Perhaps no pirate has more fake history surrounding them than that of Anne Bonny. As with all of the most famous pirates, Captain Johnson’s (Daniel Defoe) General History of Pirates, written in 1724 is the source of such tales. Johnson never sourced anything and some of what he said has been proven false and some has been confirmed. He seems to have written rumors and facts alike and perhaps made some of it up. It makes researching Anne Bonny difficult because almost all secondary sources go back to Johnson or to someone else who got their info from Johnson. Thus, for this pirate profile I had to stick to primary sources of which there are very few.
Anne was born in Ireland around 1698. Ireland did not record births until 1864 but sometimes families kept track of their own in Bibles. There is no record of Anne’s birth but we know she was 12 when her mom died in 1710.
Her father, William McCormick married into money but had an affair with a servant who became pregnant and gave birth to Anne. The servant’s name was Mary Brennon. McCormick it is said by Johnson, that Anne’s father dressed Anne as a boy and called her Andy. He pretended to be raising the child to be his clerk. McCormick was a lawyer. McCormick’s wife found out and cut off his allowance, so he moved to Charleston, South Carolina and took Anne and Mary Brennon with him. I doubt seriously that his wife was so dim she could be fooled for years.
At any rate, Anne’s mom dies when she is 12. Her father did well in Charlestown working as a lawyer then with merchants. Charleston was a major port and full of merchants. Anne got married when she was very young to a pirate named James Bonny. Her father did not approve at all and disowned Anne. Mythology says Anne burned his plantation the skipped town with her husband. There is also a mth about Anne stabbing a servant to death when she was 13. No records of either event exist and in a place like Charleston the chances are a murder and a fire would be recorded. The last record we have of Anne in Charleston is in 1714 and then she appears in 1718 in Nassau, Bahamas.
Anne’s pirate husband took the pardon that was issued in 1718, first by Vincent Pierce then by Governor Woods Rogers. The pardon forgave pirates for all they had done if they swore to stop and live a crime free life. This pardon was after years of trying to round up and hang all the pirates. It was a desperate attempt to keep Nassau from becoming an independent nation and end piracy.
James Bonny not only took the pardon but became an informant for Rogers. Many of Anne and James’s friends were arrested because of James’s intel. Anne was disgusted by this and cheated on her husband with Jack Rackham, known now as Calico Jack. Her husband found out but would not give her a divorce. Rackham had already had an eventful career mostly as the quartermaster to Charles Vane but also as captain of his own crew for a few months. He had decided to quit while he was ahead and take the pardon.
It is amazing that Rodgers gave Calico Jack a pardon because they had history. When Rodgers first came to Nassau it was Charles Vane and Calico Jack who had taken over a fort build during Queen Anne’s War and would not let Rodgers’s ships enter the harbor. Rodgers responded by blockading the harbor and refusing to leave until someone removed Vane and his men from the fort. Calico Jack and Vane lit a ship on fire that was full of gunpowder, barrels of nails, cannon balls and iron rivets and set its course under full sails toward Rodgers’s fleet.
Rodgers’s fleet saw the burning ship coming and gave a wide berth to avoid being hit by the explosion they knew was coming. When it did explode only one of Rodgers’s ships was badly damaged. Calico Jack and Vane sailed behind the burning ship and slipped out of Nassau firing roadsides at Rodgers as they did. This amazing story we actually have records for and can verify.
Later Calico Jack and Vane parted ways after Vane broke off a fight with a French warship. Jack thought it was cowardly and took command of most of the crew after being voted the new captain. Vane and some loyal to him left in a prize ship they had taken. Vane’s story will be covered in another pirate profile.
Jack did not do well as a captain and after a short career on his own went back to Nassau and said he had run away from Vane and wanted to live a productive life. He blamed everything on Vane and Rodgers gave him a pardon. He lived a “normal” life until he met Anne.
Anne could not get a divorce, so she and Calico Jack formed a crew, stole a Jamaican sloop called William out of the harbor and left Nassau to live as pirates. It is not true that Anne was disguised as a man. All of the records have the men refer to her as lass and a woman who was robbed by Anne noted how large her breast looked. It is true that Anne and Jack were lovers. It is not true that Mary Reed was the lover of either of them. Mary Reed had dressed as a man and served in the English army against Spain in the War of Spanish Succession. She joined the crew of Calico Jack when the ship she was on was taken as a prize. She had a boyfriend that was part of the crew, but it was not Calico Jack and there is no evidence she was ever lovers with Anne.
Eventually Calico Jack was caught after a vicious cannon fight with captain Barnet, a pirate hunter. Calico Jack was arrested along with Anne and Mary. All three were sentenced to be hanged but Mary and Anne were both pregnant. This is documented clearly in their trial. The court had some mercy and after examinations that proved they were pregnant decided not to hang them. Calico Jack was hanged at Port Royal and his body was put in a cage to hang and sway on a sandbar south of Port Royal. It is called Rackham’s Cay to this day. Mary died in prison from a fever and lost the baby as well. Anne vanishes from record. She either escaped or her rich father was able to bribe her out. There are all kinds of tales about what happened, but the truth is we don’t know. After 1721 she is gone from all records. Keep in mind that she was only 23 when she went to jail.
Any questions?