TWO WOMEN PIRATES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 61, 29 November 1907, Page 4

TWO WOMEN PIRATES.

Among the chain of small coral islets round the entrance to Kingston Harbour, in Jamaica, the most famous is Rackham Cay. It is a tiny, insignificant, barren place—"the last, least lump of coral"—but it is famous in Jamaican history, and is assocted with some of the most extraordinary" achievements ever performed by women. Captain Rackham, who gave his name to the cay, by reason of the fact that he was hanged on the gallows there, was a bold, bad man, whose storv is enshrined in the annals of the buccaneers. After winning much fame and loot as a picaroon, he was captured bv a British man-of-war, and taken into Port Koval, on November 16, 1720. It was thought that he and his crew would be better for a little hanging, so hanged they were. Their tale does not concern us. According to the "New York Herald," there were two members of the pirate band who were convicted with the others, but were not ciecuted; and it is with them we have to do.

The Admiralty Court had found the verdict of guilty, and the judge, putting on his sternest expression, asked the sullen prisoners at the bar if they had anything to say why sentence of death should not be passed upon them. One by one the pirates scowled savagcand shook their heads. But presently a young, fresh-faced, chubby person said: "My Lord, I am a woman." The judge gasped and wondered if he had heard aright, or if he had taken too much rum sangarec the night before—a thing West Indian magnates were prone to do in those good old days. With an effort he pulled himself together, only to be dumbfounded by an hysterical giggle from the next prisoner, who chimed in: "And so am I, too, my lord! I am Anne Bonney and this is Mary Read." Inquiry was made into these astounding statements, and both were found to be perfectly true. The clemency of the King was extended to them, and they were pardoned. Mary Read fell ill and died in her cell while under reprieve; but Anne Bonney, through the kindness of some Jamaican planters, was restored to her family in Carolina. According to the story which she told to the judge, she was the daughter of looked at her anxiously; she had put was going out to the suburb to do some business for his company, with a servant girl, settled in Carolina, and made a fortune. She was wooed I by many young men of good family, but,

to her father's intense disgust, she rejected them all and eloped with a young i skipper, who had nothing but his luck to depend upon. The parental frown pro vine persistent, the young couple removed to New Providence, then the favourite resort of all the bucaneers and desperadoes of the day. Anne* set up house-keeping here, and her skipper went a-pirating for a living. Out of sight, out of mind. While her husband was away, Captain Rackham came along to New Providence, saw Anne, fell in love with her pretty face, and persuaded her to elope with him on his ship. She dressed in boy's clothes and shipped as one of the crew, unknown to anybody but Rackham. y Now comes the most amazing part of this extraordinary affair. On board the ship there was a very handsome sailor, who acted as carpenter. Ever flighty in her affections, Anne soon tired of Rackham, and fell in love with this handsome carpenter, who first attracted her attention by his desperate courage in battle. She was not a woman to boggle at conventions, so she fell at his feet one night in a passion of scalding tears, and sobbed out her love, revealing her indentity. Dumbfounded, he exclaimed, "I'm a woman, too!" Of course, Anne was bitterly disappointed, but soon the two women, thus strangely thrown together on the pirate ship, became very close friends, and could hardly bear to be out of one another's company, even for an hour. Observing their intimacy, Rackham grew bitterly jealous, and threatened to throw Anne to the sharks in punishment for her supposed affection for one of the crew. To save herself, she was obliged to tell him that his rival was a woman, whose name was Mary Read. Mary's life had been a stranger and more adventurous one even than Anne's. She had been from her earliest childhood as a boy, in order to secure an allowance from an old grandmother, who hated girls. After the grandmother died, without having discovered the secret, the disguised girl obtained employment in the service of a French lady as footboy, and in that capacity travelled all over the Continent. Yearning for further adventures, she discarded menial's livery, and went to sea as a cabin boy. Tiring of that hard life, she enlisted in a regiment of British infantry, and fought valiantly in the Flemish wars under Marlborough. Here she met her fate. One of her comrades was a very handsome young Fleming, who unconsciously won her love. She did not reveal her sex directly to him, but one day he found her weeping hysterically in her tent, and understood the truth. He fell head over heels in love with her at once, and next day they were married, the ceremony being publicly performed before the whole regiment. All England rang with the romance, and the happy lovers were discharged from military service and set up in life in a cosy little country publichouse, with the money showered upon them by their many sympathisers. At first the hosterly paid very well, crowds of people flocking to see the woman whose remarkable history had been bruited abroad. Tired of the unadventurous life of the country, Mary donned man's clothes again, once more enlisted in the army, and fought with great bravery" at Ramillies, Oudenarde, and Malplaquet. Presently the treaty of Utrecht put an end to the wars which hnd been going on so long, and Mary, in common with many other poor soldiers, found herself cast adrift.

Never at a ioss, snc snipped oefore the mast on a West Indianman. When out in the Caribbean Sea the vessel was captured by Rackham, and Mary Read, in her disguise, was allowed to join the pirate crew as an alternative to walking the plank. Thus it was that her path in life crossed that of Anne Bonney. Unknown to any of the picaroons as women, save only to Rackham, Mary and Anne lived on the pirate ship for a long time and went through enough thrilling adventures to serve for a library of "penny dreadfuls." They were both utterly fearless and bore themselves as bravely as the bravest man amidst the crash of cannon and the carnage of battle.

Mary Read achieved great honour among the pirates. One chronicler says : "To courage and daring she has united such skill as a swordsman that she was foremost in all desperate adventures." Like Anne, Mary had her own romance aboard the pirate ship. A young carpenter was taken prisoner on one of the prizes captured by Rackham, and was enlisted among the freebooting crew. He was a good-looking young fellow, and Mary fell secretly in love with him, just as she had done with her Fleming in Marlborough's wars. A romantic incident hastened the declaration of her love. Aboard pirate ships tempers were short and quarrels easy. One day the carpenter got into a dispute with one of the sailors, which ended with a challenge to fight a duel. Mary was present, and, fearing for the safety of the man she loved, she threw a glass of rum and water in the face of his enemy and demanded that he should wipe out that insult by fighting her before he tackeled the other fellow. By the pirate code of honour he was obliged to do so. Her life as a soldier had made Manan expert swordsman. After a few passes she ran the man through the heart with her rapier and laid him dead at her feet. Afterwards- she told the carpenter who she was, won his love, and they were secretly married at the next port at which the vessel touched. Such are the romances which Rackhaw Cay commemorates. Both of these remarkable women showed in every action of their lives a greater intrepidity than one ordinarily expects from even the bravest man. An old chronicler says that Rackham was permitted to sec Anne Bonney just before he was led out to execution. She did not condole with him, but, knowing what desperate courage would do even in the worst straits, she roughly remarked: "If you had thoughts like a man before you were taken you would not be led away now to be hanged like a dog." Which must have been cold comfort for poor Rackham, coming, as it did, from his best beloved. Fo'r two years the skeleton of the pirate chief hung in chains on the island that bears his name, and then the great hurricane of 1722 swept the gibbet and bore it broken to the shore. Curiously enough, this instrument of death was the raft of life to one poor fellow. A negro labourer, who had been left on the cay to do some coopering work, clung to it, and was washed safely to shore during the hurricane.