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| Drawing of Cheng I Sao (R) in battle. (Credit: Hulton Archive/Getty Images) |
It was once a common belief among pirates that having women aboard a ship
was bad luck, but that didn’t stop a few swashbuckling ladies from joining and
even leading bands of buccaneers. Take a look back at the criminal careers of
five of history’s most ferocious seafaring women.
1. Cheng I Sao
One of history’s most influential raiders began
her career in a Chinese brothel. Cheng I Sao, or the “wife of Cheng,” was a
Cantonese former prostitute who married a powerful corsair named Cheng I in
1801. The husband and wife team soon raised one of China’s most formidable
pirate armies. Their outfit boasted hundreds of ships and some 50,000 men, and
it preyed on the fishing vessels, supply junks and the coastal villages of
Southern China with impunity.
Upon her husband’s death in 1807, Mrs. Cheng
elbowed her way into power and partnered with a trusted lieutenant and lover
named Chang Pao. Over the next few years, she plundered her way across
Southeast Asia and assembled a fleet that rivaled many countries’ navies. She
also penned a rigorous code of conduct for her pirates. Rape of female prisoners
was punishable by beheading, and deserters had their ears lopped off. Mrs.
Cheng’s bloody reign made her public enemy number one of the Chinese
government, and in 1810, the British and Portuguese navies were enlisted to
bring her to justice. Rather than duking it out at sea, she shrewdly agreed to
surrender her fleet and lay down her cutlass in exchange for the right to keep
her ill-gotten riches. Mrs. Cheng retired as one of history’s most successful
pirates, and went on to run a gambling house until her death in 1844 at the age
of 69.
2. Anne Bonny
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| Credit: The Print Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images |
The notorious pirate Anne Bonny began her life
as the illegitimate daughter of a wealthy Irish lawyer. In an effort to hide
her dubious parentage, her father had her dress a boy and pose as his law clerk
for part of her youth. She later moved to America, where she married a sailor
in 1718 and journeyed to the pirate-infested island of New Providence in the
Bahamas. There, she abandoned her husband and fell under the spell of “Calico”
Jack Rackam, a flamboyant buccaneer who plied his trade in the Caribbean.
Bonny had always been known for her “fierce and
courageous temper”—according to one legend, she nearly beat a man to death when
he tried to force himself on her—and she quickly showed she could guzzle rum,
curse and wield a pistol and cutlass with the best of Calico Jack’s crew. She
later forged a friendship with fellow female pirate Mary Read, and the pair
played a leading role in a spree of raids against small fishing boats and
trading sloops in the summer and fall of 1720. Bonny’s stint on the high seas
was cut short that October, when Calico Jack’s ship was captured by a band of
pirate-hunters. Calico Jack and several other men were executed, but Bonny and
Read dodged the noose after they were both found to be pregnant.
3. Mary Read
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| Credit: Culture Club/Getty Images |
Born in England in the late-17th century, Mary
Read spent most of her youth disguised as her deceased half-brother so that her
penniless mother could scam the boy’s grandmother. Hoping to quench her thirst
for adventure, she later adopted the name Mark Read and took on a succession of
traditionally male jobs, first as a soldier and later as a merchant sailor.
Read turned pirate in the late-1710s, after buccaneers attacked the ship she
was working on and impressed her into their ranks. She later found her way
aboard Calico Jack Rackam’s boat, where she met and befriended Anne Bonny and
revealed herself to be a woman.
Read only sailed with Calico Jack for a few
months, but during that time she won a fearsome reputation. One of her most
famous exploits came in October 1720, when she and Bonny fought like banshees
during an attack by pirate-hunters. “If there’s a man among ye,” she supposedly
screamed at the male buccaneers cowering below decks, “ye’ll come up and fight
like the man ye are to be!” Despite Read’s heroics, she and the rest of Calico
Jack’s crew were captured and charged with piracy. Read avoided execution by
admitting she was “quick with child,” but she later came down with a fever and
died in prison.
4. Grace O’Malley
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| Clew Bay, where O’Malley was based. (Credit: Universal History Archive/Getty Images) |
During a time when most women were denied an
education and kept restrained to their homes, pirate Grace O’Malley led a
20-ship fleet that stood up to the might of the British monarchy. Also known as
“Granuaille,” or “bald,” for her habit of cutting her hair short, O’Malley was
born into a powerful clan that lorded over the coastlines of western Ireland.
After taking the reigns in the 1560s, she continued a family tradition of piracy
by plundering English and Spanish shipping vessels and attacking rival
chieftains. Her escapades were legendary—one tale claims she did battle at sea
only a day after giving birth—but they also drew the ire of the authorities.
She was forced to repel a siege against her stronghold at Rockfleet Castle in
1574, and later did 18 months behind bars after she was captured during one of
her raids.
O’Malley resumed her marauding after her
release, but more trouble arrived in the early 1590s, when British authorities
impounded her fleet. With nowhere else to turn, the 63-year-old buccaneer
appealed directly to Queen Elizabeth I for assistance. During a famous royal
audience in London, O’Malley portrayed herself as a tired and broken old woman
and begged the Queen to return her ships, release one of her captured sons and
allow her to retire in peace. The gambit worked, but it seems that “Granuaille”
didn’t keep up her end of the bargain—records show that she and her sons
continued pirating until her death in 1603.
5. Rachel Wall
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| Boston Harbor (Credit: Buyenlarge/Getty Images) |
Rachel Wall’s biography is peppered with myths
and legends, but if certain tales about her are true, she was one of the first
and only American women to try her hand at piracy. As the story goes, Wall was
a Pennsylvania native who ran away from home as a teen and married a fisherman
named George Wall. The couple settled in Boston and tried to scrape out a
living, but constant money problems eventually led them to turn to a life of
crime. In 1781, the Walls procured a small boat, teamed with a few low-life
mariners and began preying on ships off the coast of New England. Their
strategy was as ingenious as it was brutal. Whenever a storm passed through the
region, the buccaneers would dress their boat up to look like it had been
ravaged by rough seas. The comely Rachel would then stand on the deck and plead
for aid from passing ships. When the unsuspecting rescuers came near, they were
promptly boarded, robbed and murdered.
Wall’s siren song may have lured as many as a
dozen ships to their doom, but her luck ran out in 1782, when a real storm
destroyed her boat and killed George. She continued her thieving on land, and
was later arrested in 1789 for attacking and robbing a Boston woman. While in
prison, she penned a confession admitting to “Sabbath-breaking, stealing,
lying, disobedience to parents, and almost every other sin a person could
commit, except murder.” Unfortunately for Wall, the mea culpa was not enough to
sway the authorities. On October 8, she became the last woman ever executed in
Massachusetts when she was hanged to death in Boston Common.
June 23, 2015
5
Notorious Female Pirates
By Evan Andrews
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