Anne Bonny and Mary Read: real-life pirates of the Caribbean

Greg Jenner is joined in the eighteenth-century Caribbean by historian and curator Hannah Cusworth and comedian Kemah Bob to learn about the swashbuckling lives of pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read. These women and their adventures on the high seas have become the stuff of legend, helped along by the sensational account of their lives written shortly after their capture. Though they are famous for the short period they spent together on a pirate ship, dressed as men to hide their true identities, the two had very different backgrounds. Anne was the well-off and rebellious daughter of a merchant and plantation owner in Carolina, while the working-class Mary already had experience dressing in men’s clothing and working as a sailor and soldier. This episode traces their biographies, exploring their upbringings, romantic entanglements (with men and each other), and time aboard the pirate ship captained by the infamous Captain 'Calico Jack' Rackham, as well as their ultimate fate. And it looks at the wider context of the Caribbean, the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans and the Golden Age of piracy which shaped their lives and choices, and asks what place they have in queer and trans histories of the period. If you’re a fan of swashbuckling pirates, women in male professions, and the complicated history of slavery and colonialism in the Caribbean, you’ll love our episode on Anne Bonny and Mary Read. If you want more from Kemah Bob, listen to our episodes on Hatshepsut or Prohibition in the USA. And for more swashbuckling women, check out our episodes on duellist and opera singer Julie d’Aubigny, Chinese pirate queen Zheng Yi Sao, or Irish pirate Grainne O’Malley. You’re Dead To Me is the comedy podcast that takes history seriously. Every episode, Greg Jenner brings together the best names in history and comedy to learn and laugh about the past. Hosted by: Greg Jenner Research by: Naomi Weaver Written by: Naomi Weaver, Dr Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow, Dr Emma Nagouse, and Greg Jenner Produced by: Dr Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow and Greg Jenner Audio Producer: Steve Hankey Production Coordinator: Gill Huggett Senior Producer: Dr Emma Nagouse Executive Editor: Philip Sellars

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Greg Jenner?

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• 1:38Greg Jenner?

  Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, the BBC Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name's Greg Jenner, I am a public historian, author and broadcaster, and today we are swashing our buckles, splicing the main braces and sailing back to the 18th century, to the Caribbean, to learn all about the piratical pair Anne Bonny and Mary Reid. And to help us, we have two very special crewmates. In history corner, she's curator of The Atlantic at the National Maritime Museum and is doing a PhD at University College London. Her research interests bring together the histories of the Atlantic world and Black Studies, and you might recognise her name from her time as a researcher on this very programme, it's Hannah Cusworth. Ahoy me, matey. Welcome back to the show. You're the first ever research intern to come back as an expert on the show.

• 2:20Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, no, thank you so much for having me back.

• 2:22Greg Jenner?

  Delighted, I feel very proud, like a proud dad.

• 2:25Speaker 04

  Like a little graduate.

• 2:26Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, it's wonderful. And in comedy corner, she's a fantastic comedian, writer and producer. You've seen her on the TV as the host of It's a Sin After Hours, on Richard Osman's House of Games, on QI, or maybe starring alongside Steve Coogan in Chivalry. Maybe you've seen her sell-out tour shows, seen her at the Edinburgh Fringe, she goes every year. She's also the host of the Icebergs podcast, You're Very Busy. But of course, most importantly, you'll remember her from our episodes, our raucous episodes indeed, on Prohibition in the USA and Pharaoh Hat Shepsut. It's Kemah Bob, welcome back, Kemah.

• 2:56Speaker 05

  Hi, glad to be here. Can't wait to laugh and learn.

• 3:00Greg Jenner?

  In that order.

• 3:02Speaker 05

  It's so funny, but like when someone does an intro and you're just like, oh yeah, I did do that, that's awesome. So thanks for reminding me of who I am.

• 3:11Greg Jenner?

  That's it, that's why I'm here. I'm basically just making sure that you're aware of your own CV.

• 3:15Speaker 05

  Yeah, I'm excited to learn stuff today.

• 3:18Greg Jenner?

  That is the plan. And when we've done America together, we've done ancient Egypt together, today we are in, well, we're doing Pirates of the Caribbean today.

• 3:25Speaker 05

  Love that.

• 3:26Greg Jenner?

  Not the movies.

• 3:27Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:28Greg Jenner?

  Genuine, real Pirates Caribbean. So what do you know? What's your starting baseline of knowledge?

• 3:31Speaker 05

  Well, I love the fashion. I love the fashion of pirates, I love what they're doing. I like, I mean, sometimes pirates are like really righteous, right? Sometimes pirates are bad, but sometimes pirates are good. And so I'm curious, I'm like, what are these pirates gonna be? Am I on the side of the pirates?

• 3:55Greg Jenner?

  Sure.

• 3:56Speaker 05

  And I tell you what, as a very Robin Hood-leaning person, I think I'm gonna be.

• 4:01Greg Jenner?

  I mean, these are some very famous pirates who do, I think, border the edges of both bad and good occasionally.

• 4:07Speaker 05

  Nice, spicy, complex characters.

• 4:09Greg Jenner?

  We'll see what we get with them, but I mean, do you know the names? Anne Bonny, Mary Reid, have you ever encountered them?

• 4:14Speaker 05

  No.

• 4:15Greg Jenner?

  Okay, so we're starting from scratch.

• 4:16Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 4:17Greg Jenner?

  Okay, that's exciting. So, what do you know?

• 4:25Greg Jenner?

  This is the So What Do You Know? This is where I have a go at guessing what you, our lovely listener or viewer, hello, might know about today's subject. And I reckon you might know a bit. Kemah didn't know Mary and Anne in terms of the names, but they are two of the most famous women of the golden age of piracy. They popped up in the hilarious 2023 sitcom Our Flag Means Death, very funny show. They're in the video game Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag. Perhaps you've stumbled across the statue of them at execution docks in London, maybe a bit of a spoiler there, sorry. Maybe you've just tumbled down a Reddit thread on their relationship. But how did two women from Ireland and England end up becoming pirates of the Caribbean? Why did they disguise themselves as men? And do you really need to take to the high seas to find yourself a girlfriend? Let's find out.

• 5:10Greg Jenner?

  Right then, Hannah, Bonny and Reid, they're a double act. We often assume they spend their whole life together, but they don't, right? They grow up completely separately.

• 5:18Speaker 04

  They do.

• 5:19Greg Jenner?

  Nothing in common. So can we start with Anne Bonny's early life? Where was she born? What was her family situation?

• 5:25Speaker 04

  Of course. So for both women, details of their childhood and actually kind of lives are unclear, and we're not always sure what is true. Not great for the historians among us, but we're, it's also not that unusual for women who were born in the kind of late 17th century, kind of early 1700s. Our main source is a 1724 book called A General History of Pirates by one Captain Charles Johnson. We're not 100% sure if that's his real name, if that's like a stage name, but it was written very close to the time that Anne Bonny and Mary Reid were doing their thing. So he probably spoke to actually quite a lot of people, sailors, maybe people who knew them, and the book is a wild ride.

• 6:08Speaker 04

  Like, he is telling, wanting to tell a really entertaining story, and it really captivated people at the time. It was a bestseller, it went through numerous editions, it was translated into different languages, but it also is still pretty hilarious today, so excited to get into it.

• 6:23Greg Jenner?

  Okay, so we should take it with a pinch of sea salt, right? Some of these, some of these facts.

• 6:28Speaker 04

  A bucket, a bucket of sea salt.

• 6:31Speaker 04

  So Anne Bonny is often said to have been born Anne Cormac in Cork, Ireland.

• 6:37Greg Jenner?

  Right.

• 6:38Speaker 04

  And then we think she was born in sort of the late 17th, early 18th century, and an illegitimate daughter, also the story goes in the general life of pirates, an illegitimate daughter of a married lawyer, guy with quite a lot of status, and a maid. And it's a bit of a like bawdy tale. There's bed swapping, there's someone stealing silver spoons, there's twins, there's like adultery, there's a lot going on. But as I said, we're not 100% sure how much of that is just Johnson kind of telling a good tale and how much is based in fact.

• 7:08Greg Jenner?

  Okay, so Anne Bonny, actually Anne Cormac, we should start there.

• 7:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, some historian, it's unclear, but let's go with Anne Bonny.

• 7:17Greg Jenner?

  How many times a day are you gonna say, it's unclear? We should just get like a little placard, it should show on the screen. Okay, so Anne Cormac, born in Cork, Ireland, her father is the sort of rich lawyer, but her mum is the maid. Bit of scandal there. And Kemah, do you want to guess how Anne's father tried to hide his illegitimate daughter that he wasn't meant to have?

• 7:37Speaker 05

  In a closet.

• 7:40Greg Jenner?

  Physically hide her, just Harry Potter style, yeah. Well, I mean, not quite in a closet, but metaphorically?

• 7:47Speaker 04

  Metaphorically, he dressed her as a boy. And I think the whole town knew, this was not a very well-kept secret, the, her kind of Anne's birth, and so he was like, hmm, how do I hide her in the house without people kind of letting on? And they were like, sure, just her as a boy, of course.

• 8:05Speaker 05

  So wouldn't people be like, where did this boy come from?

• 8:08Speaker 04

  Right. So the story is that he was like, oh, this is a male relative of mine that I'm like training up to be like someone, basically a paralegal in my law firm.

• 8:18Greg Jenner?

  Right, okay.

• 8:19Speaker 04

  And apparently people bought it.

• 8:23Speaker 05

  Also, I love, like, she's doing drag from a young age.

• 8:27Speaker 04

  That is a consistent theme. Unfortunately, people found out and they decided to find a new life in the new world. So they travelled to the Carolinas. And this bit, we think, is probably based in historical fact. And at this time, as lots of our listeners will know, South Carolina was a real kind of hub for the trade of enslaved people. And so a lot of enslaved people who were brought into the US were brought to South Carolina at this time. Figures are about roughly kind of 40%. And her father, it's said, kind of left law and fell into merchandise, which, as a historian of this period, is often like, oh, what are you selling, cakes? And the answer is, no enslaved people.

• 9:09Speaker 04

  So we think that's probably what he did as his job, and apparently he made so much money from that that he was able to purchase a considerable plantation. And so Anne grew up pretty well, yeah.

• 9:23Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, so it's not a great start, Kemah.

• 9:25Speaker 05

  Hey, shall we be responsible for the sins of our fathers?

• 9:30Greg Jenner?

  No, sure.

• 9:31Speaker 05

  But at the same time... She is living, living high on the hog with money that comes from evil. I don't, oh no, maybe I'm not, maybe I'm not on her side.

• 9:42Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 9:43Speaker 05

  Oh, man.

• 9:44Greg Jenner?

  We've had our first moral quandary. Can you tell us more about Anne's teenage years, you know, growing up?

• 9:49Speaker 04

  According to Johnson, Anne's mother died relatively soon after they arrived in the Carolinas and therefore kind of Anne became the lady of the house. And we don't have a huge amount of evidence about what her, that kind of life was like for her. But we do know that there are a number of other women, even in South Carolina, who had this kind of role, even being quite young women, of kind of being like the lady of the house and overseeing the plantation. There was a woman who's kind of really quite famous in the US, her name's Eliza Pickney-Lucas, and she at 16 was managing her family's plantation in the Carolinas and then goes on to make a huge amount of money and is kind of credited as like bringing indigo into the colony.

• 10:34Speaker 04

  So that might have been quite a similar role for Anne. She might have been managing enslaved people. She might have been responsible for kind of running the plantation, the finances of it.

• 10:44Speaker 05

  Anne, what the hell?

• 10:46Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, she's not a hero yet, is she?

• 10:48Speaker 05

  No.

• 10:49Greg Jenner?

  No, okay.

• 10:50Speaker 05

  Oh, man.

• 10:51Greg Jenner?

  Don't worry, I mean, there's more to come.

• 10:52Speaker 04

  There's more to come. Apparently she also had a temper from a young age. And there is this story, which apparently is almost certainly untrue, of her attacking an English servant with a carving knife.

• 11:02Greg Jenner?

  Wow, okay. Kemah, our fiery-tempered Anne wasn't the only one with the anger issues because she also managed to anger her father, the, you know, former lawyer. How did she do it? What did she do that's made daddy angry?

• 11:16Speaker 05

  Ooh, hopefully free some slaves.

• 11:20Greg Jenner?

  That would be good. It wasn't quite that. It was more of a sort of daddy, I love him type thing, right?

• 11:27Speaker 04

  So Anne married a poor sailor, James Bonney, hence becoming Anne Bonney. And her father was livid and threw her out. He had wanted to make a good match for her and this kind of relatively lowly sailor, James, was not the one. James was also really angry, actually, because he thought that by marrying Anne, he was going to be making a little bit of money, right? She was going to be bringing a little bit of money to the relationship. And then daddy cut her off. And then according to one story, she was kind of so furious that she burned down the plantation on her way out.

• 11:56Greg Jenner?

  Wow.

• 11:56Speaker 05

  Hmm, okay, Anne and back in.

• 12:02Greg Jenner?

  So we have our pyraminiac Anne on the run. Let's check in with our other leading lady then. So Hannah, how does Mary read? If it is Mary read at this point, how does she start her life? Is she similarly wealthy as her dad, also a lawyer? You know, is it comfortable beginnings?

• 12:17Speaker 04

  Not so comfortable beginnings for Mary read, from what we can tell. Again, having to take this with a bit of, with a large pinch of salt. There is a Mary read existing in Bristol, in the like historical record. And apparently she's like there writing a petition to kind of pardon pirates. So maybe, we're not sure if this is like a family thing for the Reed's. But her father apparently, actually, do you know what? We don't know, illegitimate. Mary Reed's mother apparently had an affair while her sailor husband was away. And then to disguise her infidelity from the husband's family, she dresses Mary as her former child, male child, who had sadly passed away.

• 12:56Greg Jenner?

  Oh.

• 12:56Speaker 04

  So that she can continue getting the allowance from her family.

• 12:59Speaker 05

  These people are obsessed.

• 13:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 13:01Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 13:02Speaker 05

  With the drag.

• 13:03Greg Jenner?

  So Anne Bonney was disguised as a boy.

• 13:05Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 13:06Greg Jenner?

  And Mary was disguised as her dead brother.

• 13:08Speaker 04

  Yes, so quite dark. At the time, these kind of mistaken identities or kind of gender swapping, dressing, this was quite a common theme in this kind of literature at this point. So we're not sure if this is just like a good tale or if there is some basis in fact for Mary read.

• 13:24Greg Jenner?

  Right. So we've got a theme established, which is girls dressing as boys. Can you guess what Mary's new name was when she was dressing as a man?

• 13:33Speaker 05

  Mario.

• 13:37Greg Jenner?

  Not a plumber, sadly. Not Mario, you weren't far off Mark. Is that the English Mario?

• 13:43Speaker 05

  Classic, classic name for a person.

• 13:47Greg Jenner?

  It's more chartered accountant than pirates, isn't it? And actually, Mark Reed stays this person's name for a while, right? They're, they're living their life as Mark Reed, but they're also dressing as their dead brother.

• 13:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, and there's a sense that we get that Mary dressed as Mark or dressed as a man, even when the situation perhaps didn't really explicitly require it. So I'm not sure if you could sort of say that maybe she had more of a kind of attachment to this gender identity or whether it was a situation where dressing as a man or as a, as a boy enabled more opportunities and was potentially kind of safer in, in some way.

• 14:25Speaker 05

  So real, wow.

• 14:28Speaker 04

  So she finds work as a sailor, dressed as, dressed as a man. And then she becomes a soldier. She's fighting in Flanders as part of the War of Spanish Succession. Mary meets another soldier. Apparently they're kind of sharing a tent together and she really falls in love with him. And thankfully, there's this kind of moment where she is like, oh, do you know what? Actually, guess what? I'm a woman and he is like, absolutely, let's crack on. And she's like, no, no, no, no, let's get married, right?

• 14:54Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 14:55Speaker 04

  Let's not, let's not do that kind of thing here. I want to be your kind of honorable, honorable wife. And I suppose like, good for the, good for the, the kind of, the people around them. They were like, yeah, this is excellent. Let's like, let's have a big wedding. They gave them some money. And Mary and her husband open a pub that's called The Three Horseshoes. Sadly.

• 15:19Speaker 05

  I like that, I kind of like that name, that's cute.

• 15:22Speaker 04

  It is cute.

• 15:22Speaker 05

  Yeah, because I feel like everything is like the, the lion and the witch in the wardrobe. Do you know what I mean? Like, I think that was like the queen's face, you know?

• 15:31Speaker 04

  Exactly, but they went three horseshoes.

• 15:33Greg Jenner?

  Only three, what happened to the fourth horseshoe? That poor horse?

• 15:36Speaker 04

  I know, and also you would have thought three horseshoes would have been good luck, right? Sadly, it didn't work out that way for them. And the husband died quite soon after. And so Mary, after kind of getting maybe her happy ending, is in quite a difficult situation. The war is over, there's not that much work for a soldier anymore. And so she decides to try her luck by going on a ship to the Americas.

• 15:56Greg Jenner?

  So as a soldier, she'd been Mark.

• 15:58Speaker 04

  As a soldier, she'd been Mark.

• 15:59Greg Jenner?

  They'd been Mark, but yeah, Mark, Mark Reed, soldier slash chartered accountant.

• 16:02Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 16:03Greg Jenner?

  And now, having got married, she was Mary Reed.

• 16:06Speaker 04

  That's right, I'm running the pub as Mary Reed.

• 16:08Greg Jenner?

  And is Reed, her husband's surname?

• 16:10Speaker 04

  No, Reed is her name.

• 16:11Greg Jenner?

  Okay, so she's keeping her original, okay, fine.

• 16:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 16:14Greg Jenner?

  And now she's off to the Caribbean.

• 16:15Speaker 04

  She's off to the Caribbean.

• 16:16Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 16:17Speaker 04

  Pirate life for me.

• 16:17Greg Jenner?

  Quite a tough start to life for Mary.

• 16:19Speaker 05

  I mean, it sounds very spicy, it sounds eventful. I bet she was never bored.

• 16:24Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, I mean, that sounds like a kind of a memoir you'd write, you know? I was, I was born and dressed as my dead brother, then I became a soldier, then I became, yeah.

• 16:31Speaker 05

  And can I say, both of these ladies are on a slippery slope to lesbianism.

• 16:38Greg Jenner?

  Okay, so Hannah, can you tell us about the 18th century Caribbean world that Mary was sailing towards and was already there?

• 16:45Speaker 04

  I would say the Caribbean at this time really is defined by empire and enslavement by many ways. And historians have kind of called it like the birthplace of modernity for lots of these things that we're more familiar with today. The sugar plantation became incredibly kind of mechanized, highly organized. There were indigenous communities who were still in the Caribbean. I think it's often a myth that once Columbus got there, suddenly all of the indigenous people were wiped out. But they were living often quite challenged existences because so much of the Caribbean was turned over to sugar plantations or coffee, other kind of cash crops like that. By the time Mary and Anne get to the Caribbean, this kind of imperial system had been going on for about 200 years.

• 17:29Speaker 05

  And can I say, that's too long. Way too long.

• 17:36Speaker 04

  And so it wasn't something that was brand new, although we do kind of get the sense the English are like slightly more latecomers to it.

• 17:43Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 17:44Speaker 04

  Rather than, than the Spanish. But you've got the English, the Spanish, the French, the Dutch, all kind of competing for supremacy over these different islands, all there really to make money. And Port Royal is kind of known as this like Denim Viniquity, this kind of pirate haven, as is what is now the Bahamas. And so you've kind of got these places of, I suppose you could argue lawlessness, but there's also really tight control, right? The colonists have to have incredibly tight control so they can run this kind of violent plantation system. Enslavement underpins all of it.

• 18:16Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, okay. So Port Royal was the sort of primary capital. That moves to Kingston, is that fair?

• 18:22Speaker 04

  There's a big old earthquake in 1692. And some people at the time are like, it's because you're all sinners. And that's why there's, that's why there's this big earthquake. But there's an earthquake and a lot of the focus moves to Kingston. So in somewhere like Port Royal or in Kingston, you've got a real mixture of white colonists, many of whom owned enslaved people. You've also got a small group of people who are kind of free people of color. Some of them might have been born free, some of them might have received their, their freedom or fought for their freedom. And there, this kind of, kind of middle ground, perhaps. Many of them do own enslaved people, but many of them also have been enslaved. And then you have the vast majority of people on these islands

• 19:05Speaker 04

  that are enslaved Africans, who are working in really brutal conditions. Sometimes in towns like Port Royal or Kingston, often on plantations. And then you have indigenous communities, particularly in some of the other islands in the kind of southern Caribbean, who are fighting against colonial control all the time that they can.

• 19:24Greg Jenner?

  Kemah, what do you imagine the position of women was in this society? Particularly, you know, Anne and Mary. What do you imagine their freedoms or responsibilities would have been moving into this world?

• 19:34Speaker 05

  Hmm, okay, so I feel like it's probably like house stuff. Like people love, they're like, you gotta, you gotta do the house. And they're, maybe they're making clothes or something. And I think they have to do things that suck and are boring.

• 19:52Greg Jenner?

  I mean, suck and boring is perhaps part of it. I mean, are you saying that they're working in manufacturing?

• 19:57Speaker 05

  I think it's like domestically.

• 19:59Greg Jenner?

  Domestic children, okay.

• 20:00Speaker 05

  I feel like it's domestic vibes, because at this point, they are making other people do things that are actually hard.

• 20:09Greg Jenner?

  That's fair.

• 20:10Speaker 04

  And there is a big, yeah, there is a big element of that. I think perhaps surprisingly, or perhaps not, right, considering this is where Anne and Mary go to, women in the Caribbean, we're talking white women here, we're talking free women of colour, had a lot more freedom and actually were a lot wealthier than their counterparts in Europe. So we've got loads of examples of white women doing exactly as Kemah said, they're kind of the woman of the plantation and they've got this big group of enslaved people who are doing the really hard work for them. But we also have loads of records of white women, and to a lesser extent, free women of colour, running businesses. They were, they were making clothes at the kind of lower end, but they were also doing things like running taverns, running boarding

• 20:54Speaker 04

  houses, smuggling, piracy. That was like actually a thing that women in Jamaica did. There was a really big trade to be made in like smuggling and contraband and running shops. So these women were actually quite big players and there was a large amount of like, people were a little bit more relaxed in Jamaica, because people died all the time. So people were like, life is short, let's just have a child out of wedlock. And people, lots of the kind of like senior people in the plantation weren't really super focused on people's morals. And so there was a little bit more freedom to be had if you were free, right? If you were enslaved, you're living a completely different existence.

• 21:33Greg Jenner?

  Right.

• 21:34Speaker 05

  Ooh, question.

• 21:35Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 21:36Speaker 05

  What kind of, what are we smuggling? What's contraband?

• 21:39Speaker 04

  Ribbons. It was quite a big.

• 21:41Greg Jenner?

  Wow.

• 21:42Speaker 04

  No, so you've got, ribbons was like a huge thing in sort of 17th century Jamaica. People are smuggling food, they're smuggling gold, they're smuggling wealth, there's a whole variety of things. Wine.

• 21:56Greg Jenner?

  Rum, presumably, rum.

• 21:57Speaker 04

  Rum. So there's a, there's a big kind of, yeah, there's a big variety.

• 22:01Greg Jenner?

  But mainly ribbons. Just sort of opening up, trying to go, do you want any ribbons?

• 22:05Speaker 04

  Would you like any? Yeah. Got the latest one from Europe for you.

• 22:08Speaker 05

  Yeah, would you like to adorn yourself?

• 22:10Greg Jenner?

  But we should talk about piracy, because we're here for pirates, right?

• 22:14Speaker 04

  We're here for pirates.

• 22:15Greg Jenner?

  That's why people have tuned in, they want pirates. So, Kemah, this is known, this period is known as the Golden Age of Piracy. So what do you think it was about this time in particular that made the life of the pirate appealing?

• 22:28Speaker 05

  There's going to be swashbuckling.

• 22:30Greg Jenner?

  Yes.

• 22:30Speaker 05

  Right? So there's swashbuckling, which, do you know what that means? Does anyone know what that is?

• 22:35Greg Jenner?

  I do, yeah.

• 22:35Speaker 05

  What does that mean?

• 22:36Greg Jenner?

  Well, technically, it's an old phrase, meaning where you bang your shield with your sword. And pirates didn't use shields. So actually, swashbuckling isn't a thing a pirate did at all.

• 22:43Speaker 05

  What? But that's, don't people say that about them?

• 22:46Greg Jenner?

  They do. That's, the Golden Age of Hollywood has ruined it.

• 22:48Speaker 05

  Interesting. Okay, so they're not swashbuckling, which is unfortunate. Maybe they're just vibing. Maybe people like, are like, hey, we actually like that you're doing that. We're fans of your work.

• 23:02Speaker 04

  Do you know, that is a really interesting point, because they were. So they were different in the kind of Golden Age of Piracy, from about 1670 to 1730. So Anne Bonny and Mary Reed are kind of coming in towards the end of it. But at the beginning, states like Britain, France, were quite into this kind of piracy. And they would often sponsor it, like state-sponsored piracy, called private, kind of privateering. And then they were like, oh no, this has really got out of hand, right? And then at first, we're into these guys attacking these Spanish ships, kind of on our behalf. But now they're attacking us and our wealth, and we are not into that. So then they kind of turn on the pirates and start prosecuting them.

• 23:39Greg Jenner?

  What are we talking about in terms of what the pirates are stealing? Do we know? Like, are they nicking clothes, money, spices, people?

• 23:47Speaker 04

  The Caribbean is this real centre of, I suppose, like wealth extraction. And that is why it's so incredible to be a pirate in these waters, because you've got so many ships that are moving from South America, there's kind of Spanish silver ships that are going over. And you've also got then rum, sugar. I think it's not talked about a huge amount in the kind of literature on pirates, but a number of these ships would also have held enslaved people. And so the pirates were taking whatever they found on the ship. And sometimes those were goods, and sometimes it was people.

• 24:22Greg Jenner?

  Yeah. I mean, obviously, yes. As you say, it's, you know, this extraordinarily diverse economy, I suppose, but these pirates will steal whatever has value.

• 24:30Speaker 04

  Exactly. And we also have this sense of the pirate crews then could become quite racially mixed, because you would have like formerly enslaved people who perhaps would be kind of taken on and would join the pirate crews, as well as pirates coming from Europe. And in particular, Nassau, the capital of Bahamas, or what is now Bahamas, was like a really thriving base for pirates to sell their kind of spoils of their ill-gotten gains.

• 24:57Greg Jenner?

  Right. So the obvious question, Kemah, how do Mary Reed and Anne Bonny get into piracy? What do you think their root is?

• 25:03Speaker 05

  Hmm, they're bored. Oh, wait, wait. One of them had a pub, but she might not anymore.

• 25:11Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm, that's right.

• 25:12Speaker 05

  Hmm, maybe they just want more ribbons. You know? They're like, I don't have enough ribbons.

• 25:21Greg Jenner?

  They're just addicted to ribbons. I've got to have more. Yeah. How do I get these ribbons? I know. Sail the high seas.

• 25:26Speaker 05

  Women love ribbons.

• 25:27Speaker 04

  They do.

• 25:28Speaker 05

  Women do shopping and women be wearing ribbons.

• 25:31Speaker 04

  From what we know from Johnson, so again, this kind of big caveat, but let's run with it for a little moment. She's on her way to the Caribbean and her ship actually gets stopped and attacked by pirates.

• 25:45Greg Jenner?

  Oh, okay, all right.

• 25:46Speaker 04

  And then she, they're like, oh, we're English pirates. And she's like, oh, hey, I'm English. And so then I think she kind of joins the ship. And at this, at this moment, there's this kind of amnesty on pirates for a while. I think the British government are like, okay, let's try a new strategy, which is that we all kind of convince them they could become like legitimate traders for a bit and see who turns over. And maybe that will solve the problem.

• 26:10Greg Jenner?

  Okay, all right.

• 26:11Speaker 04

  Spoiler, yeah, it doesn't really. And so Mary, we think perhaps became pirate by choice. Anne, we get more of a sense of she was like into the life. And so she's there with this husband, James Bonny, and quickly, it seems, kind of becomes bored of him, decides to go for this much more dashing or exciting guy called Jack Rackham, who some of the listeners will know as Calico Jack.

• 26:38Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, that's his pirate name, isn't it? Calico Jack. Calico's a type of fabric, right?

• 26:42Speaker 04

  Exactly. And so apparently, I think it comes from the trousers that he was wearing. So when Kemah said earlier that she liked the outfits, I think that was, those like big trousers were quite big in the pirate world.

• 26:52Greg Jenner?

  Clearly Anne fancied the trousers too.

• 26:53Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 26:53Greg Jenner?

  Okay, so Anne sort of dumps her husband for Calico Jack.

• 26:57Speaker 04

  That's right. They tried to do a wife sale. Have you heard about this?

• 26:59Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 27:00Speaker 04

  So they tried to kind of suggest that like Anne should get an annulment, but that's quite difficult in this time. So they're like, hey, how about, James, you have this wife, you're not really that into her. How about we pay you off, right?

• 27:15Greg Jenner?

  Wow.

• 27:15Speaker 04

  And I'll take Anne and you can get an annulment and you can just kind of start again.

• 27:20Greg Jenner?

  I will buy your wife.

• 27:21Speaker 04

  I will buy your wife.

• 27:21Speaker 05

  Hey, these people are obsessed with selling humans.

• 27:24Speaker 04

  They got a taste for it, and then, yeah, they couldn't let it go.

• 27:29Greg Jenner?

  Presumably, she at least said yes to this.

• 27:31Speaker 04

  The sense we get is that she kind of, she's into it. She's like head over heels with Jack and it's just like, by any means, by any means possible.

• 27:39Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 27:39Speaker 04

  Yeah. We get a sense that from Johnson, that Anne is a very strong character, that she is kind of making very firm, kind of fierce choices across her life.

• 27:51Greg Jenner?

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so Mary Reed is effectively captured by pirates. And then it's like, well, this is, this seems fine.

• 27:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 27:57Greg Jenner?

  I'll just join you.

• 27:58Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 27:58Greg Jenner?

  But that's quite rare, right? Women aren't really common pirates at this point.

• 28:02Speaker 04

  No. So women would travel on ships, but women as pirates is incredibly rare. We only have like a small number of documented examples of women as pirates. There may have been a large number or a certain number that dressed up as men. And I suppose those people might be lost to the historical record. And kind of Anne Bonny and Mary Reed are kind of really noted because they are that rare thing, which is a female pirate in the Golden Age.

• 28:28Greg Jenner?

  But of course, at this point, they're not female pirates, because they are dressing as men again. As soon as they get, as soon as they're on the pirate ship, they're back to their old characters. So it's.

• 28:37Speaker 05

  Wait, does that make her thing with Jack like gay?

• 28:42Greg Jenner?

  I don't know. I mean, Jack presumably knows, because he's bought a wife, right?

• 28:45Speaker 04

  Yeah. So Jack knows. So at this point, I think when she's in Nassau, she is living, Nassau, sorry, she's living as a woman. That's the sense that we get. But once on the ship, there's very clear like donning of men's clothes.

• 28:59Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 28:59Speaker 04

  And so how much this is kind of a gender identity that she is kind of into, it's like the best version of herself? And how much this is more like, I'm not going to be wearing all big skirts on a pirate ship, because they're going to get tangled up in the ropes and the rigging.

• 29:14Speaker 05

  It's impractical.

• 29:15Speaker 04

  It's impractical.

• 29:16Greg Jenner?

  All those ribbons that get tangled up.

• 29:18Speaker 04

  Indeed.

• 29:18Speaker 05

  So real.

• 29:19Greg Jenner?

  Okay, so I guess we get to reintroduce Mark Reed, chartered accountant. And do we know Anne's name? Her dead brother's, I mean, Andy? Andy Bonny?

• 29:30Speaker 04

  So it's, the dead brother is Mary.

• 29:33Greg Jenner?

  Oh, okay, I'm getting confused.

• 29:34Speaker 04

  And at some points, in some historians' work, is sometimes described as Andy. And I'm not sure where they got that from.

• 29:40Greg Jenner?

  Andy Bonny.

• 29:41Speaker 04

  It's not out of the realm of possibility that some of the people who kind of gave their stories to Johnson, who was writing a general history of pirates, had actually come across Anne Bonny and Mary Reed. And some sources suggest that they met in kind of 1717, 1718, when they were in Nassau. Some, they're definitely together by 1720. And then they, because their names appear in this kind of state proclamation from the government of Bahamas, the governor of Bahamas, sorry, declaring Jack Rackham and his crew to be enemies of the Crown of Great Britain.

• 30:14Greg Jenner?

  Right.

• 30:15Speaker 04

  So that, and they are Anne Bonny and Mary Reed. And she's kind of given this like alias. Sometimes she's known as Fulford, sometimes she's known as Anne Bonny. So we get the sense that she's kind of got this slightly shady past already. And they're listed with Jack Rackham as being these big enemies of the state.

• 30:30Greg Jenner?

  That's cool. Okay. So the, the previous sort of policy of like, hands off, it's fine. You just please be legitimate, legitimate traders. That's ended. The government's come back down hard again.

• 30:40Speaker 04

  The government is not happy with Anne and Mary and Jack. And partly it's because they've stolen this, this ship called the William. And if you're into ships, it's a great little number, sloop, apparently very fast. I feel like I've got to say, you know, bring in the type of ship from working in a maritime museum.

• 30:58Greg Jenner?

  Sure.

• 30:59Speaker 04

  And yeah, so they do that in sort of August seventeen twenty and they kind of slip away from Nassau and they're off into Caribbean waters.

• 31:07Greg Jenner?

  Ah, that's exciting. The pirate life for me. Kemah, what do you imagine the life was like on the ship for Anne and Mary slash Mark and Andy, whatever they're going by?

• 31:16Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 31:17Greg Jenner?

  What do you think their daily life is like?

• 31:19Speaker 05

  On the deck, tanning, having little drinks. They invent the pina colada.

• 31:27Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 31:27Speaker 05

  They're having a lovely time and they're giving, they're giving orders while they sunbathe.

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• 33:54Greg Jenner?

  That's a lovely vision of piracy. I'm assuming it's a much harder life on a ship, even if they are, I mean, one of them's dating the captain, right? So that's, that's gonna give you some privileges. But it's hard, it's hard work being a pirate.

• 34:06Speaker 04

  It is hard work being a pirate. But apparently Anne could really kind of handle herself in this male dominated space. She was neither mindful nor demure. Allegedly, and I think this might actually come from a novel, but let's go with it anyway for the moment. Allegedly, she once used her sword to publicly undress her fencing master button by button.

• 34:24Greg Jenner?

  Amazing.

• 34:25Speaker 04

  And another story was that she shot off the-

• 34:27Speaker 05

  Um, was that sexually or non?

• 34:30Speaker 04

  I don't know. I mean, I think it's quite unlikely to have actually happened. So we can read into it whatever we want.

• 34:35Greg Jenner?

  It's a real romance novel trope, Brian.

• 34:37Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's quite hard.

• 34:38Greg Jenner?

  It's very Zorro. It's very, oh, you know, you know.

• 34:40Speaker 04

  But we do get the sense, I think, and I think we probably can take this a little bit more seriously, that Anne was, someone tried to sexually assault Anne, not on the ship, but on land, and she like, she smashed him. And so she was, I think these women were in this world where they had some like levels of agency, but they were living very much under a patriarchal system. It seemed like kind of Anne and Mary could handle themselves, but there were dangers coming from either men on the ship or from men on shore.

• 35:09Greg Jenner?

  So Kemah, you've imagined, you've imagined them on the, on the deck signing themselves, pina coladas. It's a lovely image. The pirate life is pretty hard, but it wasn't as hard as the naval life. If you were in the British Navy, that was a really tough life. So piracy was a bit more, slightly more glamorous?

• 35:25Speaker 04

  I guess, yeah. It's, it's a little bit less kind of proto cruise ship, you know, like you're on there, you've got your entertainment, there's a swimming pool, you've got your pina colada. But pirate life, yeah, it was hard. I think it was a case of choose your hard. So if you were a pirate, your average life expectancy was two years.

• 35:43Speaker 05

  Whoa, whoa.

• 35:45Speaker 04

  Sorry. Yeah, maybe I should have tried to land that with a little, a little bit better.

• 35:48Speaker 05

  I'm gonna say it. It probably sounds crazy, but that's too short.

• 35:52Greg Jenner?

  Yeah. I mean, that's like the life cycle of a butterfly or something. That's so short.

• 35:57Speaker 04

  It's not two-year-old pirates, right? So they've like lived this life.

• 35:59Greg Jenner?

  No toddlers. Okay.

• 36:00Speaker 04

  No toddlers. We're not talking like toddler pirates.

• 36:02Greg Jenner?

  Adorable two-year-olds running around with swords. Yeah. Okay.

• 36:05Speaker 04

  It's that they were very likely already at sea. And what would happen is like a pirate ship would come across another vessel, sometimes a Royal Navy vessel or a merchant kind of shipping vessel. And they would try and work out like who were the good sailors on it and would be like, hey, do you want to come and be a pirate? And would get them to sign up to some sort of like pirate code. And so there's an element here of, I suppose, like a different social structure outside the quite like rigid, and often if you're thinking about like naval discipline, very harsh life, it's a little bit more perhaps democratic. You're signing up to this kind of charter, but you're also then getting, I suppose, some

• 36:45Speaker 04

  rights in, in return. So that it was much more egalitarian on a pirate ship than on a navy ship. There was a sense that when you then got this loot, it would be shared almost equally between the crew. Like maybe the captain would get two shares and the kind of ordinary sailors would, would get a share. But it wasn't this strictly very hierarchical system that you would get. And I mean, people have kind of described pirates as almost like this kind of proletarian class of kind of, I suppose, more like working class people. You know, people have different kind of interpretations of it.

• 37:23Greg Jenner?

  Nautical socialism.

• 37:24Speaker 04

  Nautical socialism. But that means you do get the sense of, I suppose, like a different social order.

• 37:30Greg Jenner?

  Yeah. I mean, it is, the code's interesting, right? The fact that they kind of sign up to a contract. I mean, you said at the start of the show that you, you knew you were hoping for kind of Robin Hood vibes.

• 37:37Speaker 05

  Yeah, well, I love that. It's like, maybe there is honor amongst thieves, you know? Like, that sounds really cute. I love that for them.

• 37:46Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 37:46Speaker 05

  That's really nice.

• 37:47Greg Jenner?

  The life expectancy of two years was, that's quite worrying.

• 37:50Speaker 05

  But maybe like if you're in the Navy and it sucks, you want to die anyway.

• 37:54Greg Jenner?

  Maybe. I mean, you know.

• 37:55Speaker 04

  No, but Kemah has a good point, right? There were a lot of people who thought, you know what? I'll, I'll give it a go. Because at least this offers the opportunity of, I suppose, adventure, of wealth. And we know that a lot of pirates were kind of captured and tried and killed. But there were a number who managed to get their wealth back to their families in, in Britain or, or whatever, and kind of lived more comfortable lives than they would have if they were just an ordinary, yeah, navy sailor.

• 38:22Greg Jenner?

  There's another thing we should talk about, another sort of novel social institution aboard a pirate ship, which I think taps into what you were saying about social contracts and pirate code. It's a thing called, well, it's a French word, so matelletage. Do you know what that would have been? Matelletage?

• 38:38Speaker 05

  The matelletage sounds like it's below the decolletage.

• 38:44Speaker 05

  Maybe the macalletage is under the boobs to the pubes. Boob to the pubes. Macalletage.

• 38:53Speaker 05

  Love it.

• 38:53Greg Jenner?

  It's a lovely theory.

• 38:55Speaker 05

  Going on, hey, if you guys do merch, get that on a t-shirt. Boobs to the pubes. On the back, macalletage.

• 39:04Greg Jenner?

  What is it? I mean, how do we describe it?

• 39:07Speaker 04

  I suppose it's an economic arrangement between two crewmates and they split spoils equally. If one of them died, then you would get your kind of mates riches, which is sweet, right? So they would give some of the pirates' wealth who had died or been killed. They would give it to family on shore if they had one and they would take some for themselves. And some people, some historians have likened this to an early form of gay marriage.

• 39:35Speaker 05

  That's what I was just, I was like, that sounds gay as hell.

• 39:37Speaker 04

  Which I think some people have said it's a stretch. Sometimes it was much more between either two men or between like an adult man and a much younger, what we would now consider to be like a boy. But I don't want to kind of-

• 39:51Speaker 05

  Like a twink?

• 39:53Speaker 04

  Like a twink, yeah.

• 39:54Speaker 05

  I'm just saying.

• 39:55Speaker 04

  You're not, I mean, you're really not wrong. I'll come back to that. So I don't kind of want to be all, you know, historians will say they're just friends about this, but I'm not sure if we can, they were just roommates. They were just pals.

• 40:04Speaker 05

  Special friends.

• 40:05Speaker 04

  They were just special friends, but I don't necessarily think we can go as far to say it's a form of kind of gay marriage. But it's clearly an arrangement and I think it is very likely that men were having sex with men on board. And that some of these relationships would have been kind of romantic relationships.

• 40:21Greg Jenner?

  Our episode is about Anne Bonny and Mary Reid. How did they first meet each other? Were they both dressed as men at the time? Did they both think the other was a man at the time? Because that's obviously, that's an exciting, interesting question for us.

• 40:34Speaker 04

  And I think part of the reason why Anne Bonny and Mary Reid have become so popular is because there was this kind of generation of gay and lesbian historians who were kind of looking to recover Anne Bonny and Mary Reid's story and to talk about them as lesbians and that this was like an important part of their identity and we should not kind of skate over that. And it's important to kind of recover these women and celebrate them and kind of be aware of their lesbianism. And so according to Johnson, Bonny took a special liking to Reid, but thinking that she was, she was at this point dressed as a man and lured Mark to the cabin that she shared with Rackham. And then Anne revealed herself, I don't know why I'm doing, I mean, I know why I'm doing that, right?

• 41:17Speaker 04

  So Anne revealed herself as a woman to persuade Reid to sleep with her. But apparently to her great disappointment, Mary let her know that she was a woman also. And then apparently Rackham burst into the cabin and found both women undressed. And then Rackham allowed Mary to carry on living kind of in secret. So to the rest of the crew, she was dressed as a man, but she and Anne apparently kind of became just friends.

• 41:42Greg Jenner?

  Sure.

• 41:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 41:43Greg Jenner?

  We don't know.

• 41:44Speaker 04

  We don't know.

• 41:44Greg Jenner?

  We don't know. It's worth asking the questions.

• 41:46Speaker 05

  I think this whole situation is inherently queer.

• 41:50Greg Jenner?

  I mean, it certainly feels like we've touched on all sorts of aspects of it.

• 41:55Speaker 05

  This is exciting.

• 41:56Speaker 04

  I'm quite passionate about the idea that like an absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. We can't say for certain just because we don't have evidence that like these women weren't queer, that they weren't attracted to each other, that there wasn't a sexual relationship between the two of them, just because there isn't like hard and fast evidence that that was, that was the case. It does feel like a pretty queer space. And queer versions do actually appear in the 18th century. So there's a 1765 edition of Johnson's work where Reid is said to have entered into the service of the kind of, of being a pirate purely on the account of Anne Bonny, who was her lover.

• 42:34Greg Jenner?

  Yeah. And then later historians were like, no, no, no, no, no, we don't want any of that.

• 42:38Speaker 04

  Yeah. And so, I mean, historians have questions whether the women were really unaware of each other's identity, which kind of suggests these possibilities for same-sex desire. I think it's going to be one of those ones. I'm going to be like the boring historian here and being like, we will never really know.

• 42:54Greg Jenner?

  It's true, we won't know. That's true.

• 42:56Speaker 05

  But quite frankly, girls who dress like boys are hot. I'll say it.

• 43:00Speaker 04

  Breach.

• 43:01Speaker 05

  Yeah. And like, do it. Let me see those cargo pads.

• 43:07Greg Jenner?

  But yeah, I mean, I guess we need to talk about the end of the story because if they had a two-year life expectancy and all that, you know, obviously the authorities caught up with them pretty quickly. Do you know what befell our pirate pair? So Anne Bonny, Mary Reid slash Mark and maybe Andy, do you know what happened to them?

• 43:21Speaker 05

  Well, you said something about execution bay or something like that.

• 43:27Greg Jenner?

  I did, yeah, execution dock.

• 43:28Speaker 05

  Get murdered peer, whatever. So I'm guessing it has something to do with that.

• 43:37Greg Jenner?

  It does, it does. I mean, some depictions before they're caught, there are depictions of Anne and Mary not wearing all their clothes, fighting bravely.

• 43:47Speaker 04

  I think it's the second, like another later edition, they are there with their boobs out.

• 43:53Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 43:53Speaker 04

  And I think this was part of the like intrigue of the time. And the trial, their trial, which we're about to get on to, there are many mentions of boobs. So this was, this was something that was kind of circulating at the time. It wasn't like the person who did the woodcar was just like, oh yeah, let's just pop them on.

• 44:10Greg Jenner?

  You don't want your nips out when you've got swords flailing around. It's just not, it's not good health and safety.

• 44:14Speaker 05

  Not safe.

• 44:15Greg Jenner?

  No. Come on, you've got to think about this stuff. Yeah, so this depiction of them, you know, fighting effectively topless or their shirt unbuttoned. This is their last stand. Is it the British authorities?

• 44:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, so there's a manhunt launched for Rackham's crew and it's led by this experienced pirate hunter called Captain Jonathan Barnett and he's employed by the British Crown.

• 44:35Greg Jenner?

  That's it. Yes, I was trying to remember his name, Barnett. And so he sort of hunts them down and he gets them at night?

• 44:40Speaker 04

  He gets them at night. Now, they were there on the ship getting drunk on, I think, this kind of Madeira wine, when suddenly it was panic stations and they were being captured by Barnett.

• 44:53Speaker 05

  Boo.

• 44:55Speaker 04

  You get the sense that like Captain Jack was not maybe like the best pirate?

• 45:03Greg Jenner?

  He looks so good in his trousers though.

• 45:05Speaker 04

  Who am I to kind of comment? But they, so they leave what is now the Bahamas and they kind of head to Jamaica relatively quickly. And they're kind of traveling around on the kind of seas of the, around Jamaica. And they're just not that good at capturing big amounts of money. There's like, at one point, they seem to like accost this woman called Dorothy in a canoe, who's just like paddling along with some provisions in the canoe and there. And Anne and Mary are apparently like, no, kill her, right? She's seen us now. You've got to like, you've got to like get rid of her. And the other pirates are like, no, she's fine, she's fine. Spoiler alert, she comes back to testify against them.

• 45:44Greg Jenner?

  Classic key witness, right? Dorothy in the canoe.

• 45:47Speaker 04

  Exactly. And then I think there's some, I think maybe there's some fishermen or some like people. It's just really small-scale piracy. At one point, they do manage to get a ship that's full of, I think it's Madeira wine. So they're all there, like very drunk on the shore. And I think there's like one version of it, which is Anne is like, what are you doing? Stop getting so drunk, you know, like we need to be, we need to like have our wits about us. And at that very moment, enter Jonathan Barnett and captures them while they're all kind of like off their faces on the shore.

• 46:19Greg Jenner?

  Yes. And the story goes that all the men were drunk and hid.

• 46:23Speaker 04

  That's all right.

• 46:23Greg Jenner?

  But the women, Mary and Anne, they fought pretty much to the death. They were like, you're not taking this ship.

• 46:29Speaker 04

  Yeah. So it's Anne, Mary, Anne and an unnamed other kind of pirate.

• 46:34Speaker 05

  Dorothy.

• 46:38Speaker 04

  She was like, pirate's life for me, gals. And Mary in particular is noted as like firing down in the hold. She was really angry. She was like, get up here, lads. Like, we need to be fighting, not like cowering in the deck, being like, oh, we're really sorry, we're really sorry.

• 46:54Greg Jenner?

  Okay, so they're captured and they are going to be sentenced. Do you know what they're going to be sentenced for? What's the, what's the trial?

• 47:01Speaker 05

  Indecent exposure.

• 47:03Greg Jenner?

  No, it wasn't actually. It was, it was for the much worse crime, I suppose, of piracy on the high seas, which is an instant death sentence, is it?

• 47:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, they were tried for piracy and death was, yeah, was going to be the likely outcome. It was the, but I mean, I'm suspicious of all colonial court documents, but this one is probably slightly more reliable. The trial document is probably slightly more reliable than Johnson. And you've got these kind of multiple witnesses who turn up to say, yeah, these guys were pirates, right? They like accosted me, they threatened to murder me, they stole my stuff. And so on the 20th of November, 1720, all of the people in the, kind of all of the pirates, except for Bonny and Reid, were found guilty and they were sentenced to death by hanging.

• 47:48Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 47:49Speaker 04

  And their corpses, that took place and their corpses, the men's corpses were kind of displayed as a warning.

• 47:54Greg Jenner?

  But why weren't Bonny and Reid sentenced to death?

• 47:58Speaker 05

  Because they were cute.

• 48:00Greg Jenner?

  I mean, go further than cute?

• 48:02Speaker 05

  Because they were very hot.

• 48:06Speaker 05

  Maybe they were like, can women commit crime?

• 48:11Greg Jenner?

  I mean, that's an interesting question.

• 48:12Speaker 05

  Was it sexism?

• 48:14Speaker 04

  Sexism was a really big part of it. It's kind of patriarchal system that they were all operating in. I think we're not, I think, 100% sure exactly why the sentencing, their sentencing or trial was delayed. But it was likely because they didn't really know, the court didn't really know what to do with two women and were kind of debating what their sentence might be or what their trial might look like.

• 48:35Greg Jenner?

  And then, of course, when they were eventually sentenced to death, then it was delayed again. This time because they both claimed to be pregnant.

• 48:43Speaker 04

  Hmm. So it was highly unusual for women to be sentenced for murder, like for murder. And only about 20% of women kind of got that sentence. But when women were sentenced, they would often do something called like pleading the belly, which means you're basically saying like, guys, I'm pregnant. You might want to execute me, but please don't come for the unborn child.

• 49:10Greg Jenner?

  Which obviously, I mean, if they were pregnant, that would mean that they were sailing the high seas and doing all of that kind of, you know, well, combating seasickness with morning sickness. It's a real, that's a tough life if they are pregnant.

• 49:23Speaker 04

  Yeah. I mean, either they dodged the morning sickness or it was getting messy. Because like, when I was in my first trimester, I was trying hard not to just like throw up on the 17th century manuscripts I was looking at. So, I mean, but we know these girls were fierce. So maybe they, they were just, yeah, working through it. The sense that we get is that they were both pregnant.

• 49:44Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 49:44Speaker 04

  Um, so we think with Anne, it was, it was Jack's child. Mary, I think, had like a lover on board.

• 49:51Greg Jenner?

  Dorothy, yeah.

• 49:52Speaker 04

  Yeah. But there was no love lost between Anne and Jack. And when she saw Rackham for one last time, she apparently told him, if he had fought like a man, then there was no need for him to have been hanged like a dog.

• 50:03Speaker 05

  Ooh, spicy.

• 50:05Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 50:06Speaker 05

  It's giving Real Housewives, Real Housewives of the Pirate Jail.

• 50:13Greg Jenner?

  Yeah. I mean, that's a, that's a good final line. So Jack Rackham was hanged.

• 50:17Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 50:17Greg Jenner?

  Calico Jack, he's a calico no more. What happened to the women?

• 50:21Speaker 04

  So the women were found to be pregnant, about four months pregnant. So kind of quick with Childers, a kind of early modern idea of when they kind of, well, you can start to feel the baby's movements. And so they were in, they were kept in jail. And it's a pretty tragic end for Mary Reed. And she died of a fever while in jail in Jamaica. And we think that because of the date, there's actually a burial record for her. So there's a burial record for her, which would have been, if she was four months pregnant, it would have been when, around the time she was due to give birth. So historians think perhaps she died of a fever during childbirth or of complications due to childbirth. And so we kind of know the end of Mary Reed's life.

• 51:06Greg Jenner?

  That's very sad.

• 51:08Speaker 04

  Very sad. For Anne Bonny, it's a bit more of a mystery.

• 51:11Greg Jenner?

  Ooh.

• 51:12Speaker 04

  So there is a burial record of an Anne Bonny in Jamaica, but it wasn't an uncommon name. So there's a burial record for her about sort of 10, 10 bit later, years later. So perhaps she kind of got out of jail, she wasn't executed. And there is no record of either of them being executed. And the kind of colonial authorities were pretty on it with their record keeping when it came to this kind of thing. So it might have been that she got out of jail, maybe she had her child and she was buried in Jamaica. There are other stories. There's one particular historian who claims to have like spoken to her descendants, which is that her father like bust her out of jail with his like connections from South Carolina.

• 51:53Greg Jenner?

  The lawyer.

• 51:53Speaker 04

  Right, the lawyer.

• 51:54Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 51:54Speaker 04

  So he kind of like apparently bust her out of jail, took her back to South Carolina. And she got married to another guy and had like eight kids or something. And they're descendants apparently in South Carolina. If you are a descendant of Anne Bonny, please let me know.

• 52:06Greg Jenner?

  Get in touch.

• 52:07Speaker 04

  Get in touch. And so, but we're not really sure what happened to Anne.

• 52:11Greg Jenner?

  Do we like that ending for her?

• 52:13Speaker 05

  Yeah, I love the mystery of it. Go off, Anne.

• 52:17Greg Jenner?

  So final thoughts, Keemo, on Mary Reed and Anne Bonny. What have you learned? What have you enjoyed?

• 52:23Speaker 05

  Hmm. I've enjoyed learning more about the piracy of the time. I have no idea what's going on at that point in time or at any point before now. So that was nice. Yeah. And it was interesting to hear about like, I guess them navigating. I also love all the gay mystery.

• 52:43Greg Jenner?

  Yes.

• 52:44Speaker 05

  Like, hmm.

• 52:45Greg Jenner?

  I think people on the internet love that the best.

• 52:47Speaker 04

  And I think it is important to, I suppose as Keemo was saying, like, there is a really big queer element to the pirate life and to Anne Bonny and Mary Reed's life, even if we don't have like definitive evidence that they were like a same-sex couple.

• 53:02Greg Jenner?

  Exactly. I mean, they're wearing men's clothes, they're doing a life that is traditionally male. That in itself is fascinating and novel. But yeah, whether they had relationships or intimacies that were, you know.

• 53:13Speaker 04

  Yeah. And whether Mary kind of was more comfortable living as Mark, it's not something that I think we'll get to the bottom of. But it is interesting to like explore these possibilities rather than just completely shutting them down.

• 53:25Greg Jenner?

  Fabulous.

• 53:26Speaker 05

  I love this like middle, like the pirate ship as this kind of third space where people can exist more how they want to. Like, it's still difficult, but also like, you know, we're having this like diversity. People are being freed sometimes. I think it's cool to have this kind of like unsafe safe haven.

• 53:49Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 53:49Speaker 05

  Like, it just sounds quite fun. Probably one of the funnest places to be at that time.

• 53:54Greg Jenner?

  Yes, but you would eventually get killed by the government. So there we go. You know, live fast, die young.

• 53:58Speaker 05

  Well, don't we all in some way or another?

• 54:02Greg Jenner?

  The Nuance Window.

• 54:07Greg Jenner?

  Okay, well, it's time now for the Nuance Window. This is where Keemo and I settle down to swig some rum and polish our cutlasses for two minutes, while Hannah stands on deck to tell us something we need to know about Anne Bonny and Mary Reed. My stopwatch is ready. Take it away, Hannah.

• 54:22Speaker 04

  Anne Bonny and Mary Reed have become icons of female rebellion, of queer identity, of living outside the rules. But what fascinates me is this paradox. The Caribbean is central to their story, but as a backdrop. And the realities of 18th century Caribbean life are very often absent. According to Johnson, both women travelled to the Americas because it's seen as a place of opportunity, whether that is making their fortune or in terms of living a less constricted life. While lots of Johnson's account, as we've said, needs to be taken with a large pinch of sea salt, archival records do consistently show that women in American colonies like South Carolina or Jamaica were much wealthier than their English counterparts and in many ways had greater agency.

• 55:06Speaker 04

  In 1721, a white woman in Jamaica named Alice Slaughter left two boats, her great tankard, feather bed, pillows, gold shoe buckles and a great cedar chest in her will. She also transferred the ownership of the enslaved people that rode those boats and over 20 other enslaved people to her godson and to her friends. This level of wealth and ownership of enslaved people was much more common for white women, but some free women of colour were economically powerful and slave owners themselves. What enabled the opportunities of women like Alice, Anne and Mary was the violent dispossession of indigenous people, the destruction of ecosystems to make way for monocrop agriculture on plantations, which by the 1720s were overwhelmingly worked by enslaved Africans.

• 55:51Speaker 04

  Part of what made Caribbean waters such a good place for pirates was the wealth that was being transported across them. Many of the ships that pirates captured were full of people as well as sugar and rum. We don't know what Mary and Anne thought of the violence that underpinned much of the life in Americas in the 18th century. We might even wonder if Anne left the Carolinas partly to escape her own entanglement with plantation slavery. Yet to celebrate or romanticise these women as queer icons or as proto-feminists while skating over or deliberately ignoring their context that their piracy took place in is a very particular choice, given what we know about the Caribbean in the early 18th century.

• 56:32Greg Jenner?

  Amazing.

• 56:33Speaker 05

  Thousand percent. I always find that like really interesting when people like talk about this era as if it was like a magical time. And like, it was extremely hard for some people.

• 56:45Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 56:46Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 56:47Greg Jenner?

  Yeah. And I think that sort of urge to romanticise, we do all the time with pirates.

• 56:50Speaker 04

  We do all the time.

• 56:51Greg Jenner?

  Hollywood does it all the time. But actually, you know, these are people who often monetised human enslavement, human cruelty. They weren't good guys and good girls all the time, but they could do stuff that you're like, that's cool. You know, there's, it's complicated.

• 57:05Speaker 04

  It's really complicated. And I think, you know, maybe Anne and Mary didn't themselves profit from enslavement, but the Caribbean that they were kind of taking, like they were profiting from or they were, they were very much in, was underpinned by it.

• 57:20Speaker 05

  If you're like a nepo, you're like a slavery nepo baby, like you're benefiting. But I think there always has to be like someone on the bottom of the thing, right? And so where enslaved people weren't, like that would have been children and that would have been women. But then you have these people to put below that and it like raises the other people up. It's very interesting.

• 57:44Greg Jenner?

  So what do you know now?

• 57:49Greg Jenner?

  Great, well it's time now for the So What Do You Know Now? This is our quickfire quiz for Kemah to see how much she has learnt.

• 57:55Speaker 05

  Uh-oh.

• 57:56Greg Jenner?

  I was gonna say, are you feeling confident? But that sound suggests not.

• 57:59Speaker 05

  Hey, let's find out. I've decided to raw dog it.

• 58:02Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 58:03Speaker 05

  And just kind of see how good my memory is. You will have noticed if you're watching that I have been using the pen. I'm doodling. So let's see how we get on.

• 58:13Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, your note taking is primarily just very lovely swirls.

• 58:17Speaker 05

  Interesting because sometimes you just put the pen down and you just see where it ends, you know?

• 58:22Greg Jenner?

  Sure.

• 58:23Speaker 05

  You've just gotta follow it for a bit, yeah.

• 58:25Greg Jenner?

  But not towards words. It didn't really write words.

• 58:28Speaker 05

  And that's okay.

• 58:28Greg Jenner?

  That's fine, that's fine. You know, let's see how you do. Ten questions for you, Kemah. Question one: how did Mary's mother hide her illegitimate birth? What did she do?

• 58:37Speaker 05

  She dressed her like a boy.

• 58:39Greg Jenner?

  She did, dressed her like her dead brother, Mark. Question two: how did Anne's father make his money after losing his law practice in Ireland and moving to the Carolinas?

• 58:48Speaker 05

  A very naughty practice of making people do stuff for no money.

• 58:54Greg Jenner?

  Yes, enslavement, absolutely. Question three: we get much of the story of Bonnie and Reed from A General History of Pirates, written by which sort of, I was gonna say celebrity author. He wasn't a celebrity, but he was famous at the time. Do you remember his name, the author of this book?

• 59:08Speaker 05

  Something Johnson.

• 59:10Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, I'll accept that. Charles Johnson, very good. Question four: what was the average lifespan of an 18th century pirate in the Caribbean?

• 59:16Speaker 05

  Two years, terrible two.

• 59:18Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, two years, it's brutal, isn't it? Question five: do you remember what a matelatage was?

• 59:24Speaker 05

  The place where the boob to be.

• 59:28Greg Jenner?

  It wasn't that.

• 59:29Speaker 05

  It's like a kind of will type thing. Where you can leave stuff to people that you like.

• 59:36Greg Jenner?

  That's right, absolutely, you can share.

• 59:38Speaker 05

  It's a big A.

• 59:39Greg Jenner?

  It's a big A. Question six: can you name one thing that people were smuggling in 17th century Jamaica?

• 59:44Speaker 05

  No, just kidding, ribbons.

• 59:46Greg Jenner?

  Ribbons!

• 59:47Speaker 05

  They were doing a lot of interpretive dancing.

• 59:51Greg Jenner?

  Question seven: who was Bonnie and Reed's captain with the wonderful trousers?

• 59:55Speaker 05

  Yes, something Calico.

• 59:58Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, Calico.

• 59:59Speaker 05

  Jack.

• 59:59Greg Jenner?

  Jack, very good, Jack Rackham. Question eight: what story was told about Bonnie and Reed's actions during their capture?

• 1:00:06Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:00:10Greg Jenner?

  Do you remember?

• 1:00:11Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:00:11Greg Jenner?

  What time was the capture and what happened on the boat?

• 1:00:14Speaker 05

  They were, everyone's drunk.

• 1:00:17Greg Jenner?

  They were very drunk.

• 1:00:18Speaker 05

  Everyone's drinking a bunch of wine. And the guy comes up, the guy that's been looking for them, and he's like, he's like, "I'm gonna get ya." And they're like, "We're gonna fight." And the boys are like, "I'm hiding, I'm shy." And they're like, "Boys, you better fight." And then they, they fight. But eventually they do get caught.

• 1:00:41Greg Jenner?

  That was a wonderful summary, thank you so much. I really enjoyed that. Question nine, you're doing really well here, by the way. Question nine: what were Anne's final words to Captain Jack Rackham before he was hanged in 1720?

• 1:00:52Speaker 05

  You're a little biatch, Anne.

• 1:00:55Greg Jenner?

  It wasn't far off.

• 1:00:55Speaker 05

  She's like, "If you fight like a man, you don't have to hang like a dog."

• 1:01:00Greg Jenner?

  Very well remembered. This were a perfect 10 out of 10. Kemah Bob, this could be faultless.

• 1:01:05Speaker 05

  This could be huge.

• 1:01:06Greg Jenner?

  How did Anne, Bonny and Mary Reed narrowly escape going to the gallows?

• 1:01:11Speaker 05

  Because they got knocked up.

• 1:01:12Greg Jenner?

  They did, yeah. They pleaded their bellies, they were pregnant, they didn't get hanged. 10 out of 10, Kemah Bob, well done!

• 1:01:19Greg Jenner?

  Who needs notebooks?

• 1:01:20Speaker 05

  So I, like most comedians, have ADHD. And so I just kind of planned the rest of my day under my doodle. I'm doing really well.

• 1:01:33Speaker 04

  While simultaneously hyper focusing on the answers.

• 1:01:36Greg Jenner?

  You've retained all the knowledge and you've also planned your lunch, amazing, fantastic.

• 1:01:39Speaker 05

  It's powerful up here, watch out!

• 1:01:42Greg Jenner?

  The comedian's brain, it's, you know, don't mess with it.

• 1:01:45Speaker 04

  It's a marvelous thing.

• 1:01:45Greg Jenner?

  Well done, Kemah, very, very impressive. Thank you, Hannah, a wonderful history lesson.

• 1:01:49Speaker 05

  Thank you so much.

• 1:01:50Greg Jenner?

  Thank you, listeners, of course, for joining us. If you want more from Kemah, you can check out her episodes on American Prohibition, a very funny one, that one.

• 1:01:56Speaker 05

  So true.

• 1:01:57Greg Jenner?

  And the ancient Egyptian pharaoh Hatshepsut, who ruled ancient Egypt thousands of years ago.

• 1:02:03Speaker 05

  I always have fun here.

• 1:02:04Greg Jenner?

  Yeah. If listeners want more swashbucklers, which of course, as we know, swashbuckling wasn't a real thing because that's when you bang your shield and they didn't do that. But anyway, we've got episodes on Blackbeard, very famous pirate. We've got episodes on Grania O'Malley, the Irish pirate queen. We've got Chungy Sao, the Chinese pirate queen, most successful pirate of all time. And we have Julie D'Obigny, the French opera singer, bisexual swordfighter. Very good fun, that too. If you've enjoyed the podcast, please subscribe to You're Dead to Me on BBC Sounds to hear the show 28 days earlier than anywhere else. And if you're outside the UK, you can listen at bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts. I'd just like to say a huge thank you to our fantastic guests. In history corner, we have the incredible Hannah Cusworth from the National Maritime Museum. Thank you, Hannah.

• 1:02:46Speaker 04

  Thank you so much, great sailing with you.

• 1:02:48Greg Jenner?

  It was good sailing, it was a short life, only two years, but you know, worth it.

• 1:02:51Speaker 05

  It's all you need.

• 1:02:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, we made it.

• 1:02:54Greg Jenner?

  And in comedy corner, we had the always brilliant Kemah Bob. Thank you, Kemah.

• 1:02:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, thanks for having me.

• 1:02:59Greg Jenner?

  It was a pleasure, 10 out of 10, very impressive. And to you, lovely listener, join me next time as we pick up our nautical telescope and bring another obscure historical figure into focus. But for now, I'm off to go and see if we can get more subscribers by podcasting with my nips out. Bye!

• 1:03:26Speaker 07

  Why do some brilliant business ideas come a cropper? I'm Sean Farrington and in a new series of Toast, I'll be looking at five more brands, businesses and wonder products which offered a lot but didn't stick around. Including a budget cinema selling tickets for 20 pence and the toilet paper we knew from school.

• 1:03:46Speaker 04

  I remember worrying about getting paper cuts in an area that you wouldn't wish to be getting a paper cut.

• 1:03:52Speaker 07

  Finding out what we can learn from their disappearance. Toast from BBC Radio 4. Listen first on BBC Sounds.

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