Often overshadowed by her fellow pirate Ann Bonny, Mary Read is still better-known than many pirates with more successful pirating careers. Read and Bonny stood out because it was unusual at the beginning of the 18th century for a woman to be part of a pirate crew. Pirates, like all seamen, generally frowned upon a woman’s presence aboard a ship. Not so much is really known about Read’s early life, the main source being her trial documents, newspaper articles, and Charles Johnson’s A General History of the Pyrates. According to Johnson, Read’s unnamed mother is said to have been married to a seaman, who went to sea and never returned. Her first child, a son, died, but she then gave birth to Mary out of wedlock. One theory is that Mary’s mother was Ann Cantrell, who is recorded as sending a letter to Adam Baldridge, a smuggler and ex-privateer on Madagascar, laying claim to some money that her husband, a pirate called John Read, who died on Madagascar some time prior to 1698, had entrusted to Baldridge. Ann Cantrell is recorded as having given birth to a daughter, who was called Mary Read, in Bristol in 1681, but there are no further traces of this Mary after her birth. If it’s true, this would have meant that Read was thirty-nine when captured, which doesn’t quite fit in with Johnson’s version of her life.
Mary Read’s life according to Captain Johnson
According to A General History, Read’s mother disguised her as a boy to receive an allowance from her grandmother, thus raising her as a boy. At the age of thirteen Mary ran away and after working as a footman, she joined the English Navy possibly as a powder monkey, later joining the English army in Flanders, probably serving in The War of Spanish Succession. She first served in an infantry, then in a cavalry regiment, where she fell in love with a Flemish soldier, whom she married after revealing she was a woman. The couple left the army and opened a tavern called The Three Horseshoes near Breda castle in the Netherlands, but when the war ended they lost most of the customers, who had been soldiers. This story seems to be based on the life of Christian Cavanagh, also known as Kit Cavanagh, Christian Davis, and Mother Ross, an Irishwoman who joined the British Army in 1693 disguised as a man in search of her missing husband. Although Cavanagh’s story was not published in the book The Life and Adventures of Mother Ross by Daniel Defoe until 1743, it is likely that the story of her life was already well-known when Johnson wrote his book. After Read’s husband died it is said she spent a short stint in the army before going to sea, arriving in the Caribbean in about 1715, where she was captured by pirates. She joined them but later took the King’s pardon with the rest of the crew.
Mary Read later resumed her piratical ways when she left Nassau together with Jack Rackham and Mary Bonny. According to Captain Johnson, it was not known that Read was a woman at this point as she had joined Jack Rackham’s crew disguised as a man. When she met Bonny, who Johnson said was Rackham’s girlfriend, Bonny fell in love with her, believing her to be a man, only later discovering her secret. When Rackham became jealous, they then revealed that Read was a woman. Johnson writes that Mary Read fell in love with a man, possibly a carpenter, who had been pressed into Rackham’s crew, later saving his life by challenging a man to a duel, who had previously challenged her lover to one. Read scheduled her duel before her lover was to fight his, killing her opponent after revealing she was a woman. There is no record of this forced, unnamed man serving on Rackham’s crew, although it was claimed Read didn’t reveal his name to protect him at their trial. Johnson also claimed that Read and Bonny were always dressed as men, which was a popular theme in contemporary history. Books like Moll Flanders, published by Daniel Defoe in 1722, about a woman who disguised herself as a man were popular a the time. Also well-known were the real life stories of women such as the already mentioned Christian Cavanagh, and Catherina Margaretha Linck, a woman who served in the Prussian army and was executed for ‘female sodomy’ in 1721 after she had married a woman while posing as a man. As with Bonny, Johnson claimed Read was an ardent fighter, writing that, on capture, both women were the only ones to resist, even firing on their own crew and calling them cowards, although there is no mention made by eyewitnesses of the two woman in the struggle to capture the pirate ship.
Mary Read’s real pirating career
Mary Read made her fist appearance in historical documents, together with Rackham and Bonny, in a proclamation by Woodes Rogers, the Governor of Nassau, calling for their arrests for piracy in August 1720. The proclamation identified both Read and Bonny as clearly being women, which tells us they were not disguised as men at the time. According to two Frenchmen pressed into Rackham’s crew, Read and Bonny were very active on board the ship and wore men’s clothes only when they gave chase to another vessel. Not much else is really known about Read’s relationship with the rest of the crew. One victim of the pirates, Dorothy Thomas, left us an interesting description of Read and Bonny: They “wore men’s jackets, and long trousers, and handkerchiefs tied about their heads: and … each of them had a machete and pistol in their hands and they cursed and swore at the men to murder her.” Dorothy Thomas also recorded that she knew that they were both women “from the largeness of their breasts.”
Mary Read’s fate
Mary Read was captured along with her fellow pirates on 22nd October 1720, when their ship, the Revenge, failed to escape from a pursuing pirate-hunter under the command of Jonathan Barnet. As already mentioned, Johnson claimed that only Read and Bonny resisted, even firing at their shipmates, who were cowering below deck, but the official trial transcript says that no defence was mounted aside from a swivel gun being fired before Barnet discharged a broadside in response. After the initial exchange of fire, the records state that Rackham and his crew promptly surrendered, requesting quarter. Mary Read was tried with the others in Spanish Town, Jamaica on 28th November of the same year, and sentenced to be hanged. She and Bonny were saved from the fate of the rest of the crew by pleading their bellies, meaning they were pregnant. The execution of the two women was stayed because they were both proven to be with child, such an act of clemency towards pregnant women being common at the time. Mary Read died from an infection in jail in April 1721, her death being noted in the records of St. Catherine’s Parish in Jamaica with the word ‘pirate’ written beside her name. Her death was probably caused by childbirth as she died around the time she was to give birth. There is no record of the burial of her baby, suggesting that it might have died while Read was giving birth, or even survived and found new parents. Although Mary Read’s career as a pirate might have been short, it was no less remarkable, she being a fearless woman in the male-dominated world at sea.
If you’re interested in reading more about Mary Read, Ann Bonny and other women at sea, check out the informative article Anne Bonny and Mary Read: Female Pirates and Maritime Women on the Colonies, Ships, and Pirates website.