Cindy Vallar's Blog - Posts Tagged "mary-read"

Pirate Women: The Princesses, Prostitutes, and Privateers Who Ruled the Seven Seas by Laura Sook Duncombe

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



Men and victors have been the predominant recorders of events throughout history. Their opinions and societal norms color their objectivity. As a result, women and their participation in historical events are either omitted from these accounts or given short shrift. Or as Duncombe writes: “Pirates live outside the laws of man, but women pirates live outside the laws of nature.” (xi) This is a reality that she encountered time and again in her research for this book. A prime example of this is Grace O’Malley, one of the few names the general public readily recognizes. Although this Irish “pirate queen” was a major thorn in the side of the English and had a private meeting with her contemporary, Queen Elizabeth I, archival mention her is scant. It is the bards of Ireland who have kept her alive.

In this highly readable and interesting account, Duncombe collects the known women who dared to become pirates. Yet this book is far more than just a look at well-researched history; among the women here one finds fictional female rogues too. She shares what is known about these people, as well as what is missing about them. In the process she clearly identifies whether this information can be proven historically or if it’s just a myth. She asks thought-provoking questions along the way to stimulate readers’ curiosity and further discussion.

The women who are often discussed in pirate histories – including Queen Teuta of Illyria, Anne Bonny, Mary Read, Cheng I Sao, and Grace O’Malley – are found in this collection. So are names that rarely see the light of day, such as Sayyida al-Hurra, Maria Cobham, Lai Choi, and Rachel Wall. Duncombe even mentions the suggestion that Bartholomew Roberts might have been a woman in disguise. Rather than use footnotes or end notes, she seamlessly weaves this information into her narrative, removing the need to search for this elsewhere and thus break its flow. Pirate Women also includes fictional pirates, such as Anne de Graaf, Jacquotte Delahaye, and Gunpowder Gertie. Duncombe provides an index and “To Find Out More” lists for general pirate and chapter-by-chapter subject resources. Most of the latter are secondary and tertiary sources, rather than primary documents.

What this book is not is strictly a history of women pirates. Duncombe tends to stray from that narrow theme, but with purpose, and she always returns to the original subject before moving on to the next pirate. Examples of this come when she discusses courtesans in ancient times, Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent’s marriage to one of his concubines, or binding women’s feet in China. Her use of a broad definition of piracy allows her to demonstrate the evolution of what constituteds piracy in different time periods. It also permits the inclusion of women who have no direct connection to maritime piracy, such as Cheng Chui Ping, a snakehead (human trafficker).

The weakest chapter in this book is the last, “The Pirates of the Silver Screen.” Although several pirate films are discussed because they focus on fictional female pirates, Duncombe also examines Bonnie and Clyde and An Unmarried Woman – neither of which involves pirates. She concludes the chapter with a criticism on Hollywood’s portrayal of and treatment of women in film.

Pirate Women is a good introduction to female pirates and the eras in which they lived. As Duncombe says, “Pirate women deserve a spot next to their more famous male counterparts because yearning to escape the confines of an ordinary life and to live on one’s own terms is not an exclusively male feeling.” (228) Her purpose in writing this book is to inspire the next generation of women to strive to be innovators. But are pirates the best role model to achieve this goal?

There are several reasons, however, why Pirate Women is a valuable addition to the handful of books that deal exclusively with these females predators. Presented in chronological sequence from ancient times to the present, it is an extensive list that includes far more than any other volume. Earlier titles often focus on only a small sample or examine women associated with piracy, but who aren’t actually pirates themselves, during a specific time period. More importantly, Duncombe incorporates the society, culture, and historical events of the period in which each woman lives. This means she examines them as part of a whole, rather than a single aspect of their lives. Equally noteworthy is the inclusion of the people who have told each pirate’s story and how their motivations impacted their renderings of her.




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Tell No Tales: Pirates of the Southern Seas by Sam Maggs

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


While plundering the Caribbean, La Sirene barely escapes an encounter with a fearsome machine that navigates the sea belching black smoke. Captain Anne Bonny and her crew – Mary Read (the quartermaster and Anne’s current lover), Kati (gunner and Miskitu refugee), Mimba (navigator and maroon), and Sarah (healer and rich girl of mixed parentage) – refuse to allow this newcomer to thwart their pillaging. They sight a Spanish galleon, but before they can attack, the monstrous steamship reappears. When Mary catches a glimpse of its captain, she warns Anne to flee. They seek the safety of the galleon, even though the Spanish don’t take kindly to pirates.

Knowing La Sirene is no match for this new enemy that seems to be stalking them, Anne sets sail for Jamaica. Once on the island, Mary reveals what she knows – the man targeting them is the ghost of Woodes Rogers, a man who made a pact with the devil. This revelation is confirmed when Calico Jack Rackham, Anne’s former lover whom they meet at a Jamaican tavern, reveals that pirates are vanishing in large numbers.

Never one to turn tail and run, Anne is determined to put an end to this new enemy. But how? A vision reveals there is a way, but to succeed the Sirens must display bravery, cunning, conviction, strength, and kindness. Of course, nothing is as simple as it seems and the best laid plans always go awry, as Anne and her Sirens soon discover.

Set in the Caribbean in 1715, this graphic novel is loosely based on history and, if readers can suspend disbelief, an intriguing divergence from the normal Anne Bonny-Mary Read story. The drawbacks here as regards Woodes Rogers as the villain are that he is very much alive in 1715 – he doesn’t die until 1732 – and has returned to London from a voyage to Madagascar, rather than being in the Caribbean. Another negative element to the story is that it glorifies piracy to some degree. There are also a few confusing situations where readers have to infer what transpires.

Before the members of the crew are introduced, it’s difficult to determine whether the graphics portray females or males, and that may be the intent since Maggs and Wells “wanted to reclaim some of our lost history – the history of women and non-binary and queer folks that must have existed, but has been hidden or kept quiet.” (157) Therein lies the value of this retelling. This is the story of individuals who are marginalized and/or shunned by society. They want acceptance for who they are, rather than what society wants them to be.




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The Determined by Rachel Rueckert

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


In February 1721, Anne Bonny sits in a gaol in Spanish Town on the isle of Jamaica. She awaits the birth of her child, as well as the hangman’s noose, for her pregnancy is all that stays her execution. Since her capture, the days have passed in monotony, without companionship and without anything to mark one day from another. On this particular day, that changes – a gentleman wearing a tricorn with an ostrich feather comes to visit. He wishes to write her story to add to his forthcoming collection that he hopes will be a bestseller. His name is Captain Charles Johnson. Anne is reticent to share her story – what business is it to others – but she asks for two boons. One is paper and ink to write letters. The second is for word of Mary and a doctor to tend to her ailing friend.

Interwoven through the chapters set in 1721 are the stories of the two most notorious female pirates of the golden age of piracy. Anne’s begins in 1705 in Kinsale, Ireland, where she is the illegitimate daughter of a lawyer from a well-to-do family and a servant woman. Social mores and debts drive them from Ireland and eventually, they land in Charlestown, South Carolina. From there, Anne explains the circumstances of how she meets James Bonny and the unfortunate circumstances that surround her arrival in New Providence and her run-in with Calico Jack Rackham.

Mary, too, is pregnant, but her health is tenuous and the odds are about even as to whether the fever or the hangman will claim her. Her tale begins a decade before Anne’s in London, England, where Mary is known as Mark Read and she has no idea that she is a girl. The ruse is staged by her mother to keep them both alive, but the day soon comes when Mary learns the truth. Life isn’t fair to women, and for them to continue to survive, Mom must separate from her and Mark must continue to make “his” way, this time as an apprentice to a ship’s captain who once was acquainted with her father. World events eventually disrupt their lives, and if Mark wishes to advance and gain enough money to search for “his” mother, he needs a new vocation. He joins the cavalry, where a Flemish officer makes Mark’s acquaintance. What follows is a love story that eventually allows Mark to become Mary once again, until tragedy forces her to make new choices that lead her to the Caribbean where she eventually crosses paths with Anne Bonny.

Using Johnson’s account of the lives of these notorious women, Rueckert has crafted a compelling and totally believable tale that fills in all the blanks left by Johnson. I have always been drawn more to Mary Read than Anne Bonny, and Rueckert’s depiction of the two women helped me understand why this is. Her words paint visual imagery that is dynamic and three-dimensional, and they depict two very different women whose friendship and living in a male-dominated world bring them together to live and survive. Her research is spot-on and seamlessly woven into the story in ways that make it impossible to separate fact from fiction, although Rueckert does elaborate on this in her afterword.

Over the years, I’ve reviewed numerous books about Anne Bonny and Mary Read, but only a few have touched my heart and stayed with me long after I finish reading. The Determined is one of those tales. It is as much a treasure as James L. Nelson’s The Only Life That Mattered and N. C. Schell’s The Ballade of Mary Reede.


This review was originally published at Pirates and Privateers: http://www.cindyvallar.com/Rueckert.h...



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