Anne Bonny

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Anne Bonny

Anne Bonny (* around 1698 near Cork , Ireland ; † around 1782 in Charles Towne , North America ) was a legendary pirate in the Caribbean.

Live and act

Apart from the book A General History of the Pyrates: from their first rise and settlement in the island of Providence, to the present time , which is attributed to Daniel Defoe and published in 1724 under the pseudonym Captain Charles Johnson , there are no sources on the figure the Anne Bonny. The following description follows this book; the extent to which the information corresponds to historical events can no longer be proven.

Bonny was born out of wedlock as the daughter of the maidservant Mary or Peg Brennan and their employer William Cormac, a married lawyer . Her father tried to cover up this by dressing Anne as a boy and posing as a distant relative, but his wife discovered the fraud and made it known as a scandal. For this reason Anne's parents moved to [[]] in the American colonies of Great Britain. His father bought land there and, thanks to his commercial skills, became a wealthy plantation owner.

In Charlestown Harbor, Anne met James Bonny, a seaman and casual robber whom she married. Her father rejected her because of it; allegedly Anne then burned down his plantation. Together with her husband, she embarked for New Providence , now Nassau , in the Bahamas . This city was considered the capital of the pirates. Here she met Calico Jack Rackham , left her husband and signed on to Charles Vane's ship, on which Rackham was the helmsman .

Because women were not welcome on board pirate ships, she dressed as a man, but she was discovered. Anne allegedly killed a man who had expressed his displeasure that a woman was there with a knife in the heart.

Anne Bonny and Calico Jack Rackham had since separated from Charles Vane (they first removed him and then abandoned him) in order to run their own ship. In New Providence a new man, Mark Read, was hired on Anne and Calico Jack's ship. On closer inspection, however, it turned out that it was also a woman: Mary Read . The three of them, the two women and Rackham, sailed through the Caribbean by capturing, looting and murdering, and as a team they were notorious and feared.

In the meantime, Anne became pregnant, probably by Calico Jack. She had the child in Cuba and left it there. In 1720 Rackham's ship, the Revenge , was attacked by an English warship . At that point they were in Jamaica . The ship's crew - apart from the two women - were drunk and hid below deck. Anne Bonny and Mary Read fought alone. Their resistance did not last long.

In November 1720 the verdict was passed on Rackham, Bonny, Read and the rest of the crew: death by hanging . The execution of the two women was postponed because they were allegedly pregnant. Mary Read died of a fever a year later. Anne Bonny is said to have been set free by her father's influence and returned to Charles Towne, where she is said to have married and lived with children for the rest of her life.

Film adaptations

In the series Black Sails Bonny is one of the protagonists and is played by Clara Paget .

literature

Fiction

Web links

Wikisource: A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the most notorious Pyrates  - Sources and full texts (English)

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Anne Bonny in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography ; accessed: January 26, 2018
  2. ↑ Anne Bonny in the Encyclopaedia Britannica ; accessed: January 26, 2018
  3. ^ Project Gutenberg , accessed on November 22, 2018.
personal data
SURNAME Bonny, Anne
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Irish rebel and pirate
DATE OF BIRTH around 1698
PLACE OF BIRTH near Cork , Ireland
DATE OF DEATH around 1782
Place of death Charles Towne , North America