Anne Bonny

 Anne Bonny

Anne Cormac's father betrothed her to a local man in Cork, Ireland, but Anne resisted. Instead, in 1718 she married sailor John Bonny, with whom she traveled to the island of New Providence in the Bahamas. Disenchanted by her marriage, she became involved with pirate John (“Calico Jack”) Rackham. He offered to pay her husband to divorce her—a common practice at the time—but John Bonny refused. In August 1720 Anne Bonny abandoned her husband and assisted Rackham in commandeering the sloop William from Nassau Harbour on New Providence. Along with a dozen others, the pair began pirating merchant vessels along the coast of Jamaica. Rackham’s decision to have Bonny accompany him was highly unusual, as women were considered bad luck aboard ship. He may have been swayed by her fierce disposition: apocryphal stories claimed that she had, in her youth, beaten an attempted rapist so badly that he was hospitalized. She eventually divorced her husband and married Rackham.

A heavily armed sloop belonging to Captain Jonathan Barnet caught up to Rackham's ship when the pirates had been drinking and after a small exchange of cannon and small arms fire, they surrendered. Rackham and the other male pirates were swiftly found guilty: he was hanged with four other men at Gallows Point in Port Royal on November 18, 1720. Bonny was also found guilty, but the execution was postponed since she was pregnant. Bonny was eventually released, likely because of her father’s influence. 

Anne Bonny then went to live in South Carolina, where she proceeded to lead the rest of her life in an uneventful domestic fashion.