Well Behaved Women…

Rarely Make History. There are plenty of t-shirts on Ocracoke that have this moniker on them. Most of it is in reference to Pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read. Yeah, these were real blood thirsty pirates who stole ships and treasure. And since Ocracoke was the famous hiding place of Edward Teach, aka Blackbeard the Pirate, there is lots of pirate lore floating around the island.

Anne Bonny was a ballsy broad. As a little girl, Anne Cormac stabbed a slave girl in the stomach and ran away and married a small-time pirate named James Bonny. She eventually found her way to a pirate hub in the Bahamas where she met Calico Jack Rackham, a more notorious pirate. I suppose she wanted to trade up, and began an affair with Cap’n Jack. Rackham tried to buy Anne from Bonny, but Bonny complained to the Bahamian Governor, who had Anne Bonny publicly flogged and returned to her husband.

But Anne Bonney ran away with Jack Rackham, and the two stole a ship, recruited a crew, and began a long series of piracy together. The crew accepted the fact that she was a woman, and she was usually the most sober person aboard ship, so she fought better than most men. She was finally captured along with Rackham in Jamaica. Cap’n Jack wanted to see Anne Bonny one last time before he was hanged, and Anne Bonny told him, “I’m sorry to see you there, but if you had fought like a man, you wouldnt have to hang like a dog.”

Then Anne Bonny disappeared from history. Maybe she left the pirating career behind, or perhaps she died in prison. But she was a very cool woman who lived in a very cool time in American History.

My wife got the Tshirt.