Pirate Women
Copyright © 2017 by Laura Sook Duncombe
All rights reserved
First edition
Published by Chicago Review Press Incorporated
814 North Franklin Street
Chicago, Illinois 60610
ISBN 978-1-61373-604-3
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Duncombe, Laura Sook, author.
Title: Pirate women : the princesses, prostitutes, and privateers who ruled
the Seven Seas / Laura Sook Duncombe.
Description: Chicago, Illinois : Chicago Review Press, Incorporated, [2017] |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016031175 (print) | LCCN 2016049773 (ebook) | ISBN
9781613736012 (cloth) | ISBN 9781613736036 (adobe pdf) | ISBN
9781613736043 (epub) | ISBN 9781613736029 (kindle)
Subjects: LCSH: Women pirates—Biography. | Women pirates—History. |
Piracy—History.
Classification: LCC G535 .D848 2017 (print) | LCC G535 (ebook) | DDC
910.4/5—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016031175
Typesetting: Nord Compo
Printed in the United States of America
5 4 3 2 1
This digital document has been produced by Nord Compo.
TO MY MOTHER, WHOSE ADMONITION
THAT I NEVER STOP WRITING HAS GOTTEN ME
THROUGH MANY A ROUGH DAY AND NIGHT
AND TO MY FATHER, THE PRESIDENT
OF THE SINGAPORE SUE FAN CLUB
WITH NEVER-ENDING LOVE AND GRATITUDE
Contents
Introduction
1 Dawn of the Pirates
2 Gatekeepers of Valhalla
3 Medieval Maiden Warriors
4 A Cinderella Story Among the Corsairs
5 The Virgin Queen and Her Pirates
6 The Golden Age
7 His Majesty’s Royal Pirates
8 “If He Had Fought Like a Man, He Need Not Have Been Hang’d Like a Dog”
9 Pirates of the New World
10 Women on the Edge
11 The Most Successful Pirate of All Time
12 Veterans of the American Wars
13 Evil Incarnate and the Dragon Lady
14 The Pirates of the Silver Screen
Acknowledgments
To Find Out More
Index
Introduction
FOR AS LONG AS there has been a sea to sail upon, there have been pirates. Modern scholarship claims they have played an enormously important role in shaping world history. They have been called raiders, sea dogs, buccaneers, freebooters, corsairs, bandits, and many other names in many languages. They have sailed throughout every millennium. They hail from every inhabited continent, in every age, color, and creed imaginable. What unites these vastly diverse people across time and space? Is it the peg legs and eye patches? The rum and the parrots?
These common tropes pervade modern depictions of piracy, but true piracy is so much more than these cartoonish trappings. The heart of piracy is freedom—freedom from society, freedom from law, and freedom from conscience. Pirates capture people’s hearts as easily as they capture their prey because they actually do what many people only dream of doing—they cast off home and comfort for a chance at life outside society’s confines. A person who does not condone a pirate’s criminal actions can still be inspired by her courageous and adventurous spirit.
No, that was not a typo: pirates have always answered to “she” as well as “he.” (During the periods covered in this book, the gender binary was still firmly in place. As far as I am aware, all the pirates in this book identified as female. My use of “she” reflects the available research on these pirates and is in no way meant to invalidate other expressions of gender.) Female pirates have fought alongside and, in some cases, in command of their male counterparts since ancient times, despite the widespread belief that women at sea were bad luck. For a woman to cast off her petticoats—and often her identity—and take up arms seems impossible, but many persevered. Yet history largely ignores them, and most people are ignorant of their existence.
So who were these women pirates? From royalty such as Queen Teuta to the penniless orphan Gunpowder Gertie, they ran the gamut from princess to pauper. Some were barely out of their teens, such as Sadie the Goat, while others such as Sister Ping were older when they started their careers. Grace O’Malley pirated for many years, and Margaret Jordan participated in only a single piratical venture. Sayyida al-Hurra took to the sea to revitalize her community, while Jacquotte Delahaye sought revenge for her parents’ deaths. Pirate women existed essentially everywhere male pirates did, in nearly every major period of pirate history. They had little in common with each other, except for their gender and their desire to escape the traditional role that their gender dictated.
If pirate women are so prevalent in history, why are they so seldom known? They had to fight at least twice as hard as male pirates to make it to sea and prove their worth, so surely they are doubly worthy of study. Yet all too often, they are left out of the piratical discussion. With the exception of Anne Bonny and Mary Read, and more recently Grace O’Malley, they are given short shrift by history, identified only by nicknames or titles if they are mentioned at all. Of the numerous pirate books on the market, precious few discuss women, and almost none hold women pirates as their focus. David Cordingly, a leading pirate scholar, devoted an entire book to women (originally titled Women Sailors and Sailor’s Women before being renamed the less-patronizing Seafaring Women). He expressed disbelief that Mary Read and Anne Bonny actually lived aboard a pirate ship and questioned how a woman could tolerate the rough working conditions at sea. When even a historian covering women sailors refuses to acknowledge that women pirates existed, there is a problem in the field.
Women pirates are often absent in historical discussion because their very existence is threatening to traditional male and female gender roles. Pirates live outside the laws of man, but women pirates live outside the laws of nature. Women pirates are left out because they don’t fit nicely into the categories of “normal” women or traditional women’s virtues. As historian Jo Stanley puts it, female pirates “like to be on top . . . and maraud fiercely where maidens should step sweetly.” They are “social outrages—and the embodiment of women’s terrifying power.” They upset the balance of power in a patriarchal society and for that reason are not to be discussed, let alone celebrated, by traditional historians.
Pirate women also interfere with man’s storied and complex relationship with the sea itself. Water is primal; life cannot exist without it. Many creation myths feature water, and it’s no wonder—humans are surrounded in water-like amniotic fluid in the womb before birth. The sea, which was here before man and cradles man, is like a mother to sailors—a woman. It is connected to the moon and tides, which have also been associated with women all the way back to the Greek goddess Artemis. Ernest Hemingway opines in his famous novel The Old Man and the Sea that “[the main character] always thought of the sea as ‘la mar’ which is what people call her in Spanish when they love her. Sometimes those who love her say bad things of her but they are always said as though she were a woman. . . . The old man always thought of her as feminine and as something that gave or withheld great favors, and if she did wild or wicked things it was because she could not help them.” Mermaids and sirens, legendary creatures who lure men to their deaths on the sea, are traditionally female as well. Ships are often named for women, and women are frequently featured on the bows of boats as buxom figureheads. Undiscovered islands on the sea are “virgin” and are “conquered” by colonizing men. For man, the sea and thi
ngs associated with it are feminine, ripe for male subjugation or, at the very least, male adventure. The feminine sea is an exclusively male domain, where men can prove their bravery or seek their fortune. Adding women to this equation dilutes the established gender binary and threatens the near-sacred relationship between sailor and the sea.
For these and countless other reasons both conscious and unconscious, male historians often exclude women pirates from their work. Unfortunately for women pirates, the vast majority of history has been recorded by—and from the perspective of—men. Scholar Dale Spender explains that “women have been kept ‘off the record’ in most, if not all, branches of knowledge by the simple process of men naming the world as it appears to them. . . . They have assumed their experience is universal, that it is representative of humanity. . . . Whenever the experience of women is different from men, therefore, it stays ‘off the record,’ for there is no way of entering it into the record when the experience is not shared by men, and men are the ones who write the record.” Deidre Beddoe echoes that sentiment, saying that recorded history “is the history of the men and male affairs . . . wars, diplomacy, politics, and commerce.” Indeed, without the efforts of women historians such as Anne Chambers, Dian Murray, and Joan Druett, much of the existing knowledge of women pirates would not have come to light. As long as men control the narrative, women pirates will be mostly left out.
Even if male historians today were inclined to write about pirate women, they would have a difficult time doing so because of the dearth of primary sources about them. Since women have been considered unworthy subjects of historical documentation in the past, it is now difficult to study them—a vicious cycle that persists in keeping women “off the record.” To date, no one has discovered a journal or first-person account of pirating written by a female pirate. Newspaper articles are few, court documents are even rarer, and books written around the time the pirate was active are virtually nonexistent. It is not particularly surprising, given all this, that pirate women have not achieved the celebrity status of their male peers.
But despite all the challenges, these stories deserve to be told. The tendency to exclude women from the narrative ignores a vital part of the history of the sea. As mythologist Suzanne Cloutier explains, “Women’s souls cannot be known without stories—their stories must be told.” This book is an attempt to collect in one volume the stories of female pirates through the ages. Feminist theologian Carol P. Christ claims that “without stories a woman is lost when she comes to make the important decisions in her life. She does not learn to value her struggles, to celebrate her strength, to comprehend her pain. Without stories, she cannot understand herself.” The existing mere paragraphs and footnotes scattered across the vast expanse of pirate lore do not do justice to the breadth and depth of pirate women’s involvement in the trade. Presenting these women together demonstrates how long women have been part of piracy and how much they have achieved. Telling their stories adds them back into the historical record and gives a clearer picture of what life at sea was actually like. After reading the accounts of their lives, it will be impossible to dismiss lone pirate women as anomalous phenomena. Each pirate woman is part of a grand tradition that has been around since the dawn of piracy itself.
Beyond simply retelling these women’s stories, this book examines the storytellers and their motives—the “why” as well as the “who.” Since so many of these stories, particularly the earliest ones, were recorded by men, taking a look at the man’s reason for writing the story is informative in understanding why the events and portrayals in the story are shaped as they are. A medieval monk, for example, would describe a woman differently than a nineteenth-century penny-dreadful author. Questioning who is responsible for spreading these legends and what agenda might have prompted him or her to do it will help to extricate the stories from the grasp of authorial intent and allow them to unfold more organically as they might have actually happened.
A very important caveat: most if not all of these stories are a combination of myth and fact. The nature of piracy is such that it is difficult to separate fact and fiction because pirates were, by necessity, not frequently a part of historical record. Robert C. Ritchie explains that “parish registers, censuses, and tax lists are of no use in studying a population that existed in the fringes of, or even beyond, settled societies.” Even Capt. Johnson’s Pyrates, which is called by Jo Stanley “as central an early [pirate] text as the Bible is to Christians,” is known to be both embellished and frequently anecdotal. The gold standard of historical fact might be said to be multiple high-quality primary sources—documents written at the time, speaking directly about the subject. Many pirate stories, especially female pirate stories, fail to meet this standard. However, since many of these stories come from the time of the pirates, these mytho-historical (and sometimes just mythic) pirates are still vital to the larger tapestry of piracy. Author Gabriel Kuhn claims when it comes to pirates, “The legend and the reality [of pirate life] are woven into a fabric impossible to unravel. However, the way this fabric is woven can be examined. . . . We are exploring the pirate myth rather than trying to expose a pirate truth.” Wherever possible, the historical backing of the stories here is explained.
Thus, this book is not a pure history book. I am not a historian. Although many historical events are described to give context to these women’s stories, nothing should be taken as comprehensive on those subjects. Those seeking to learn about, say, the American Civil War or the Great Leap Forward should seek other works on the subject. Resources are listed in the back of the book to aid readers in their quest. I am a storyteller and a lover of pirates, and so while every effort has been made to present a clear and accurate historical account, this is a book primarily about pirate stories. And besides, as historiographer Keith Jenkin says, “The past and history are two separate things.”
Though fashions, weapons, and even treasure changed over time, all pirate women have at least one thing in common: the desire to be masters of their own fates, whatever the cost. Perhaps an exploration of what that desire meant to these women and how much they endured for it will inspire the next great adventurer—or the next great storyteller. In any case, Audre Lorde reminds us that, in terms of writing by and about women, “we must each of us recognize our responsibility to seek those words out, to read them and share them and examine them in their pertinence to our lives.” May this book be a worthy addition to the ever-growing pantheon of women’s words about women.
Laura Sook Duncombe
Alexandria, Virginia
May 17, 2016
1
Dawn of the Pirates
“STRANGERS, WHO ARE YOU? Where do you sail from? Are you traders, or do you sail the sea as pirates, with your hands against every man, and every man’s hand against you?”
These lines come from Homer’s Odyssey, one of the earliest existing texts. Piracy—one of the world’s oldest professions—has been around even longer than the blind poet and also shares a birthplace with him: the Mediterranean. Since the late Bronze Age, this area has been a hotbed for piratical activity. In fact, the word pirate comes from the ancient Greek word piero, which means “to make an attempt.” According to an Egyptian clay tablet from the period, the people of the eastern Mediterranean were attacking ships as early as the fourteenth century BCE, and it is not a big surprise given the geography of the area.
Greece is one of the most mountainous countries in Europe, with a rugged terrain unsuitable for farming. Hence, civilizations sprang up only in flat pockets near the shore, where the mountain ranges tapered off, but even in these flatter areas, the rocky soil was of too poor quality to be hospitable to crops. Villages by necessity had to be small and humble—they could not grow large and prosperous because there was not enough arable land to grow food to feed a large village.
Since the ancients could not grow enough food to be profitable, they were forced to take up fishing as a way to make a living. In the water be
yond their shores, food such as fish, squid, octopus, and shellfish flourished. An average able-bodied man would have had access to a boat for fishing. For him to be successful, he also needed navigation and sailing skills. Sailing in the ancient world bore little relation to the sailboats and speedboats enjoyed by sailors today. Without the modern inventions of GPS, sonar, power engines, and the National Weather Service, sailors had to be conscious every moment of the water depth, the weather conditions, and their position in the sea in order to avoid running aground, capsizing, or becoming lost. These skills, learned by necessity for fishing purposes, came in handy for the men and women who eventually turned to piracy.
The scarcity of good soil and natural resources naturally led to trade. Since it was virtually impossible to cross over any of the Greek mountains in those days (and moving stuff by sea is always easier anyway), the sea turned into the Greek “highway” system as the best and most efficient way to get around and conduct trade. One city-state would specialize in a particular good or crop and ship it to other city-states, selling their product and purchasing the products of other city-states. Over time, the best routes to navigate from city-state to city-state became well known and well used—and irresistible to pirates.
In fact, the very geography of the sea itself helped to foster piracy. The Mediterranean basin is essentially an obstacle course of small islands. Large trade ships were forced to sail in very narrow lanes between the islands and the shore in order to avoid shipwrecks. Before the advent of the steam engine, sailors were at the mercy of the currents and tides and unable to deviate from the courses nature charted. Ships could not sail in the winter or during rough weather. All these factors combined meant that large trade ships were likely to pass through only certain small areas and only under certain weather conditions. They were sitting ducks for the pirates, who had only to lie in wait among the many islands along the coast for a big ship to pass by.