Mary Read

Mary Read
Pirate

Mary Read kills a pirate
Type Pirate
Born c. 1690
Place of birth England
Died April 1721 (aged 31)
Place of death Port Royal, Jamaica
Allegiance English-allied infantry & cavalry in Holland
Years active c.1708-1721
Rank Privateer
Base of operations Caribbean
A contemporary engraving of Mary Read

Mary Read (c.1690-1721) a.k.a. Mark Read, was an English pirate. She and Anne Bonny are two of the most famed female pirates of all time; they are the only two women known to have been convicted of piracy during the early 18th century, at the height of the Golden Age of Piracy.

Early life

Mary Read was illegitimately born in England, in the late 17th century, to the widow of a sea captain.

Her date of birth is disputed among historians because of a reference to the "Peace of Ryswick" by her contemporary biographer Captain Charles Johnson in A General History of the Pyrates. He very well may have made an error, intending to refer to the "Treaty of Utrecht". Whichever it is, her birth was about 1691.

Read's mother began to disguise illegitimately born Mary as a boy after the death of Mary's older, legitimate brother Mark. This was done in order to continue to receive financial support from his paternal grandmother. The grandmother was apparently fooled, and Read and her mother lived on the inheritance into her teenage years. Still dressed as a boy, Read then found work as a footboy, and later found employment on a ship.

She later joined the British military, allied with Dutch forces against the French (this could have been during the Nine Years War or during the War of the Spanish Succession). Read, in male disguise, proved herself through battle, but she fell in love with a Flemish soldier. When they married, she used their military commission and gifts from intrigued brethren in arms as a funding source to acquire an inn named "De drie hoefijzers" (The Three Horseshoes") near Breda Castle in The Netherlands.

Upon her husband's early death, Read resumed male dress and military service in Holland. With peace, there was no room for advancement, so she quit and boarded a ship bound for the West Indies.

Becoming a pirate

Read's ship was taken by pirates, who forced her to join them. She took the King's pardon c.1718-1719, and took a commission to privateer, until that ended with her joining the crew in mutiny. In 1720 she joined pirate John "Calico Jack" Rackham and his companion, the female pirate Anne Bonny.

Capture and imprisonment

In October 1720, pirate hunter Captain Jonathan Barnet took Rackham's crew by surprise while they were hosting a rum party with another crew of Englishmen off the west coast of Jamaica. After a volley of fire left the pirate vessel disabled, Rackham's crew and their "guests" fled to the hold, leaving only the women and one other to fight Barnet's boarding party (it is also possible that Rackham and his crew were too drunk to fight.) Allegedly, Read angrily shot into the hold, killing one, and wounding others when the men would not come up and fight with them. Barnet's crew eventually overcame the women. Rackham surrendered, requesting "quarter."[1]

Rackham and his crew were arrested and brought to trial in what is now known as Spanish Town, Jamaica, where they were sentenced to hang for acts of piracy, as were Read and Bonny. However, the women escaped the noose when they revealed they were both "quick with child" (known as "Pleading the belly"), so they received a temporary stay of execution.

Read died of a violent fever while in prison, and her April 28, 1721 burial is in the records of St. Catherine's church in Jamaica.[2] There is no record of the burial of her baby.

In popular culture

In Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, Mary Read is a non-playable character first introduced to the player character, Edward Kenway, as James Kidd, the alleged son of William Kidd. She eventually reveals herself as Mary Read and a member of the Assassin Order. Other parts of her life story revealed in-game are her initial enticement of Anne Bonny, joining Jack Rackham's crew and her trial for piracy, as well as a fondness for Colman's Mustard, a delicacy of the City of Norwich. Towards the end of the game she dies from fever (due to the unsanitary conditions of the cell in which she had given birth) while being carried from prison by Kenway.

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1721, The Trials of Captain John Rackam and other Pirates
  2. ↑ http://www.republicofpirates.net/Read.html

1. Johnson, Captain Charles, ed. Hayward Arthur L., A history of the robberies and murders of the most notorious pirates from their first rise and settlement in the island of Providence to the present year, London: George Routledge & Sons, Ltd. First published in 1724, with the second edition published 1728, both versions attributed to Daniel Defoe. The two editions are very different, with the second edition much less accurate than the first when compared to court records. In the second edition however, no such accuracy is even attempted. In particular,the lurid details of the capture of the merchant ship the Neptune by Charles Vane in September 1718, conflicts entirely with the court records of both Charles Vane and Robert Deal, his quartermaster.

2. 'The Tryals of Captain John Rackam and Other Pirates', 1721, by Robert Baldwin, in The Colonial Office Records in The Public Records Office at Kew, (ref: CO 137/14f.9). This details the trials of JackRackam, Mary Read, Anne Bonny, and Charles Vane.

External links

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