Anne Bonny, Pirate     

Anne Bonny was one of the most famous of female pirates to scourge the seas during the heyday of the pirating era.  She was born in 1700, the daughter of an Irish Laywer who fled to South Carolina.  Anne was raised in the seaport village of Charleston.  She learned fencing, hunting, shooting, and throwing knives and hatchets at the hands of her father’s gamekeeper, an American Indian named Charlie Fourfeathers. 

 She was 13 years old when, in a rage, she stabbed her mother’s maid to death.  It was claimed as self-defense, and the older woman had drawn a knife on Anne.  Only three years later, in 1716, she was married had moved to the Bahamas with her new husband, where she soon abandoned all pretense of marriage with him and entered the world of Piracy. That year, in an argument over a wealthy businessman in New Providence, Bahama, she was challenged to a duel by the fellow’s current mistress.  They fought, and she sliced the rival female to death in a long and slow duel with rapiers. 

 Anne was described as a tall girl, with red-gold hair, flashing eyes, and handsome features.  She was a “strapping and shapely” woman, and was described as “sexually aggressive”, and a “minx”.  She took many lovers, both older and younger than herself, and in one instance, assassinated a fellow Pirate captain while making love to him by shooting him in the head during the climax of the evening.  She felt he had earned the right to “die happy”, and not be forced to hang.  It is said she would have bedded the infamous Blackbeard, except that he refused to bathe, and she was fastidious about her bed partners.