XX: Marks The Spot
An imaginative writer launches a semi-exhaustive search of Jamaica to uncover the somewhat true fates of Anne Bonny and Mary Read, history’s famed lady pirates.
Anne Bonny And Mary Read
In the 18th century, when Jamaica was known as “Pirates’ Hideout” and renowned for its tropical beauty, rum-fueled debauchery, bloody brutality and political duplicity (in other words, a paradise), I’m fairly certain it would have been easy for a pirate to spring himself from jail.
For sure, he could slip the jailer a couple doubloons or count on his unsavory brethren to bust him out. That’s my hope, anyway.
That’s because in 1720 the two most notorious lady pirates of history were captured here together, imprisoned and condemned to the gallows. According to record, though, those hangings never happened. In fact, after the metal bars banged shut behind them, Anne Bonny and Mary Read may have disappeared altogether.
So when I called my sister, Kim, to suggest that we go to the sunny isle to follow in these lady marauders’ footsteps — two wild sisters after a pirate’s life — she practically crawled through the phone in her excitement. I’m not surprised. We both have a penchant for period novels set in the 1700s Caribbean with titles like Saucy Sea Wench and Brigantine Temptress. The heroines are always hopeless romantics awash in a sea of unfathomable desire, swept off their feet by dashing pirates. I promised Kim that, according to lore, this is exactly what it was like for Mary Read and Anne Bonny, the notorious lady pirates of Jamaica.
“That is not how lore has it,” Kim — always the serious one — corrected me on our flight to Montego Bay. “According to history, they were captured and imprisoned in Port Royal. Records state that Mary died in her cell, while Anne disappeared from record altogether.”
But the records on Mary could be wrong, right? An escape would be such an embarrassment that officials had to have fictionalized them. Besides, every great pirate tale sees the wise-cracking buccaneers breaking free. My favorite internet account had them both outsmarting the guards to escape and live long lives full of adventure and intrigue. (I may have written that account myself, but still, these were wily women who swung from mastheads and held their own among coarse men.) According to lore, in other words, they could have escaped. My sister and I were on a quest to find out.
What history does tell us is this: Mary Read was born in England and wore men’s clothes from an early age. Amazing adventures were to be had, after all, and feminine dress simply did not comport with her grand plans. Anne Bonny was born in Ireland and ran away to the Bahamas, where she met and fell in love with Captain John “Calico Jack” Rackham. Not satisfied with the simple life of a mistress, she became a vital member of his crew. Like Read, she dressed as a man to hide her femininity, because pirates considered it bad luck to have a woman aboard their ship. The two women met in 1718 when Calico Jack commandeered the Dutch ship Mary happened to be sailing on, disguised as a seaman. Anne immediately discerned her to be a sister in arms, and the two became inseparable. Two years later, after high seas adventures where I imagine they looted treasure galleons and had rum parties, they were captured, tried for piracy and sentenced.
But women like this were capable of immense cleverness. Kim, of all people, should know that. Our own mother was a missile scientist who designed weapons for the military. She escaped plenty in her life, not the least of which was the status quo, but in the end she died young and left us looking to fill a gaping hole in our lives. And where do you find women to fill a gap like that? Lore, that’s where.
Our adventure began on Jamaica’s north coast, even though much of the island’s pirate scallywagging and skullduggery happened in the southeast around Port Royal, which was then considered “The Wickedest City in Christendom.” Starting in the mid-1600s, it served as home port and safe haven for buccaneers who raided Spanish settlements and harassed the treasure fleets. Before the end of the century, though, the town tried to clean up its reputation and become known as a place where captured pirates were imprisoned, tried and hanged. But an earthquake annihilated Port Royal in 1692 — literally sinking most of it into the sea — so Kim and I chose to traverse the north and west coasts of the island, from Ocho Rios to Montego Bay and beyond to Negril, where history was a little…drier. Plus, according to history, this is the side of the island where pirates had lots of fun and were hardly hanged at all.
Today, Ocho Rios serves as one of Jamaica’s primary cruise ports, and ships loom in the harbor like floating metal planets. When we were teenagers, Kim and I once docked here on a cruise and took a bamboo raft trip down the White River with our mother. Almost immediately, Kim fell into the water and was nearly eaten by a crocodile. “I was not almost eaten by a crocodile,” Kim invariably sighs, but I definitely recall seeing a crocodile-shaped ripple in the water at the time. Our mother jumped into the water and helped her climb back onto the raft, and to this day I remember her laughter echoing off the banks.
Outside Ocho Rios, in the hills overlooking the seaside town of Port Maria, there is a sacred burial ground where the famed Captain Henry Morgan — British Admiral, privateer and/or pirate, depending on the political sentiment of the moment — built a lofty lookout to protect Jamaica from Spanish attempts to retake the island. The wily bandit ingeniously dug an escape tunnel that led from his hillside base to the sea. Morgan’s gun-slit “pirate cabin” remains today, with a stunning view over Port Maria’s harbor and lighthouse, and a nearby hole in the ground is said to lead to his escape tunnel — the same tunnel, lore has it, that Mary Read and Anne Bonny used in their flight from Jamaica after their harrowing escape from prison.
“That is not how lore has it,” Kim corrected me, again. “In fact, the only real record that exists of Anne and Mary’s time in Jamaica documents their capture and imprisonment. Beyond that, there is no definitive record of their lives, or even lore.” Exactly! They disappeared from record, which means anything could have happened. Mary’s death in prison could have been faked. They could have escaped. Right?
We continued west to Montego, passing up Green Grotto, a nearly mile-long cave that, over time, has harbored the native Taino Indians, runaway slaves, weapons smugglers, barrels of rum and, of course, pirates. Kim was all for bumbling around in the darkness, searching for pirate clues and maybe the odd barrel of rum, but I have a huge aversion to dark caves, especially after reading all that pirate lore, which is rife with witches and sea monsters. Anyway, I am fairly positive Anne and Mary wouldn’t have lived out their final days in a dark cave.
Just west of Montego Bay, overlooking the west end of its harbor, we came upon Round Hill. At its peak lie the scant remains of an ancient fort that was meant to protect this part of the island from pirates. I don’t know how effective it was, though, as pirates partied here like frat boys on spring break.
To be fair to the island’s powdered wig officials, though, pirates enjoyed a fickle popularity here. Their criminal status was contingent on whether their actions benefitted the bureaucrats in charge. After the British captured Jamaica from the Spanish in 1655, rather than train a naval fleet to defend this territory, they simply commissioned as private mercenaries most of the same pirates who had been freely plundering the Spanish treasure galleons all along. Those who accepted the Crown’s commission were dubbed “privateers.” They continued to rob the Spanish fleets the same as before, but now were dividing their spoils with the kings and queens. Those who declined the commission remained pirates and were subject to the gallows by both sides, English and Spanish.
Below Round Hill Fort, we checked into the five-star Round Hill Resort, an elegant assortment of villas and terraced hotel rooms overlooking an almost achingly serene Caribbean Sea. The gardens there are so well tended that I kept touching the flowers to make sure they were real. Tiki bars have literally been built into almond trees, and the impeccably vintage common areas are studded with photos of Hollywood stars like Bob Hope and Paul Newman partaking in the resort’s amenities since as far back as the 1950s.
One of the villas at Round Hill is christened “Reid’s End” for an 18th century sea captain (“Probably a pirate!” I said. “Probably not,” said Kim) whose grave was discovered on its grounds. At the resort’s beach bar, Kim and I toasted Capt. Reid with a Round Hill Special, which contained seven or so kinds of alcohol. Thus fortified and swept up in the adventurous spirit of our trip, we ran fully clothed into the Caribbean and lolled on our backs in the calm water. Yes, I thought, looking back at the lush, terraced hillside, if I were a pirate, I couldn’t have hoped for a better place to be buried than Round Hill.
The next day we stopped at Scotchies, a roadside jerk joint renowned as the best in Jamaica. Not only is it authentic food, it’s pirate food. You see, the word “buccaneer” is derived from the French word “boucan,” which is the wooden frame traditionally used to smoke meat in these parts. Centuries ago, Europeans in the Caribbean made a livelihood smoking meat and selling it to passing ships. They were called buccaneers, and when business got slow, they commandeered the ships rather than cater to them. It was, for the captains, a pricey lunch.
Scotchies is exactly the opposite — so cheap and delicious that it makes you feel like you’re a thieving buccaneer. The whole place sort of resembles one big boucan, with bamboo planks seemingly propping it up and clouds of smoke rising from the rear roof where the chicken is cooked. The chicken is prepared to-go-style, with moist, spicy pieces wrapped in tin foil. We plopped down immediately and dug in. “Let’s build a boucan back home,” I proposed to Kim, who would have voiced her enthusiasm if her mouth wasn’t full.
So far, we hadn’t uncovered any clues that would lead us to Anne and Mary’s ultimate fates. I still refused to believe that Mary could have died in prison (from labor-induced fever, as some accounts claimed), but it was looking more and more like definitive information would remain buried, like pirate booty, in history. Luckily, though, this land is soaked in exciting tales of superstition. Ghosts and sea monsters and witches seep into the bedrock of Jamaica’s history like roots into a water pipe, which means there are other strong, independent women to research in Jamaican lore, even if they do happen to have been murdering psychopaths.
That’s what drove us to Rose Hall, a historic, beautifully manicured former sugar plantation that’s reportedly haunted by its murderous mistress, Annie Palmer. Known locally as the White Witch of Rose Hall, Palmer is said to have killed three husbands and countless slaves during her reign as the richest person on the island, and her husbands are unceremoniously buried between two palms on the property of what is now the Ritz-Carlton Hotel.
Conroy Thompson of Hilton Rose Hall, a neighboring high-end all-inclusive resort, confirmed the rumor. He pointed in the direction of said palm trees, and Kim and I set out to find the grave. Alas, we were waylaid by the hotel bar. This was a girl-pirate research trip, after all, and we thought it important to consume as much rum as possible. We had one rum-filled signature welcome cocktail and set out to commandeer the giant slide at the Hilton’s lagoon-like pool from a gaggle of laughing children. They hardly put up any fight at all.
By morning, the hangovers had worn off and we were back to serious business. Kim wanted to relive past trauma and do some research on a bamboo-raft trip down the Martha Brae River, a waterway thought to have been traveled by pirates in search of secluded places to bury treasure. I — owing to my fear of crocodiles — would rather have been hanged. When we were kids living in Florida, an alligator ate our neighbor’s Beagle. Since then, I’ve tried to keep a safe distance from any big swamp lizards. But Kim refused to entertain my fear and hopped onto the rickety raft without a care. “Do you think Anne and Mary would have been stopped by a croc?” she teased me, pulling me reluctantly along.
Our raft captain was a wiry Jamaican named Herman who probably wouldn’t have been a very good barrier between the crocodiles and us — more like an appetizer, if you ask me. He’d made the raft himself — a flat, surprisingly buoyant plank of bamboo poles placed side-by-side and bound together with reeds. Kim and I sat in a bamboo carriage perched toward the back that made it feel like we were riding a floating rickshaw. As Herman gently propelled us along, gondolier-like, with a long bamboo pole, he told us that the river is haunted by the ghost of Martha Brae, a Taino girl who was captured by the Spanish and tortured to reveal the location of a secret gold mine along its bank. To protect her secrets, she called upon her voodoo powers to create a rainstorm, which changed the course of the river and drowned her tormentors in the mine.
All I could think about, besides being drowned by Martha’s ghost, was how prevalent witches and feminine ghosts are in Jamaican lore. Annie Palmer herself is said to have practiced witchcraft to intimidate her adversaries. During our tour of Rose Hall the day before, we’d been offered the chance to spend a night inside the haunted property. Kim was all for it, but I practically bolted for the ocean at the very suggestion.
“What do you keep swatting at?” my sister had asked.
“Ghosts,” I said, flailing my arms about like an over-medicated mental patient.
On the Martha Brae, though, I didn’t have to swat so much as a mosquito; the three-mile trip was tranquil as a lullaby. The river was so green it could have been colored by a kindergartner, and just as still. Dotted here and there along the banks were shacks where laidback proprietors sold beer, beads, beach art and cups carved from big vanilla beans. I bought a seashell sculpture in the shape of a frog playing the saxophone, and I listened intently for the ghost of Martha Brae. All was quiet except for the sound of laughter echoing off the banks.
Next we arrived in Negril, where Calico Jack was anchored when he and his crew — Anne Bonny and Mary Read included — were captured by the British. During their trial, British soldiers testified that the two feisty women occasionally fired on their own crewmates for failing to fight. In the end, they were found guilty of piracy, but spared the gallows because both were “quick with child.”
Despite their conditions, Anne and Mary didn’t go quietly. They fought fiercely as the British boarded their ship, while their mates cowered belowdecks. This amazes me, because when I was pregnant, the most I could do was lie around like a walrus, begging people to bring me things. Kim is completely with me on this one, as she remembers bringing me the things. According to legend, Anne visited Jack the night before his hanging. “If you had fought like a man,” she famously admonished him, “you would not now be hanged like a dog.”
Kim and I checked into the Moondance Villas, just steps away from Negril’s legendary seven-mile-long beach. Our villa was a minimansion, complete with a chef, a full bar and a butler who greeted us with a tray of rum punch. We each grabbed a glass and immediately commenced lying languidly on the white sand, basking in a sunset so beautiful that I almost tried to reach for it and take it with me.
Kim and I were, at this moment, looking at the waters where Anne Bonny and Mary Read sailed their last adventure. The sky was such a lovely splash of fire — the same celestial inferno the two lady pirates must have routinely gazed upon from this very shore — that it’s no wonder they chose to forsake a lifestyle that would have kept them safe yet sequestered from it. Having no siblings of their own, they forged a sisterhood on the seas, and stood to defend it when no one else would.
“Do you think they escaped?” I asked Kim. “Of course they escaped,” she said. They escaped tradition, decorum and expectation. We realized then that the closest we could come to following in their footsteps was to escape ourselves for a while in this island paradise. Besides, Mary and Anne weren’t forging a path for us to follow; they were living adventurous lives for us to admire. Today, spotty records are all we have left to tell of their destinies, and those say that Mary died in prison and Anne disappeared altogether.
But spotty records could be wrong.
Reader Comments
- Very creative way to write a travel story, "Nollis" (Posted on 12 Dec 2011)
- Hollis--(why does the byline say 'Nollis', by the way?)--THANK YOU for this great article! Not only are you writing about two of my favorite figures from history, you bring back memories that hold special significance to me. It would've been 1952, and I was in a small rural school in North Carolina, in the fourth grade. Roaming around in the tiny library one day, I came across a book about 'lady pirates'--with this very photo on the cover. It took me many years to understand why the very title and image made me flush, and continue to do so as I read of their friendship and passions and adventures: a dozen years after that library bounty I learned the word 'lesbian' and realized that it had applied to me long before I knew there was a 'name' for who I was, and I remembered Bonny and Read. In my childhood ways of putting things together, but unbeknownst to me at the time, they had fit my emotional identity. Along with all else we don't know about them, I don't know that they ever lived as lovers. But I might as well add my own chapter to the lore. Again, thank you so much for this! (Posted on 13 Dec 2011)
- Yet more excellent writing by Hollis Gillespie, henceforth to be known as Nollis! I love the different perspective she brings to all her stories and this piece certainly makes me want to make travel plans! (Posted on 13 Dec 2011)
- Fabulous Hollis! I can smell and taste the mystery, beauty, and flavors of Jamaica. Female pirates have always fascinated me and your article has reminded me why. Would love a follow up on Annie Palmer. I await your next adventure.
(Posted on 30 Dec 2011)
