who only by moving can balance

Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 338 - Anne Bonny, Mary Read, and Other Pirates - transcript

(Originally aired 2026/03/21)

I don’t know if anyone else has noticed, but pirate novels have been getting rather popular in lesbian and sapphic fiction. Going by my spreadsheet (which isn’t necessarily complete), and searching on cover copy that includes the word “pirate” or “piracy,” after a long period with only 1 to 3 pirate books each year, the numbers started climbing in 2022 and hit 16 titles in 2025. While maybe half fall within the “golden age of piracy” stretching from the late 17th century to the mid 18th, and set primarily in and around the Caribbean, another solid chunk have stretched that era into the 19th century or exist in the nebulous, timeless “Pirate Era” of Hollywood movies.

There were, of course, female pirates in history, many of whom would make excellent subjects for historical fiction. From the bloodthirsty Jeanne de Clisson in 14th century Brittany, to Gráinne ní Mháille in 16th century Ireland, to the powerful commander of the Red Flag Fleet in 19th century China, Zheng Yi Sao, there are plenty of colorful figures to provide inspiration. The Wikipedia article on Women in Piracy [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_piracy] has extensive listings with reliable assessments of historicity. Rather less reliable is a popular book titled Women Pirates and the Politics of the Jolly Roger by Ulrike Klausmann, Marion Meinzerin, and Gabriel Kuhn which aims more at entertainment and speculation.

Now, it isn’t quite fair to blame Hollywood for the familiar version of the Golden Age of Piracy. Indeed, there is a long tradition of pirate stories being based primarily on a fantasy version of history, invented by someone who was most likely already a prolific novelist, who gave the public what they wanted in the form of elaborate, bloody, and largely fictionalized stories of real-life pirates…and some pirates who never existed in the first place. And at the center of that fiction are two real-life women pirates: Anne Bonny and Mary Read. Bonny and Read are the darlings of the lesbian pirate set, but almost everything that makes them of interest—everything except that they were women and were pirates—is fictitious.

The fantasy version of the Golden Age of Piracy was the creation of a man writing under the pen name “Captain Charles Johnson,” but who many scholars believe to have been Daniel Defoe, author of Robinson Crusoe, Moll Flanders, A Journal of the Plague Year, and Memoirs of a Cavalier. The full title of the work—following the expansive fashion of the times—is A General History of the Pyrates: from their first rise and settlement in the Island of Providence, to the present time. With the remarkable actions and adventures of the two female pyrates Mary Read and Anne Bonny ... To which is added. A short abstract of the statute and civil law, in relation to pyracy. Whew. The first edition—published early in 1724—covered 16 pirate captains (with Bonny and Read’s stories included under Captain Rackham) and was so popular that a second edition was published a few months later, which included a second volume with an additional 15 biographies and further details about the people covered in the first volume. Supposedly this second volume was aided by contributions of material from correspondents who had access to first-hand knowledge, but it includes several figures who are entirely invented. And like the material in the first volume, it includes detailed personal histories with content that could not plausibly have been obtained under the conditions in which it was written.

The vast majority of the material about Bonny and Read falls in this category, included detailed histories of their childhood and early careers that could not have been available to the supposed author, whoever he was. If you want to read the complete original material and an analysis of its possible veracity, there’s a multi-part series of posts on the Lesbian Historic Motif Project blog that will be linked in the show notes.

But let’s step back for a moment. Anne Bonny and Mary Read were genuine historical figures. Their presence and activities among the crew of Jack Rackham during acts of piracy in the later part of 1720 are documented in contemporary legal records and newspapers, as is their trial for piracy—complete with detailed eyewitness accounts—from an official record published by the government of Jamaica, covering a whole series of piracy trials in the later part of 1720 and early 1721 and published sometime around May 1721.

The trial records and eyewitness statements document that Bonny and Read participated enthusiastically and violently in acts of piracy, that they did so while wearing masculine clothing, that they were found guilty and sentenced to hang, and that they successfully delayed execution by claiming pregnancy. (This was a common tactic for female defendants, as execution would be put off until either the child was born or it was demonstrated the claim was not true, and the delay could allow time for appeals or clemency.) In contrast to the General History’s claim that Bonny and Read were successfully disguised as men during their time on ship—their true sex unknown to anyone except each other and Captain Rackham—the eyewitnesses indicated it was perfectly obvious they were women, and furthermore that they only dressed in masculine clothing during combat, while wearing skirts at other times. But I get a little ahead of myself.

The myth of “lesbian pirates” derives from one episode in the General History that depends entirely on the motif of a completely successful gender disguise. I’ll quote the passage in full. It comes during the biography of Mary Read.

Her Sex was not so much as suspected by any Person on Board, till Anne Bonny, who was not altogether so reserved in point of Chastity, took a particular liking to her; in short, Anne Bonny took her for a handsome young Fellow, and for some Reasons best known to herself, first discovered her Sex to Mary Read; Mary Read knowing what she would be at, and being very sensible of her own Incapacity that Way, was forced to come to a right Understanding with her, and so to the great Disappointment of Anne Bonny, she let her know she was a Woman also; but this Intimacy so disturb’d Captain Rackam, who was the Lover and Gallant of Anne Bonny, that he grew furiously jealous, so that he told Anne Bonny, he would cut her new Lover’s Throat, therefore, to quiet him, she let him into the Secret also.

Now, it’s an important bit of context that gender-disguise adventures were a popular staple of 17th and 18th century popular culture, and there’s a common motif of a women in male disguise on shipboard falling into sexual adventures because a woman (usually the captain’s wife) is attracted to someone she thinks is a handsome young man. While this motif flirts with the idea of same-sex relations, it’s done with plausible deniability as the desiring person believes they are pursuing an opposite-sex encounter, and the revelation of the underlying sex immediately puts an end to the desire.

That said, the historic record does include a good number of successful gender disguise biographies (and that’s only the ones we know about because they failed at some later point), including ones where a disguised woman either initiates or goes along with a romantic or sexual relationship with a woman, either to support the disguise or from desire—we can’t always tell.

So the fictional version of Bonny and Read’s encounter—that they were both successfully passing as men, and engaged in a same-sex flirtation within that context—is quite plausible. But the totality of the evidence for the real Bonny and Read’s lives makes it clear that no such encounter happened between them. They were not successfully passing as men—they weren’t even trying to. Even within the narratives offered by the General History—the only source for the slightest hint of sapphic attraction—they are both depicted as exclusively heterosexual, both pursuing sexual relationships with fellow male pirates.

So how did Bonny and Read end up becoming the darlings of the lesbian pirate movement? For that, we need to trace the history of the genre. Historian Helen Rodriguez is joining the podcast to talk about the pop culture afterlife of Bonny and Read, and especially how they became lesbian icons.

[A transcript of the interview will be included when available.]

Show Notes

In this episode we talk about:

• Female pirates
• Anne Bonny and Mary Read in the General History of the Pyrates
• The motif of “lesbian Bonny & Read”
• Bonny and Read in lesbian historical fiction
• Sources mentioned
  • Wikipedia entry: Women in Piracy
  • Women Pirates and the Politics of the Jolly Roger by Ulrike Klausmann, Marion Meinzerin, and Gabriel Kuhn
• This topic is discussed in one or more entries of the Lesbian Historic Motif Project here:
  • Anne Bonny
  • Mary Read
  • LHMP Entry #547 A General History of the Pyrates
• Works mentioned by Helen Rodriguez:
  • The History and Lives of Notorious Pirates (1735)
  • The Extraordinary Adventures and Daring Exploits of Captain Henry Morgan (1813)
  • The Naval History of the United States by Willis J. Abbott (1896)
  • The Buccaneers and their Reign of Terror by C.M. Stevens (1899)
  • The Homosexuality of Men and Women by Magnus Hirschfield (1920)
  • ”Anne Bonny & Mary Read: They Killed Pricks” by Susan Baker in The Furies: Lesbian/Feminist Monthly Vol. 1, issue 6 (August 1972)
  • Mistress of the Seas (novel) by John Carlova (1964)
  • Forgotten Women ed. By Nancy M[???] (couldn’t identify this book)
  • The Women Pirates (play) by Steve Gooch (
  • Mary Read, Buccaneer (novel) by Philip Rush (1945)
  • Beneath the Black Flag by David Cordingly
  • Kingston by Starlight (novel) by Christopher John Farley
  • Black Sails (tv series)
  • Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag (video game)
  • The Pirates of Neverland (video game)
  • Our Flag Means Death (tv series)
  • Hellcats (podcast fiction)

Links to the Lesbian Historic Motif Project Online

• Website: http://alpennia.com/lhmp
• Blog: http://alpennia.com/blog
• RSS: http://alpennia.com/blog/feed/
• Twitter: @LesbianMotif
• Discord: Contact Heather for an invitation to the Alpennia/LHMP Discord server
• The Lesbian Historic Motif Project Patreon

Links to Heather Online

• Website: http://alpennia.com
• Email: Heather Rose Jones
• Mastodon: @heatherrosejones@Wandering.Shop
• Bluesky: @heatherrosejones
• Facebook: Heather Rose Jones (author page)

Links to Helen Rodriguez Online

• Email: Helenrodriguez1720@gmail.com
• Bluesky: @ladytyler.bsky.social