8

“If He Had Fought Like a Man,
He Need Not Have Been Hang’d
Like a Dog”

DESPITE THE STRANGLEHOLD CARIBBEAN PIRATES have on popular imagination, their heyday in the period following the Spanish succession spanned roughly ten years. By the second decade of the eighteenth century, the pirates’ days of reckless plundering while the law looked the other way were drawing to a close. Several factors brought about the end of this third and final phase in the Golden Age of piracy.

As discussed in the previous chapter, with the signing of the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, the War of the Spanish Succession ended, and the population of pirates experienced a huge boost. Thousands of skilled soldiers found themselves suddenly unemployed, and many of them migrated to the warmer climates and the more adventurous lifestyle of the Caribbean. However, this rise in piracy caused a corresponding beefing up of national navies as protection against the pirates. No longer needed to fight other nations postwar, the navies were able to focus on pirate hunting. Privateering, the nations reasoned, was all well and good, but outright pirating could no longer be tolerated now that the once-rival nations were at peace.

The pirates now lacked a safe haven where they could base their adventures. By the late 1680s, the former pirate hot spot of Tortuga had turned hostile, passing strict antipiracy laws and increasing the military presence. To make matters worse, party city Port Royal had been destroyed by an earthquake in 1692. All over the Caribbean, the pirate paradises full of taverns, whores, and places to sleep it all off were attempting to turn themselves into more law-abiding communities, which would ironically bring a few of their economies to financial ruin. Once given free rein of the Caribbean, the pirates were now confined to an ever-smaller geographical area. They needed one secure base to keep their trade viable, and they found that base in the city of New Providence.

The last great Caribbean pirate stronghold, New Providence, part of the present-day Bahamas, became home to some two thousand pirates, who in 1713 outnumbered law-abiding inhabitants two to one. An island of about sixty square miles does not seem like a likely pirate metropolis, but it had a variety of features that made it a decent base. Before 1718, governors were selected by the islanders instead of appointed by England, and the British Bahamas happened to lack a governor from 1706 to 1718. Besides the lack of supervision, the island—like much of the Caribbean—was ideally located close to trade routes and good wind patterns. The harbor was too shallow for large warships but just right for the smaller ships favored by pirates. There was an adequate supply of fresh water, timber, wild animals for hunting, and high hills that could be used as lookout posts. These factors, combined with the fact that the pirates were no longer welcome in Port Royal or Tortuga, meant that New Providence was an excellent choice for them.

Nearly every major pirate of the period spent time on the island. They conducted business in the thriving black market, trading slaves, liquor, and other contraband. Ships, cannons, swords, and other weapons could be obtained as well as repaired there. When work was done for the day, the pirates could pass a few merry hours in the taverns and brothels of the island. Benjamin Hornigold, Calico Jack Rackham, Samuel Bellamy, and Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard, were known to frequent New Providence during the last years of the Golden Age.

New Providence was a prosperous yet lawless island, which made it a threat to the British colonial presence in the Caribbean. Woodes Rogers, appointed governor of the Bahamas in 1717, intended to flush out the pirates once and for all and make the Bahamas a respectable colony. His efforts ultimately succeeded, but at tremendous personal cost. With his bold plans to pardon pirates and his insistence on maintaining England’s sovereignty on the island, he was able to convince the inhabitants of New Providence that he was there to stay, and he meant business. Pirates had three options: decide to abide by Rogers’s conditions, make themselves scarce, or die fighting. Rogers pardoned over six hundred pirates, many of whom became pirate hunters themselves and made a living by informing on their former brethren. Many other pirates were captured, tried, and executed, such as Calico Jack Rackham and his crew. Rogers’s move of convening pirate trials right in New Providence instead of sending the pirates back to England to face justice further established his supreme authority and convinced the pirates that there was no escaping him.

Ironically, without the pirate economy, the colony fell into ruin, and Rogers was imprisoned for his debts. The man who ended the Golden Age of piracy died in debtor’s prison and is for the most part left out of the history books. Today, much of New Providence’s livelihood comes from pirate tourism, a fact that surely has Rogers rolling in his grave.

As the Golden Age was winding down, two fierce pirate women—one famous, one less so—were making names for themselves. Their exploits ensured that the Golden Age went out with a bang instead of a whimper. Although their methods and locations of piracy were very different, these women shared an adventurous spirit and a knack for the nastier bits of pirating. In the Caribbean, there was Anne Bonny, and off the North American coast, there was Maria Cobham.

Anne, like Mary Read, is one of the few pirates whose existence has been verified. She was a main attraction in Captain Johnson’s A General History of the Pyrates, originally published in 1724, just a few years after her trial took place. Her name also appears in the trial documents of the crew of the William, and she is mentioned in a pamphlet and letter written during this time. The main source of information that exists about her life, however, is Johnson’s account. As discussed in the last chapter, Johnson’s accounts cannot be taken entirely at face value, particularly where the women pirates are concerned. Johnson himself says the section on Bonny and Read strains credulity. In a few key places in Anne’s story, it is necessary to push back against Johnson’s assertions to see what the famous pirate biographer might have purposely left out.

Anne was born in Ireland, the illegitimate daughter of an attorney thought to be named William Cormac and his maid Peggy. After his affair was discovered, the scandal cost him many of his clients. He was forced to appeal to his wife for an allowance to live on, the wife having been left all of William’s mother’s money upon her death, due to her son’s infidelity. Knowing that his wife would never pay for the upbringing of his bastard daughter, Cormac dressed Anne as a boy and told everyone she was a relative’s child whom he was training to be his clerk. When Cormac’s wife figured out her husband’s ward was not a nephew but in fact his illegitimate daughter, she cut them all off. So William, his maid, and his young daughter set off for America in search of a new start.

William found better luck as a merchant in the Carolina colony, in the area of present-day South Carolina, than he had back home as a lawyer. He became the wealthy owner of a large plantation that Anne became the mistress of at just twelve years old, after her mother’s death. She ruled the plantation with her famous fiery temper. Stories abound regarding her punishment of servants, including one brought up at her trial about stabbing a servant with a knife, although Johnson claims this tale is “groundless.” The only daughter of a rich merchant, she had many suitors, yet she rejected them all. She so severely beat a would-be suitor who was too forward with her that he was laid up for weeks. Despite her father’s desire to marry her off to one of Charles Town’s eligible bachelors, she set her sights on ne’er-do-well sailor James Bonny. When she married him over her father’s objections, the heartbroken William disowned her. A prevalent legend states that she retaliated by setting fire to her father’s plantation, but the incident is not mentioned in Johnson’s account.

James was allegedly interested in Anne only for her father’s money, so he was extremely disappointed when he found out she would inherit none of that money. The disenchanted newlyweds took off to New Providence, where James thought he’d try his luck as a pirate hunter. Governor Woodes Rogers’s 1718 declaration welcomed anyone looking to make some easy money by capturing some pirates—no questions asked. Anne quickly tired of her uninterested husband and began frequenting the nightlife of the pirate hot spot she found herself in, meeting and quickly falling in love with Captain John Rackham, known as Calico Jack due to his fondness for flashy calico clothing.

John Rackham began his pirating career as a quartermaster under pirate Charles Vane—one of the only pirates who actively resisted Governor Rogers. When Vane refused to attack a ship the crew felt that they ought to go after, they voted Vane out of his captaincy and elected Rackham into power. Such an episode would never have happened on a ship in any national navy—one of the many reasons why piracy was so appealing to many former navy sailors. Rackham fell in love with Anne and, according to one story, offered her husband, James, a large sum of money if he’d release her from the marriage. Given James’s desire for money, this proposition might have seemed well timed, but apparently the pirate hunter was offended by the offer and asked Governor Rogers to administer a rarely enforced adultery law and have Anne publicly beaten. Anne and her new lover Rackham ran off to bluer seas to avoid the sentence.

While off pirating, Anne became pregnant with Rackham’s child. Rackham sailed to Cuba for his wife’s delivery. She had the baby in Cuba, although the exact date is unclear—some accounts place it as late as 1720. What happened to the baby is also unclear; Anne either gave it up for adoption or it died, according to different versions of the story. Whatever happened to the child, Anne rejoined her pirate crew soon after the birth of the baby and continued pirating.

Rackham and his crew were technically privateers, having taken advantage of a proclamation that pardoned pirates provided they turned themselves in. Anne, Jack, and the rest of them did enough privateering to avoid arousing suspicion, but they also did a fair bit of honest-to-goodness pirating on the side. This was not an uncommon situation, and many other pirates did the same thing. The American colonies, for example, looked the other way while pirating was taking place so long as the privateers defended the colonies against opposing forces. This lax attitude had taken its toll over time and the pirates had grown too powerful to control, which is one of the reasons Woodes Rogers was sent to the Bahamas—to end the pirates’ domination of the area.

Sometime after Anne rejoined Jack’s crew, the pirates picked up another crew member, a slim fellow called Mark Read. According to many accounts, Anne became quite taken with Mark, to the point that Rackham became jealous. Mark was forced to reveal to the pair that “he” was actually a “she”: Mary Read. Johnson claims that the rest of the crew never discovered Mary’s secret, which seems odd given the trial testimony by the pirates’ victims that it was easy to tell that Anne and Mary were women. Perhaps Johnson felt that if he acknowledged that the crew knew about the women, he would have to explain why the crew did not reject them onboard. Regardless of his claims, captives also testified at trial that the women dressed as men only during raids and were dressed as women at all other times.

No matter what they were wearing, it is clear from trial testimony and Johnson’s account that Anne and Mary were fierce pirates who took an equal part in the business of pirating. During battles, they participated enthusiastically with guns and swords. At trial, captive Dorothy Thomas claimed that the women “were very active on Board and willing to do any Thing . . . they did not seem to be kept or detained by Force, but of their own Free-Will and Consent.” Thomas Dillon, another witness at trial, testified that “[the women] were both very profligate, cursing and swearing much, and very ready and willing to do any Thing on Board.” Historian Jo Stanley asserts that the women were “not marginalized but played a central role in Rackham’s raids, as integral members of a tightly knit group.”

A recurring idea in Anne and Mary’s stories is that they were lesbian lovers. It is by no means impossible that these women shared a sexual attraction, but there is no evidence to support this claim. Both women were married to men at various points, and Anne was Jack Rackham’s lover, so each woman appeared to have some heterosexual inclinations. Each could have been bisexual, but it is doubtful that they were exclusively homosexually oriented. Mary was said to have fallen in love with a fellow pirate once she joined Rackham’s crew and possibly even married him onboard. Johnson details an encounter where the object of her affection angered a fellow pirate, who challenged him to a duel. Mary, eager to rescue her love but unwilling to do it in a way that emasculated him, challenged the other pirate to a duel that was to take place before the one scheduled with her lover. She killed the pirate, thereby negating her lover’s duel and saving his life. Like Charlotte de Berry, her combat skills came in handy to preserve her love affair. Johnson, again curiously dismissive when it comes to Mary Read, intimates that the entire duel was an attention-getting charade Mary partook in to get the man to like her. Fortunately he liked her anyway, according to Johnson, and they “plighted their Troth to each other,” which they considered to be as good as a marriage. Mary used this union in court to justify her pregnancy, claiming she had never committed fornication or adultery. Johnson describes how, also at the trial, Mary Read refused to identify her husband/lover, which allowed him to claim he was press-ganged into service and was not a pirate voluntarily. This lie spared his life once again and allowed him to go free. Johnson seems keen to set up Mary Read as the “good” girl next to Anne Bonny’s “bad” girl, which does both women a disservice in reducing them to stereotypes. It would have, however, enticed readers and consequently boosted sales of the book.

Despite the largeness of their legends, the women were pirates together for only a short time—some accounts claim less than a year. Trial testimony says that they began their official pirating careers on September 1, 1720, when they agreed to sail with Rackham. Anne had been with Rackham for a longer period of time but perhaps was involved only in privateering up to that point, or maybe the date given at trial was inaccurate. In any case, by 1720, Calico Jack and his crew—Anne and Mary included—were successfully plundering many ships in the Caribbean and on the North American coast. Rumors of a pirate crew with not one but two women began to circulate throughout the Caribbean.

Perhaps one of their greatest exploits was the theft of the sloop William, stolen in August 1720 out of the Nassau harbor right under Governor Rogers’s nose. Owned by John Ham, the twelve-ton sloop was a British warship with one gun deck that could hold up to eighteen guns. It would have been rather small in comparison to other British warships, but it was still a large prize for the pirates. Stealing a British ship was a clear indication that the pirates were not strictly privateers as they had promised, and Governor Rogers was incensed that he’d been duped. On September 5, 1720, he declared that Jack Rackham and his crew, including “two women, by name, Anne Fulford alias Bonny & Mary Read,” were enemies to the Crown of Great Britain and sent Captain John Barnet to capture them. From then on, the clock was ticking against their capture.

The date on which the women were captured is unclear. Johnson’s account does not mention an exact date. A popular date offered is October 22, 1720, but November is also given. One evening, in either October or November, Captain Jonathan Barnet came across the pirates at Negril Point, Jamaica. He ordered them to surrender immediately.

Legend has it that, it being late at night, the pirate crew of the William was belowdecks, drinking, sleeping, and playing cards. Only Anne and Mary were on deck keeping watch. When the women realized they were being attacked, they shouted below in an attempt to rouse the men, but none came to help. Mary Read is even rumored to have fired her gun into the hold, wounding several, in an attempt to coerce her fellow pirates into defending the ship. While the men, including Captain Jack Rackham, cowered down below, Anne and Mary fought like the devil himself, shooting their pistols and brandishing their swords. The women held off the British crew for as long as possible and managed to take down several of them, but eventually they were overtaken. Along with the rest of the crew, they were captured and taken to Jamaica for trial.

The High Court of Admiralty convened in Spanish Town, Jamaica, on November 16, 1720. The men of Rackham’s crew who could not deny they were voluntarily pirates were tried for piracy. Those who were believed to be press-ganged or held against their wills, including Mary Read’s “husband,” were acquitted. In a trial lasting a short amount of time, the remaining pirates were all convicted and sentenced to hang.

Captain Jack Rackham was one of the first to be hanged. His body was shown publicly as a warning to other pirates. He was put on a gibbet, which was a type of gallows used to showcase dead, and sometimes still-living, bodies of criminals in chains, and displayed near the water. The spot near the entrance to the Port Royal harbor where his body hung as it decayed is now known as Rackham’s Cay. Before he was to be executed, the condemned man requested one last moment with his beloved to say good-bye. Knowing Anne as he did, he likely did not expect any words of comfort from the fiery woman, but even he probably did not expect her last words to him to be that she was “sorry to see him there, but if he had fought like a Man, he need not have been hang’d like a Dog.” One hopes that he went to his death smiling at the thought that even the specter of death could not cow the woman he loved. The stone-cold sass of Anne’s statement, more than any other part of her story, has enshrined her legend dearly into the hearts of pirate lovers everywhere.

On November 28, 1720, ten days after Jack’s execution, Mary Read and Anne Bonny were tried for piracy. They were accused of having committed “Piracies, Felonies, and Robberies . . . on the High Sea” numerous times. They were not accused of murder, but throughout the trial numerous victims, including captive Dorothy Thomas, testified that they feared for their lives. They also testified that the women were active participants in the raids, threatened captives, and were equally as culpable in all pirate activities as the men were. The women spoke very little and offered no statements in their own defense. It was only after Sir Nicholas Lawes pronounced them guilty and sentenced them to hang that both women claimed to be pregnant.

Numerous scholars, Joan Druett and Jo Stanley among them, have pointed out the irony that these two women who lived like men in so many other respects were able to cheat death due to the womanliest of reasons. However, this analysis is not entirely fair because the executions were only stayed—not commuted—until the children were born. The court was concerned that it did not take an innocent life as well as a guilty one, but it was apparently not worried about the children who would grow up without mothers due to their actions. These pirates would have to serve another sentence—pregnancy and childbirth—before coming to reckoning for their crimes.

Mary Read did not live to see the hangman’s noose. She died in prison in 1721, either in childbirth or of a type of typhus known as “prison fever.” What became of Anne Bonny is even less certain. There are no records of her execution. Some accounts claim that she was given a reprieve. Another theory says her father, overcome with grief, intervened on her behalf and secreted her away to the Carolina colony, where she lived out the rest of her days as a law-abiding citizen. Perhaps she returned to her home country of Ireland.

Another theory is less popular but infinitely more exciting. Picture Anne in her jail cell one night, furious that she had been caught, and unable to sleep. Suddenly, she hears a muffled thump and a crash in the dark hallway. Someone is jiggling the key in her door’s rusty lock. The heavy wooden door is thrown open to reveal Bartholomew Roberts, resplendent in his fine clothes and jewels. Although they have never met, Anne recognizes him from the stories she’s heard in port. There’s a glint in his eye that speaks of mischief. “Come on, Anne, let’s get you out of here. Will you join my crew?” Roberts asks. Anne just stares, in a rare moment of speechlessness. “Why did you come for me?” she asks Roberts, who in turn opens his jacket to reveal that he is most definitely a she. “We women have to stick together, don’t we? Come on!” The shocked Anne follows the legendary Black Bart to the waiting dinghy in the harbor, and by dawn they are on the Royal Ranger, sailing toward a lifetime of more adventures, at least until Roberts’s death in 1722.

Bartholomew Roberts, one of the most famous pirates of this era, may have been female, according to Klausmann et al. Born in Wales, Roberts captured four hundred ships in a relatively short two-and-a-half-year career. Roberts’s introduction to the pirate life was being captured by them off the coast of West Africa. Although initially repulsed by the pirate way, he quickly got onboard, so much so that a few weeks later, he was elected as the ship’s new captain. He quickly drew up his own articles—a strict code that forbade gambling, staying up past eight o’clock, bringing women and boys onboard, and allowing one’s pistol to fall into disrepair. He is known for never killing a single passenger or crew member of an enemy ship except in battle.

His famously austere life could have been the result of a religious upbringing—or it could have hidden a huge secret. Toward the end of his life, Roberts engaged in a serious emotional relationship with the ship’s surgeon, which could indicate he was a homosexual man or a straight woman in disguise. After dying in battle, Roberts was buried at sea, in accordance with his wishes. His body was never examined by a doctor, which adds more fuel to the flame. There is no proof that Roberts was a woman, but then again there is also no proof that Roberts was a man, and there are plenty of things that give an investigator pause. It is tempting to imagine that the most successful pirate of the Golden Age was actually a woman in disguise, but there is simply not enough evidence at present to back up the theory. Unless more comes to light, Roberts will remain on the books as a man.

Anne’s fate is ultimately unknown. One of the most famous female pirates of all time simply disappeared, although the circumstances were altogether different than those of other pirate women, who faded into obscurity. If Anne fell off the map, one senses that she meant to do so. This remarkable woman, an illegitimate child turned fierce pirate, would not go gently into that good night. One hopes that she fought her way into old age, regaling anyone who would listen with tales of her adventures.

Why, out of all the pirates in this book, is Anne one of the most famous? She is neither the longest-reigning pirate nor the most successful. No doubt her inclusion in Johnson’s Pyrates as the “bad girl pirate” aided her ascent. His titillating account of her sordid deeds made her a media darling. She is a popular figure in pirate novels, TV shows, and movies, which has kept her in the public eye. The fact that she was active during the most famous period of piracy, the Golden Age, probably helped her too. She was also white and allegedly beautiful, which never hurts one’s prospects for fame. Whatever the reason, there is no doubt her legend lives on and will most likely continue to do so long after others are forgotten.

While Anne Bonny was being tried for piracy, another woman pirate was just getting started. Maria Cobham, born Maria Lindsey, raised hell all over the Atlantic from 1720 to 1740. She and her husband made bundles of money—enough to retire and buy a fine estate in France. However, her story is far less well known, possibly because it is less verifiable. Maria’s story first appears in the anonymous volume Lives of the Most Celebrated Pirates, published around 1800. She is also included in The Pirate Who’s Who, written by Philip Gosse in 1924. Allegedly, a firsthand account of their exploits was written by her husband, Eric, but it has never been located. Given her twenty-year span of activity, it seems strange that she would not have been covered in newspapers or other contemporary material. Her story is often included in twentieth-century piracy books and is mentioned in the Canadian Encyclopedia, so she has become part of history regardless of whether or not she actually existed. If she did exist, she would have to be among the longest-lasting and most successful female pirates.

Maria’s birthplace and family circumstances are unknown. She enters history as a young prostitute in Plymouth Harbor, a busy harbor on the English Channel in the south of England where, one hundred years earlier, the Mayflower embarked for the New World. Prostitution in England at that time took roughly three forms: the high-class courtesans and mistresses, the pimp- or madam-controlled girls who worked in brothels, and the street girls who often worked outside and serviced many clients per day. These street girls were mostly young, uneducated women, many of whom were addicted to drugs such as morphine, laudanum, and opium.

Prostitution was at the time considered a safe way for bachelor men to sow their wild oats without sullying the virtues of their chaste sweethearts. So long as this practice remained quiet and discreet, the authorities were loath to intervene. It is estimated that in the early 1700s, roughly one in five women in London were prostitutes. Catalogs describing the locations, physical virtues, and prices of prostitutes around London were printed and circulated during this time. Not until the late Georgian era did reformers focus on equating prostitution with sin. The Vagrancy Act of 1824 punished prostitutes with up to one month of hard labor. Depending on the political climate, prostitutes were either denounced for their supposedly lustful natures or seen as victims of desperate economic circumstances. This public opinion battle still carries on in the twenty-first century, not only in the United Kingdom but in other countries as well.

Eric Cobham, a pirate captain fresh off a voyage where he stole thousands of pounds of gold, made a brief stop at the harbor that would change his life forever. He met and wooed Maria with stories of the gory business of pirating. Eric, according to the stories, had lived a foul life full of thievery, murder, and deceit, which began when he was very young. These stories enchanted rather than repelled young Maria. She was so taken with his tales of murder and mayhem that when Eric’s ship left port a few days later, she was onboard as his wife, most likely as a result of a “Fleet Marriage,” like Charlotte de Berry’s.

Women as a rule were not welcome on ships, and Eric’s crew was not happy about their newest passenger. Maria quickly endeared herself to them. She won their admiration, if not their hearts, by being the cruelest pirate of them all, perfectly willing to plunge her dagger into a man’s heart with no hesitation. Pirate stories are seldom without violence, but legends of Maria’s bloodthirsty nature are extreme, even for a pirate. She seemed to genuinely enjoy murder—stabbing people in the heart, tying them to the mast and using them for target practice, and sewing them into bags and dumping them overboard. While other pirates killed out of necessity, Maria killed for fun.

One of the more popular stories about her comes from early in her career and involves the capture of the Flemish brig Altona. When they captured the ship, Maria took a fancy to the captain’s uniform and decided she would have it. In front of the crews of both ships, she made the captain strip. Once he was completely naked and humiliated, she shot him and two other crew members. She put on the uniform, promoted herself to first officer, and just like that her transformation into a member of Cobham’s crew was complete. From then on, she wore the uniform at all times, even going so far as to have copies of it made. Nobody dared question her authority—they were all too terrified of her.

As she was coming into her own as a vicious pirate, her husband was becoming ever more disenchanted with their way of life. The swaggering pirate who’d won his bride with gruesome tales now yearned for a quiet, respectable life on the Continent. Twenty years on the sea was long enough for him. Maria, however, was not interested in retiring, but eventually agreed—provided Eric agree to buy her dream home on the coast of France. In order to finance that, the couple would have to pull one last big job and go out with a bang.

Most accounts agree that the couple selected an East Indian ship, the Middleton, for their last target. What happened once they took the ship is the subject of several different stories. One account claims that Maria, to avoid anyone’s giving them away, ordered the whole crew locked in manacles and thrown overboard. Another story is a bit more sinister but seems like something Maria might have enjoyed. The crew, no doubt aware of their captors’ reputation for cruelty, was astonished when rather than immediately murder them all, Maria instead served them a fine dinner and sent them belowdecks to get some rest. All night, the ship reverberated with the groans of the crew as the men died slow and painful deaths from the poison Maria had cooked into the stew. By morning, she had a ship full of corpses, which she tossed overboard. Either way, Maria ensured that nobody would be around to tell their story.

With the money they made from the Middleton, as well as the profits from the sale of their ship, the Cobhams were able to purchase a massive, twenty-mile-long estate on the coast of Le Havre, France. The estate’s previous owner was the Duke of Chartres. Le Havre’s location in the northwest region of Normandy, adjacent to both the English Channel and the Seine River, ensured it was a busy port area where many ships passed. Many wealthy traders were building homes along the coastline around the time the Cobhams chose to retire there. King Louis XV himself visited the area with Madame de Pompadour in 1749. It was a place for the rich and powerful to enjoy the view of the sea—and Eric Cobham intended to do just that.

Apparently done with his life of crime, Eric became a local magistrate. Landlubbing life suited him, and he became, by all appearances, a respectable citizen, presiding at local courts. Occasionally he would take the family yacht out for a spin and do some minor pirating, but he never again took on the “big money and many murders” jobs he and Maria used to get away with. The family had three children and seemed to be settling into life in Le Havre quite nicely.

Maria, however, was not quite so content to close the door on their old life. She became a recluse, reportedly leaving the house only for brief journeys on the yacht. Eventually, she met her untimely end—though just how is the subject of some dispute. Gosse reports that, filled with shame for her lifetime of bad deeds, she took laudanum and died. Other accounts claim that she told Eric she was going to take a walk along the cliffs one day and never returned; her shawl washed up on the beach some days later. Howard Pyle’s Book of Pirates says that Eric was fed up with his wife’s morose behavior and killed her himself. Lives of the Most Celebrated Pirates notes that nobody mourned her death because “her temper had nothing feminine in it.”

Eric, overcome with guilt over his wife’s death, assuming he didn’t kill her himself, went to a priest to unburden himself of their sordid past. Over the remaining years of his life, he told the priest everything about what he and his late wife had done, confiding all their secrets. As he lay dying at the estate, he called the priest to hear his last confession. He gave the priest the account he had written about their twenty years pirating and made the priest promise to publish it after his death. The priest, according to the story, kept his promise.

At the time of his death from old age, Eric’s children had become members of Le Havre’s high society and had no inkling of their parents’ wicked past. When the pamphlet appeared, they were horrified but determined to avoid a scandal. With their considerable money and influence, they made sure that every copy of the confession disappeared—save one. The only surviving copy is said to be secreted away in French archives, but it has been so cunningly hidden that it has never been recovered. Nonetheless, the story of the pamphlet somehow got out, and thus the Cobhams’ bloody past became part of pirate history.

Maria’s story hits a discordant note in the ballad of pirate women—she is one who is hard to root for. Pirates always operate in a morally gray area, but Maria Cobham seems by all accounts to have been a vicious, ruthless woman who was not drawn to the freedom or adventure of piracy as much as the murder. Like Rachel Wall after her, she has very little in her story that readers would strive to emulate. She drives home the fact that piracy, for all the love it is given in popular culture, was sometimes a vile and cutthroat business, not for the weak of heart. It attracted all sorts of people for a variety of reasons, many of which were less than noble. Yes, there were the pirate republics and constitutions that promised equality for all, but there were also the amoral robbers and villains who just wanted to cause mayhem. The line between morally questionable and morally reprehensible behavior is constantly evolving with societal and cultural norms. Piracy straddles that line, pushing readers to reckon with their own moral codes. Seldom is that duality more evident than in the tale of Maria Cobham.

But perhaps Maria was not as vicious as she was portrayed. Lack of a reliable primary source account of her life means that her story has been subject to many retellings and edits over the years. It seems more than likely that details could have been exaggerated. History may never get a clear picture of what Maria Cobham really was like. But perhaps she was as bloodthirsty as has been claimed—is the reader more likely to judge her harshly due to her sex? Many male pirates, such as François L’Ollonais, were noted for their cruelty but were not chastened because of it—if anything, they are admired for it. Should Maria be spoken ill of for the same qualities that are applauded in her male counterparts? If piracy is to be accepted, warts and all, then Maria Cobham should be praised for her long career and great success, as are her similarly dispositioned male cohorts.

Bonny and Cobham entered piracy voluntarily for ostensibly the same reason: the love of a man. Both exit the historical record under mysterious circumstances. With the Golden Age of piracy coming to an end, the world no longer had room for such ambitious and avaricious women. Their crimes would inspire some copycat women pirates in the coming years, but nobody would rise to the level of these two in the West. Piracy lost something important at the end of the Golden Age—call it swagger, call it panache, call it what you will. By no means was piracy over, but the glory days of pirate havens and permissive governments were gone. From this point forward, pirates would look back to the Golden Age and try to recapture some of its grandeur. Anne and Maria, with their larger-than-life tales and remarkable careers, are excellent symbols of that bygone age.