Mary Read

Mary Read was born in England around 1685. Her mother, widowed and pregnant by another man, disguised the infant Mary as her dead son to extract support from her wealthy mother-in-law. The deception worked, and Mary spent her childhood dressed as a boy.

A life in uniform

As a teenager she enlisted as a foot soldier in the British army and fought in Flanders during the War of the Spanish Succession. She later married a fellow soldier and the two ran an inn called The Three Horse Shoes. When he died she resumed men's clothing, shipped out aboard a Dutch merchantman, and was captured by pirates in the West Indies.

Joining Rackham

Read accepted the pirate articles and sailed for a time under various captains before joining John "Calico Jack" Rackham's crew aboard the sloop William. Her shipmate Anne Bonny initially mistook her for a young man and made advances; Read revealed her sex in confidence, and the two became inseparable.

Trial at Spanish Town

Captured with Rackham off Negril Point in October 1720, Read was condemned to hang at Spanish Town, Jamaica. Like Bonny, she pleaded her belly and was granted a reprieve. She is reported to have told the court, when asked whether she did not fear the rope: that without it, every pirate would turn coward, and "the ocean would be crowded with rogues."

Death

She died in prison in April 1721, almost certainly of fever — possibly complicated by the pregnancy that had spared her the gallows. She was buried in St. Catherine, Jamaica, on 28 April 1721. The child she carried did not survive her.

Related: Anne Bonny · Calico Jack