Read, Mary (late 1600s–c. 1720)

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Read, Mary (late 1600s–c. 1720)

Mary Read (b. late 1600s; d. c. 1720), early-eighteenth-century pirate. Read was born out of wedlock in England in the late seventeenth century. Her mother had been married to a sailor who either died or abandoned her and their young son while at sea. Shortly thereafter, the son died and Read was born. As a ruse to receive financial support from her deceased son's grandmother, Read's mother disguised the young girl as a boy and claimed that the imposter was the sailor's offspring. Such trickery proved successful and would become Read's modus operandi throughout her life. She went on to serve in the British army in the Low Countries and married a fellow trooper.

When Read's husband died, she resumed her masquerade as a man and joined a Dutch vessel bound for the West Indies. Pirates raided the ship and took on Read, still in disguise, as a fellow pirate. Read and her companions took advantage of the king's proclamation of 1717, which offered amnesty to pirates who turned themselves in. They later joined the British privateering ship Griffin with the intention of raiding the Spanish. However, Read and her crewmates mutinied and resumed their piracy under the leadership of Captain "Calico Jack" Rackam. During this period, Read and Anne Bonny met and began a close friendship.

By all accounts, Read displayed enthusiasm, skill, and fortitude in her trade. In one incident, she dueled to the death with another pirate who had threatened her lover. Read was brought to trial in 1720, but escaped the hangman's noose because she was pregnant. Shortly thereafter, fever overtook Read and she died in prison.

See alsoBonny, Anne; Piracy.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Charles Johnson, A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pirates from Their First Rise and Settlement in the Island of Providence to the Present Year, edited by Arthur L. Hayward (1926).

George Woodbury, The Great Days of Piracy in the West Indies (1951).

Rafael Abella, Los piratas del Nuevo Mundo (1989).