ANN BONNY’S
Mysterious Disappearance & Hidden Treasures
Overview
Henry Every is not the only pirate known to have vanished without a trace. Anne Bonny, one of the few recorded female pirates, may have also performed an equally puzzling disappearing act around 1721 after her capture.
Anne was married and living in Nassau in the Bahamas when she met the English pirate captain Calico Jack Rackham with whom she ran away to live a life of piracy operating in the Caribbean. In 1720 Bonny was captured alongside Rackham and fellow female pirate Mary Read. While Rackham met his fate at the end of a noose, Mary Read and Anne Bonny escaped execution.
Records show that Mary Read died in prison from a fever and was buried in church grounds in Jamaica. However, there is no record of Bonny’s release and there was no record of her execution which has led to a lot of speculation since.
Does a death record in a ledger from the same town in Jamaica where she was tried for an “Ann Bonny” in 1733 put an end to this legend?
Bonny from a Dutch version of Charles Johnson’s book of pirates.
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Origins
Sketch of Old Head of Kinsale with de Courcy’s castles by NEWENHAM, Robert O’Callaghan.
While what official records exist about Anne Bonny’s life are scant at best it is believed that she was born around 1700 in Old Head of Kinsale, Ireland to a lawyer named WIlliam Cormac and his servant Mary Brennan.
After Anne was born William moved them to London where he attempted to pass Anne off as a lawyer’s clerk, dressing her as a boy and calling her “Andy”. Shortly after William, Mary and Anne moved to Charles Town in the Province of Carolina. With William’s knowledge of the laws and ability to buy and sell goods, prospered greatly from joining the merchant business.
When Anne was 12 her mother died which may have been the catalyst for what was to come. At 13 she allegedly stabbed a servant girl with a knife.
At 14 she married a small-time pirate by the name James Bonny who had hoped to win possession of William’s sizable estate. However, as Anne’s father disapproved of James as a suitable husband for his daughter, he kicked her out of the house and effectively disowned her.
1700’s map of Charlestown South Carolina by Bellin, Jacques Nicolas, 1703-1772.
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The Legend
In retaliation to this she is said to have set fire to her father’s plantation before moving with James Bonny to a sanctuary for the Republic of Pirates in Nassau, on New Providence Island. When Woodes Rogers became Governor in 1718, James Bonny became an informant for the new Governor, betraying his fellow pirates which Anne disapproved of.
This may have been due to an affair she was having with the infamous pirate John “Calico Jack” Rackham whom she had met whilst mingling with pirates in the local taverns. Rackham offered James Bonny a sum of money to divorce Anne to which James refused which forced them to flee the island together with Anne disguising herself as a man and becoming one of Rackham’s crew.
Woodes Rogers, former Pirate, Governor of the Bahamas. The son of the Governor presents his father to the right with plans for the port of Nassau.
A Map of the British Empire in America from 1746 showing Nassau in the Bahamas.
It wasn’t long however until Anne became pregnant at which point Rackham landed her at a port in Cuba so that she could give birth to a son before rejoining the crew.
While aboard Rackham’s ship and crew Anne allegedly grew attracted to another pirate whom she revealed herself as a woman to. However, to Anne’s surprise the pirate she was attempting to seduce revealed themselves to be Mary Read, another woman aboard Rackham’s crew who had disguised themselves as a man.
On August 22nd, 1720 the gang stole an armed sloop named William from port Nassau shortly before Governor Woodes Rogers issued a proclamation declaring Rackham and his crew pirates in October, 1720 which spurred former pirate Jean Bonadvis and pirate hunter Jonathan Barnet to track them down and bring them to justice.
It didn’t take them long to track down Rackham’s crew who were laid to anchor when Barnet had located the ship. Barnet had a broadside take out the boom on Rackham’s ship after which most of Rackham’s fled to the hold in fear.
Jolly Roger flag of the pirates of the Flying Gang who used Nassau as a base for their operations.
A woodcut of Rackham from Charles Johnson’s 1725 edition of A General History of the Pyrates.
Anne and Mary remained on the deck ready to take on Barnet’s boarding party from where they shot into the hold declaring the rest of the crew cowards. Barnet’s crew soon got the better of them and they were put ashore at Davis Cove near Lucea, Jamaica.
They were arrested and tried in November, 1720 in Spanish Town, Jamaica and sentenced to hang. While Rackham was executed in Port Royal on 18th November 1720, his body gibbeted on display on a very small islet at a main entrance to Port Royal now known as Rackham’s Cay.
Bonny and Read both “pleaded the belly” claiming to be pregnant and as such delayed their execution until after they had given birth while imprisoned at Fort Charles.
Records show that Mary Read died of a violent fever while in prison and was buried at St. Catherine’s church in Jamaica with a headstone that reads “Mary Read, pirate”. As for Anne Bonny there is no record of her release or death.
In Charles Johnson’s A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the most notorious Pyrates, published in 1724 he writes that “She was continued in Prison, to the Time of her lying in, and afterwards reprived from Time to Time; but what is become of her since, we cannot tell; only this we know, that she was not executed.”
Cover page from the transcript of Rackham, Read, and Bonney’s 1721 trial.
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The Treasures
The lack of evidence as to what happened to Anne Bonny led to a wide range of stories being told about her and over time a legend.
One account said Bonny escaped from Jamaica, thanks to her father, others have her seducing a guard and making an escape out of the prison. Being the only living member of Rackham’s crew that remained alive at this point it would be believed that she would have made her journey to collect Rackham’s hidden loot and any others they may have hidden.
One legend places Rackham’s treasure on an island in Oyster Bay, Florida and consists of gold bars and Spanish doubloons worth more than $2,000,000.
Oyster Bay treasure legend as depicted in the Ye True Chart of Pirate Treasure Lost or Hidden In the Land & Waters of Florida from 1960 by Sanford, Warner.
Artistic depiction of the Pirate Ann Bonny in the midst of a battle.
Another legend claims that a female buccaneer by the name of Mary Anne Blythe buried a treasure consisting of gold bullion and silver coins a couple of miles south of Southport, North Carolina in the area of old Fort Caswell, at the mouth of the Cape Fear River.
However, there seems to be no evidence to show that a pirate by the name of “Mary Anne Blythe” ever existed and what little information can be found regarding her appears to be a copy of the stories that we hear about Mary Read and Anne Bonny. Most likely Mary Anne Blythe is a chimaera of Mary Read, Anne Bonny, and possibly that of William Bligh.
Does this mean that the legend is only one of fantasy?
Another attributed to “Mary Anne Blythe” was a chest full of jewels which were removed from the ground at Plum Point in 1928.
After all Anne Bonny can be linked to North Carolina through her father’s plantation and would have been there in 1718 with her pirate husband James Bonny before leaving for New Providence.
An Arial view of Fort Caswell, North Carolina.
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Conclusion
On the 29th November 2020 the Youtube channel Debunk File may have put the legends to rest when they discovered archival records of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints regarding burials in 1721 where they found on April 28, 1721 it listed “Mary Read, pirate” showing that Read had died about 5 months after her trial.
Continuing to search the records for any sign of what happened to Anne Bonny they found a ledger of deaths for St. Catherine’s Parish in Jamaica, where Read had died. It’s there on December 29, 1733 that they found a listing for an “Ann Bonny” being buried.
St Catherine’s Church in Spanish Town, Jamaica.
A record in the logbook of burial records for St Catherine’s Church listing “Ann Bonny” being buried in 1732.
With the listing being from Spanish Town, the same place where the pirates were put on trial and where Read was buried together with the correct spelling of “Ann Bonny” as it was in the newspaper accounts before Captain Charles Johnson added the “e” to “Anne”, would suggest that this is the genuine record of the pirate Anne Bonny’s burial and evidence that she remained in Jamaica for 13 years after her trial.
While this comes as good news to treasure hunters who know she never returned for the hidden treasures left by Rackham, it leaves a sense of disappointment for all those who enjoyed the mysteries and legends that tell of a fierce red haired female pirate who defied the powers-be in a man’s world and made it out alive, living a life of fortune from looted pirate treasure on some tropical island somewhere.
Sources & References
Information for this article has been provided by various sources and are referenced here:
Primary Source: Anne Bonny – Wikipedia
REFERENCES:
Websites
- “Anne Bonny“, Encyclopædia Britannica Online
- “Fact and Fiction“, Newspaper article
- “The true and false stories of Anne Bonny, pirate woman of the Caribbean“, Newspaper article
Books
- Baldwin, Robert (1721). The Tryals of Captain John Rackam and Other Pirates. in The Colonial Office Records in The Public Records Office at Kew, (ref: CO 137/14f.9).
Details the trials of Jack Rackam, Mary Read, Anne Bonny, and Charles Vane. - Carlova, John (1964). Mistress of the Seas. Citadel Press.
- Cordingly, David. “Bonny, Anne (1698–1782)“, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004. Accessed 18 November 2006.
- Druett, Joan (2000). She Captains: Heroines and Hellions of the Sea. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0684856905.
- Gosse, Philip; De Marco, Guy Anthony (2015). The Pirate Who’s Who (Extended ed.). Amazon: Villainous Press. pp. 52, 53, 54. ISBN 978-1-62225-650-1.
- Jarrells, Ralph E. (2019). “Fiery Red Hair, Emerald Green Eyes and A Vicious Irish Temper”, WordCrafts Press. 2019. ISBN 978-1-948679-64-0
- Johnson, Captain Charles (1724). Hayward, Arthur L. (ed.). A 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. London: George Routledge & Sons, Ltd.
- Lorimer, Sara; Synarski, Susan (2002). Booty: Girl Pirates on the High Seas. San Francisco: Chronicle Books.
- Meltzer, Milton; Waldman, Bruce (2001). Piracy & Plunder: A Murderous Business. New York: Dutton Children’s Books. ISBN 0-525-45857-3.
- Sharp, Anne Wallace (2002). Daring Pirate Women. Minneapolis: Lerner Publications.
- Zettle, LuAnn (2015). Anne Bonny The Last Pirate. Amazon: Arrowhead Book Co. pp. 8, 9, 11. ISBN 978-0-9826048-6-1.
- Brown, Douglas (1962). Anne Bonny, Pirate Queen. Monarch #MA320.
Other sources of information:
Jack Rackham: Calico Jack – Wikipedia
Mary Read the Pirate: Mary Read – Wikipedia
The Legend of Anne Bonny YouTube: Debunk File On YouTube
The Legends of Brunswick County: Ghosts, Pirates, Indians and Colonial… – Google Books
Pirates: A General History of the Robberies & Murders of the Most Notorious Pirates – Google Books
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Written By
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ADAM L C
Director of Areas Grey
Adam is an avid treasure hunter, seeker of adventure and the creator of Areas Grey. After travelling for almost half his life and cataloguing over 100 treasure legends along the way. He decided this was simply far too much treasure for one person to chase! As a result he created Areas Grey so he could share his stories, connect with other treasure hunters and put a little more adventure in the lives of the treasure hunting community.
Adam is a Private Investigator and former Wilderness Guide with a passion for history and archaeology. With the skills, knowledge and gear, Adam is always eager to go on the next fortune seeking adventure and connect with fellow treasure hunters along the way.
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