Wonder Woman of the Week: Mary Read
- Sep 16, 2020
- 2 min read
Updated: Jun 4, 2025
With International Talk Like a Pirate Day on the horizon (see what we did there?), we are once again spotlighting a famous pirate for this week's Wonder Woman. Mary Read is often overshadowed by her more famous partner Anne Bonny, but Read's own story was far more fascinating. Born in England to a mother out of wedlock, Read's mother raised Mary as her deceased son in order to cash in on her dead husband's inheritance. When Mary grew older, she continued to pose as her brother and joined the military in which she gained combat experience during either the 9 Years' War or the War of Spanish Succession. While fighting beside the allied Dutch, Read met the man she would eventually marry, and the two retired after the war to running an inn in the Netherlands. When Read's husband died however, Read resumed her disguise as a man and enlisted in the Dutch military. With no war to fight in however, Read ditched the Dutch and headed for the Caribbean.
When pirates captured Mary Read's transport ship in the 1710's, Read willingly joined the pirate crew of the ship that attacked hers, but quickly switched to privateering after accepting a pardon sometime between 1718-1719. The ship she served on however played witness to a mutiny, and Read joined her mutineers before switching crews to join the famous "Calico" Jack Rackham and his partner Anne Bonny. Read fooled both into believing she was a man until Bonny eventually expressed love for Read. Bonny and Read revealed the latter's true identity to Rackham and continued to serve on his crew.
In 1720, English privateer Jonathan Barnet captured Jack Rackham's ship and with it the pirate trio. The English tried Rackham and his crew in Jamaica where most were sentenced to death for piracy. Mary Read and Anne Bonny both "pleaded the belly" (meaning they attempted to use pregnancy as a defense against execution). While Bonny successful evaded execution and quietly disappeared from the history books, Read died from a fever while in prison in 1721. As there are no records of a child's birth, most historians believed Read died while pregnant.
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