Bold Women in History: Women Pirates

by Jennifer Knighton


"Now, 'tis of a handsome female as you should understand,
She had a mind for roving unto some foreign land,
Attired in sailor's clothing she boldly did appear,
And engaged with a captain, to serve him for a year." 1

There's been something about the sea that's drawn men away from their homes to seek their fortunes as far back as recorded history will tell us. One of the oldest written documents we know, The Odyssey, begins each new book with the dawn rising over the water. But it isn't just men who ran away to sea. Many women, dressed in men's attire, as the song above mentions, to sail away as well. They are only a subsection of bold women who stand out in the history books.

Though there were likely many such instances of cross-dressing women joining the military or even engaging in piracy, the ones we have recorded history of are the ones who really stood out and distinguished themselves. Either they were discovered for who they truly were, or didn't bother hiding it to begin with.

Standing on the deck as the pirate hunters boarded the ship, two women stood alone to fight off the inevitable while the men of the ship hid below decks claiming hangovers. Anne Bonny and Mary Read fought fiercely and descriptions of that fight appear in history texts as one of the few mentions of female pirates. Both women had originally disguised themselves as men aboard the ship of Calico Jack Rackham. When this battle occurred, they were captured and their true identities revealed, much to Anne's aristocratic father's dismay. Pregnancy was used to save them from the gallows. There were probably a lot of men who would've liked to be able to claim that escape!

Not all women on the seas had to hide their identities. Grace O'Malley, or Granuaile, lived in Ireland. Her father ran a successful fishing and trading business with a little piracy on the side. When he died, Grace took over the family business. There are even records of her visit to Queen Elizabeth I and the death of Grace's sons at the hands of the Queen's man.

In the South China Sea, Cheng I Sao led fleets of 40,000 to 70,000 men. She began as a Cantonese prostitute who married a pirate leader.2 When he died several years later she took control of the fleet naming their adopted son, and later her paramour, as leader of the grandest of those fleets in her control.

The women I've mentioned spanned from the 1500s all the way to the 1800s and documentation of such women on the seas reaches a far wider range than just those few hundred years. They were fierce, practical, and daring women.

The seas are not the only places that we see these women who chose to step out of the mold society had given them. We see them in other branches of the military, as performers, as religious figures, as rulers of countries, and many other places. In today's society we are far more accepted and encouraged to stand out from the crowd. It's accepted that we'll make our own way. When these women took command of their ships, it was not an accepted or normal activity.

If you are interested in further research into these women pirates or even just pirates in general, here are a just a few recommended texts:

Bold in Her Breeches, ed. Jo Stanley, Harper Collins, 1995.
Burg, B. R., Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition: English sea rovers in the 17th century Caribbean, New York University Press, 1984.
Chambers, Anne, Granuaile, the life and times of Grace O'Malley, 1530-1603, Wolfhound Press, 1991.
Exquemelin, A. O., The Buccaneers of America, (1678), The Folio Society, 1969.


1: An excerpt from the English song, "The Handsome Cabin Boy"
2: Bold in Her Breeches, ed. Jo Stanley, Harper Collins, 1995: 209-10.


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