The Pop Culture Background of Cross-Dressing Sailors

Sorting Out Rackham’s Crew

Given the wide variety of numbers given for Rackham’s crew, it might be useful to digress a moment and try to sort things out.

The American Weekly Mercury lists the largest crew size at 26, while the number is given as 14 in The Daily Post, The Boston Gazette (which specified 12 men and 2 women in reporting prior to the capture), and The London Journal, with the Journals of the Assembly of Jamaica reporting 18. Some of the confusion may be sorted out by a set of men who had been on Rackham’s ship when it was taken but claimed they had only boarded to receive hospitality and then pressed into helping when the ship was attacked.

The official trial record lists a total of 9 men (including Rackham) in the first trial. This includes 5 names listed in the initial (incomplete) Boston Gazette report of Rackham’s crew being declared pirates, but one name that appears in the Boston Gazette list never appears in the trial records. It’s possible that he died prior to trial. The second trial lists 2 men and a comparison of the one charge against them to the list of charges against the “Rackham 9” indicates that they were part of the crew for at least that one incident. Based on other evidence, they don’t appear to have been present on Rackham’s ship at the time of capture.

Bonny and Read were tried separately in a third trial.

In a fourth trial, 9 named men were tried in the group who claimed they were only visiting on the ship (but were condemned anyway). So all together, this comes to 23 people, which doesn’t match any of the reports unless the Boston Gazette’s “12 men and 2 women” is interpreted either as “12 crew and 2 female civilian captives” (two women were kidnapped and held on 9/4/1720, and might possibly still have been on board on 10/31/1720 when Rackham was captured) or as including the 2 men from the second trial, with Bonny and Read being the “2 women.”

The news report form S. Jago de la Vega gives 11 names, including the 9 men from the first trial and the 2 from the second trial. The names listed in the General History precisely match the official trial report of the “Rackham 9,” Bonny and Read, and the “Just Visiting 9” and were presumably taken directly from that document, but do not include the 2 men from the second trial.

So in terms of named individuals said to be on Rackham’s ship when taken (including Rackham) we have 20 hands including Read and Bonny. The two presumed crew not present at the time of capture get us to 22.  If the two kidnapped women and held were still on board then we’re up to 24, but that still doesn’t get us to the American Weekly Mercury’s 26. Taking the evidence all together, I’m inclined to trust the combination of the trial records and the initial Boston Gazette partial list and conclude that Rackham’s core crew at the time of capture consisted of him, 9 additional men, Bonny, and Read, with one of the men dying unreported before trial. The reports of 14 crew include the two from the second trial. Other numbers are due to the addition of the “just visiting” men and confusion with separate captures of other crews.

An Initial Timeline

At this point, we can construct a timeline of events based on the news reports and official documents. Years will be converted to Gregorian to avoid confusion.

• 9/1/1720 Bonny and Read “agreed with” Rackham and others to commit piracy
• 9/3-4/1720 The first two acts of piracy cited in the trial
• 9/5/1720 Rackham and crew (including Bonny and Read) officially proclaimed to be pirates
• 10/1-20/1720 Multiple acts of piracy cited in the trial
• 10/30/1720 Rackham’s ship and crew captured, including Bonny and Read
• 11/16/1720 Trials of Rackham’s crew begin
• 11/28/1720 Trial of Bonny and Read, they are found guilty and sentenced
• 4/28/1721 Death of “Mary Read Pirate” recorded
• May 1721 Approximate date when the detailed trial records are published. The ultimate fate of Bonny and Read is not included.
• 6/1/1721 Governor Rogers returns to England. He is later approached to be a source for the General History.
• 9/1/1721 The detailed publication of the trials is available in England with the results reported in newspapers.
• Approximately March 1724 the first edition of the General History is published.

One detail to take note of is the very short timeline between when Rackham and crew were officially proclaimed to be pirates and the date when they were captured: a scant two months. As we’ll see, the General History gives them a multi-year history of piracy prior to this date. (It sets Rackham’s elevation to captain in November 1718.) Governor Woodes Rogers arrived in the Bahamas in July 1718 with an assignment to begin anti-piracy activities. It may well be that it took a while for Rogers to get organized enough to begin identifying specific pirates by name, but another possible interpretation is that Rackham and crew were simply inept and quickly taken out of commission. But I get ahead of myself.

Witness Descriptions of Bonny and Read

The image of Bonny and Read dressed in male clothing comes from the eyewitness reports given during their trial. These reports had two purposes: to clearly identify Bonny and Read as having been present during various attacks, and to establish that they were active and willing participants.

To reiterate, Dorothy Thomas related:  “That the Two Women, Prisoners at the Bar, were then on Board the said Sloop, and wore Mens Jackets, and long Trouzers, and Handkerchiefs tied about their Heads; and that each of them had a Machet and Pistol in their Hands, and cursed and swore at the Men, to murther the Deponent [i.e., Thomas]; and that they should kill her, to prevent her coming against them; and the Deponent further said, That the Reason of her knowing and believing them to be Women then was, by the largeness of their Breasts.”

John Besneck and Peter Cornelian, who evidently were present for several of the Rackham crew’s assaults, reported similarly: “That the Two Women…were very active on Board, and willing to do any Thing; That Ann Bonny, one of the Prisoners at the Bar, handed Gun-powder to the Men, That when they saw any Vessel, gave Chase, or Attacked, they wore Men’s Cloaths; and, at other Times, they wore Women’s Cloaths; That they did not seem to be kept, or detain’d by Force, but of their own Free-Will and Consent.”

Thomas Dillon didn’t mention anything about their clothing, but only spoke to their demeanor, saying: “That Ann Bonny, one of the Prisoners at the Bar, had a Gun in her Hand, That they were both very profligate, cursing and swearing much, and very ready and willing to do any Thing on Board.”

These accounts were condensed significantly in news reports. The Daily Courant reported: “Mary Read and Sarah [sic] Bonny…were both in Mens Habit, and fought desperately.” While The Daily Journal had a similarly brief note of: “Mary Road [sic] and Anne Bonney…both of them wore Seamens Habits, were in Arms, fought desperately, and were more unmerciful than any of the Crew.”

Pay attention in particular to Besneck and Cornelian’s testimony, which rather puts the lie to the idea that Bonny and Read were disguising their gender to any degree.

Passing Women in Military and Navel Narratives

The eyewitness account of Bonny and Read’s cross-dressing differs from the classic female cross-dressing narratives of the 18th century, as discussed in works like Dekker and van de Pol (The Tradition of Female Transvestism in Early Modern Europe) or Dianne Dugaw’s Warrior Women and Popular Balladry: 1650-1850. The two women are described as wearing male clothing for combat, but female clothing at other times, while making no serious effort to conceal their physiological sex. There is no mention of them using male aliases. In contrast, the back-stories provided for them in the General History align much more strongly with both real-life and literary depictions of passing women of the time. So let’s explore the structure of those other narratives before moving on to the General History accounts.

Especially in the context of cross-dressing as a soldier or sailor, passing narratives have many common elements while also displaying significant variety. A woman displaced from her birthplace obtains male clothing, adopts a male name, and joins the army or signs on as a sailor. She may be unmasked relatively soon or may not be unmasked until after death, or any time in between. Often she is introduced to the idea of cross-dressing by another woman who has done so successfully. She may flirt with or even marry a woman, either to support her disguise or from personal desire. Sometimes a female partner has urged her to cross-dress so that they may marry. If her disguise is discovered, it is often because she encounters someone who recognizes her from her earlier life. In the real-life cases (as opposed to the literary ones) such women appear to have been able to perform the work expected of a man (or of an adolescent boy) with no problem. While passing women took on all manner of occupations, one study found that 90% were either soldiers or sailors at some point, likely due to the low bar for admission to these professions.

Narratives of passing women were part of popular culture, both treated as exceptional heroines (especially if a patriotic motive could be attributed to them) and later as transgressive “freaks.” These fictional (and fictionalized) women were often given the motive of cross-dressing to join or follow (or pursue) a male partner. Same-sex encounters might be included in the narrative as the humorous result of the disguise. When considering the influences of pre-existing popular culture on the biographies of Bonny and Read presented in the General History, we might take note of the following published examples that would have been in circulation prior to 1720. (I’m omitting people known from historic records whose stories were not published in general circulation at the time.)

• The broadside ballad “The Merchant’s Daughter of Bristoll” published in 1595 describes a woman disguised as a boy to become a sailor.
• At a similar era, various ballads about “Mary Ambree” were popular enough to be quoted or referenced in other works and became one of the most popular English ballads of the 17th century. Mary Ambree put on male military garb to fight at Ghent, allegedly to avenge her slain (male) lover.
• In fact, there was an entire genre of broadside ballads about cross-dressing women becoming soldiers or sailors in the 17th century. Diane Dugaw lists dozens in this era, such as an English one titled The Female Warrior, and a Dutch one published in 1690 about Trijn Jurriaens.
• English theater of the 17th century was fond of the motif of a woman in male disguise provoking a romantic encounter with a woman, as discussed in extensive detail in Denise A. Walen’s Constructions of Female Homoeroticism in Early Modern Drama. One specific example that includes a military motif is Margaret Cavendish’s Love’s Adventures.
• The story of Catalina de Erauso was published in a variety of versions and genres in Spanish in the 17th century, detailing her cross-dressed military career in the Americas and including several flirtatious encounters with women.
• Both French and Dutch versions of a biography of Christine de Meyrak, who served in the French army, were published in the later 17th century.
• A possibly fictionalized biography of Geneviève Prémoy, who served in the French army in the 1670s and 1680s was published in 1703.
• A possibly fictionalized biography (in Dutch) was published in 1706 detailing the cross-dressed military career of Willempja Gerrits as a soldier and sailor in the 1660s and 1670s.
• Christian Davies disguised herself as a man to seek her husband, who was serving in the army in Holland in the 1690s. She continued serving in disguise (after ditching the unfaithful husband) until 1706 when she was wounded and her sex was discovered. Although her life story was not published until after our key date, she was presented to the queen in 1712 and was known as a public celebrity.

The point of these examples is to demonstrate that there was an existing pop culture genre of “the cross-dressed woman who becomes a soldier or sailor, often in the context of a relationship with a man, but who may have romantic encounters with women as a result of the disguise.” This was the context in which the narratives about Anne Bonny and Mary Read were written.