Anne Bonny:

a red-headed free spirit, a woman who lived for adventure danger and excitement. A pirate. Husbands and lovers came and went. But the sea stayed, and called to her. She roamed the Caribbean, hiding out in Jamaica and Cuba, fighting, carousing and plundering alongside men, as an equal.

Time and again, just as her luck seemed to about run out, she would manage to get away. Some said this was the influence of her weary father, a rich and powerful merchant. Others said that she could sweet-talk her way past any captor.

Anne lived as she wished, escaping one last time to South Carolina, where she lived out her days in peace - although, it is said, never truly free of the call of the sea and the lure of the tides…

  • LEGEND IS BORN

    1702

    Born Anne Cormac, in Kinsale County Cork Ireland. The illegitimate daughter of lawyer William Cormac and his servant woman Mary Brennan.

  • MAIDEN VOYAGE

    1705

    She immigrated with her family and settled on a plantation near Charleston, North Carolina. It was here where her father would become a businessman accumulating a substantial fortune.

  • STABBED A SERVANT

    1715

    Anne with her red hair was considered a ‘good catch’ but with a temper even more fiery than her hair. It is said she stabbed a servant girl with a table knife.

  • A PIRATES LIFE FOR ME

    1715

    fiery Red Head with a a fierce and courageous temper she eloped with pirate James Bonney, against her fathers wishes. Stories say that she set fire to her fathers plantation in retaliation.

  • A LIFE ON THE HIGH SEAS

    1716

    James took her to a pirates lair in New Providence in the Bahamas where she would commence in her life as pirate.

  • SHE HATED TRAITORS

    1717

    Bahamian Governor Woodes Rogers offered the King’s pardon to any pirate, James turned informant. Anne was disgusted with his cowardice.

  • RACKAHAM’S MISTRESS

    1718

    A new love is born with swaggering pirate Captain Jack “Calico Jack” Rackhan. She began sailing with him on his sloop Vanity preying on Spanish treasure ships off Cuba.

  • UNDER ATTACK

    1719

    Bonny, Rackhan and their crew where attacked under the cover of darkness by a Kings Ship. They where captured and imprisoned in Jamaica.

  • CAPTURE & IMPRISONMENT

    1720

    Whilst Rackham was convicted to be hanged Bonny asked for mercy “pleading their bellies” because she was pregnant.

  • PARTING SHOT

    1721

    Bonny’s last words to the imprisoned Rackham “Sorry to see him there, but if he had fought like a Man, he need not have been hang’d like a dog.”

  • RUM SELLER

    1725

    Having escaped death by hanging it was a quieter life for Red Bonny owning a tavern in the South of England regaling tales of her exploits to the locals.

  • 80 PROOF

    1782

    With 80 years of proof as a pirate it was only natural causes that could stop Red Bonny. It is in York County Churchyard in York County, Virgina where her spirit lives on.