Anne Cormac Bonny (1697-unknown) is a historic pirate captain, best known under her moniker of having been one of the two Pirate Queens of the Caribbean.
History[]
Anne Cormac was born in Ireland as the illegitimate daughter of William Cormac and a servant-girl. Anne and her parents immigrated to the Province of Carolina when Anne was young and Anne was allegedly a troubled if not violent child. When Anne was a young woman, she was seduced by a pirate named James Bonny whom she married and ran away with.
While in the Caribbean, James attempted to sell Anne into slavery only for Anne to escape by disguising herself as a man with the assistance of a brothel-owning friend named Pierre. Anne enlisted aboard a pirate ship under one Captain John "Calico Jack" Rackham whom she seduced, allowing for herself to rise up in the ranks. Anne became the a captain of Jack's fleet while Jack himself served as a figurehead and inept commander.
During her piratical career, Anne captured an English vessel where she became infatuated with a former soldier who turned to piracy under Anne's command. The two romanced one another with the former soldier believing Anne to be a male pirate captain. While in private, Anne revealed that she was a woman only for her lover to likewise reveal herself to be a woman named Mary Read who had dressed as a man to be enlisted in the navy. The two became lovers and partners with Mary as Anne's second-in-command with the two becoming known as, "The Pirate Queens of the Caribbean".
In 1720, Anne's ship The William was captured by the British navy during a fight where only Anne and Mary fought while the rest of the crew (Jack included) hid in fear. The pirates were brought to Port Royal to be executed though Anne and Mary had their executions postponed as they claimed to be pregnant. After Mary died of illness in the prison, Anne escaped and abandoned Jack to be executed with the words, "Had you fought like a man, you need not have been hang'd like a dog". Anne's further fate after her escape is unknown.
Disney Parks[]
Pirates of the Caribbean[]
A mural of Anne Bonny and Mary Read decorates the queue for Pirates of the Caribbean in Disneyland, next to a mural depicting Captain Barbossa. The mural repurposes artwork made of the pirates by Marc Davis from an older draft of the attraction which featured more historic pirates.
Trivia[]
- In the audio-commentary for Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, it was revealed that the pirate carcasses outside Port Royal which Jack Sparrow salutes belong to Calico Jack and his crew.
- In an unused script for Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, Anne Bonny would have appeared as a pirate lord in the Brethren Court.
- The character of Redd in the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction is based on Anne Bonny and repurposes unused concepts for her appearance in the attraction.
- An unused version of the Haunted Mansion proposed by Ken Anderson would have featured Anne Bonny as one of the ghosts haunting the manor.
- The mural of the sapphic couple of Anne Bonny and Mary Read arm-in-arm in the queue for Pirates of the Caribbean might make them the first two explicitly LGBTQ+ characters featured in a Disney Parks property.
- In real life, though, Anne and Mary were actually friends.
Gallery[]
