Mary Read was born in England around 1685.  Mary had an older brother, who died soon after her birth.  The mother in financial difficulties and living off a stipend from her mother-in-law, disguised Anne as the now dead infant brother in order to stay in the in-laws good graces and continue the support. Eventually the mother-in-law died and Mary was forced to seek employment as a French lady's foot-boy at the age of thirteen.

It was not long before Mary again donned male attire and set to sea in a Dutch merchant bound for the Caribbean Sea and eventually joined up with Rackam and Anne Bonny as privateers against the Spanish. Privateering soon gave way to piracy. This eventually led to the meeting with Captain Jonathan Barnet in late October of 1720 off the coast of Jamaica, where that fateful scene in which the two women were the only resistence to capture as the rest of the crew hid below decks either drunk or recovering from a drunk.

Read was sentenced to hang, but before she could do so she died of a fever in jail. possibly on April 28, 1721.

Heave to, ye swabs, and get yerselves back to the Main Deck!

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