Here are some facts about Anne Bonny.
- Anne Bonny was born Anne McCormac in the late 1690s in Cork, Ireland.
- Her father was Mary Brennan, a servant, and her father was William McCormac, Mary’s employer.
- William McCormac moved to London with his daughter and he started dressing her as boy and calling her Andy. He then took his family to Charles Town in South Carolina, United States and changed the family’s name from McCormac to Cormac.
- Anne’s mother died when she was about twelve years old.
- Anne had red hair.
- At the age of 13 she apparently stabbed a servant with a table knife.
- Anne married a sailor called James Bonny. As a result she was disowned by her father.
- James and Anne moved to Nassau on New Providence Island at some point between 1714 and 1718.
- James Bonny became an informant for Governor Woodes Rogers.
- Anne Bonny met Calico Jack Rackham, a pirate captain, and the they started a relationship.
- She divorced her husband and married Jack Rackham at sea.
- Bonny, Jack Rackham and Mary Read, another female pirate, recruited a crew and spent months living as pirates in the seas around Jamaica.
- Anne Bonny fought alongside the male pirates and she was named by Governor Woodes Rogers in his ‘Wanted Pirates’ list in The Boston News-Letter.
- In 1720, Jack Rackham, Anne Bonny, Mary Read and the rest of Rackham’s crew were captured. they were sentenced to hang.
- Mary Read died in prison, Jack Rackham was hanged, but there is no historical record detailing what happened to Anne Bonny.
- Some historians believe she was ransomed by her father, others think she married a Jamaican Commissioner, changed her name to Annabele and lived into her eighties.
- Anne Bonny appears in the video game Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag.
- She appears in the book Seizure by Kathy Reichs.
- In some records, Anne Bonny is spelled Anne Bonney.