She was born as Anne Cormac in County Cork, Ireland; the illegitimate daughter of a lawyer and his servant. The three lived in London, where her father dressed her as a boy and called her Andy in public. After her father’s infidelity got discovered, they sailed to the Province of Carolina in the New World.
At 21, against her father’s wishes, she married a sailor named James Bonny, and the two settled in New Providence Island in the Bahamas, a sanctuary for English pirates. There, her husband became an informant for the governor of the Bahamas, against Bonny’s approval.
She met the pirate captain John “Calico Jack” Rackham, and they became lovers. She joined his crew on his sloop, The William, disguising herself as a man and participating in all pirate duties, including pirating merchant vessels and fighting in armed combats. At an unknown point, another female pirate, named Mary Read, joined the crew, and the two became sisters in arms. When Bonny realized she was pregnant, she waited in Cuba until her son was born before returning to pirate life.
In October 1720, the Governor of Jamaica ordered to attack Bonny’s ship; all the crew members were captured and sentenced to hang. Bonny and Read claimed to be pregnant, so their executions got delayed until they gave birth, under the rule that an unborn child is innocent and not deemed to die for the mother’s sins.
While Read died in prison, Bonny probably escaped or was pardoned because there is no documentation of her death by execution or otherwise. The lack of an official record of her faith spurred various theories on her whereabouts; the most common one is that she returned to South Carolina, got married, had eight children, and lived as a respectable woman until she died at the age of 84.
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