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Top 10 Notorious Female Pirates In History
Women have also historically been more heavily involved in piracy through secondary roles, interacting with pirates through being smugglers, lenders of money, purchasers of stolen goods, and tavern keepers, and through having been family members of both pirates and victims.
Do you want to know the top 10 notorious female pirates in History? A lot of people still think that only men were pirates, Although the majority of pirates in history have been men, Sailors believed having women aboard could anger the water gods, causing dangerous weather. They also assumed that women would distract male sailors during long voyages. Therefore, women at sea often remained so illicitly or in disguise.
Women have also historically been more heavily involved in piracy through secondary roles, interacting with pirates through being smugglers, lenders of money, purchasers of stolen goods, and tavern keepers, and through having been family members of both pirates and victims. Some women also married pirates and turned their homes or establishments into piratical safe-havens. Through women in these secondary roles, pirates were strongly supported by the agency of women.
Piracy is also a crime and not a lifestyle decision any woman made lightly, facing arrest or even death. Although for some women, piracy also helped them hold onto powerful positions traditionally held by men.
Here is the list of the Top 10 notorious female pirates in history.
1. Anne Bonny
Top 10 Notorious Female Pirates In History
The notorious pirate Anne Bonny began her life as the illegitimate daughter of a wealthy Irish lawyer. To hide her dubious parentage, her father had her dress as a boy and pose as his law clerk for part of her youth. She later moved to America, where she married a sailor in 1718 and journeyed to the pirate-infested island of New Providence in the Bahamas. There, she abandoned her husband and fell under the spell of “Calico” Jack Rackam, a flamboyant buccaneer who plied his trade in the Caribbean.
Bonny had always been known for her “fierce and courageous temper”, according to one legend, she nearly beat a man to death when he tried to force himself on her and she quickly showed she could guzzle rum, curse, and wield a pistol and cutlass with the best of Calico Jack’s crew. She later forged a friendship with fellow female pirate Mary Read, and the pair played a leading role in a spree of raids against small fishing boats and trading sloops in the summer and fall of 1720. Bonny’s stint on the high seas was cut short that October when Calico Jack’s ship was captured by a band of pirate hunters. Calico Jack and several other men were executed, but Bonny and Read dodged the noose after they were both found to be pregnant.
2. Ching Shih
Top 10 Notorious Female Pirates In History
Ching Shih, also known as Zheng Yi Sao was a Chinese pirate leader active in the South China Sea from 1801 to 1810.
Born Shi Yang in 1775 to humble origins, she married a pirate named Zheng Yi at age 26 in 1801. She was named Zheng Yi Sao (“wife of Zheng Yi”) by the people of Guangdong. After the death of her husband in 1807, she took control of his pirate confederation with the support of Zheng Yi’s adopted son Zhang Bao, with whom she entered into a relationship and later married. As the unofficial commander of the Guangdong Pirate Confederation, her fleet was composed of 400 junks and between 40,000 and 60,000 pirates in 1805. Her ships entered into conflict with several major powers, such as the East India Company, the Portuguese Empire, and Qing China.
In 1810, Zheng Yi Sao negotiated a surrender to the Qing authorities that allowed her and Zhang Bao to retain a substantial fleet and avoid prosecution. At the time of her surrender, she commanded 24 ships and over 1,400 pirates. She died in 1844 at the age of about 68, having lived a relatively peaceful and prosperous life since the end of her career in piracy. Zheng Yi Sao has been described as not only history’s most successful female pirate but one of the most successful pirates in history.
3. Mary Read
Top 10 Notorious Female Pirates In History
Born in England in the late 17th century, Mary Read spent most of her youth disguised as her deceased half-brother so that her penniless mother could scam the boy’s grandmother. Hoping to quench her thirst for adventure, she later adopted the name Mark Read and took on a succession of traditionally male jobs, first as a soldier and later as a merchant sailor. Read turned pirate in the late-1710s, after buccaneers attacked the ship she was working on and impressed her into their ranks. She later found her way aboard Calico Jack Rackam’s boat, where she met and befriended Anne Bonny and revealed herself to be a woman.
Read only sailed with Calico Jack for a few months, but during that time she won a fearsome reputation. One of her most famous exploits came in October 1720, when she and Bonny fought like banshees during an attack by pirate hunters. “If there’s a man among ye,” she supposedly screamed at the male buccaneers cowering below decks, “you’ll come up and fight like the man ye are to be!” Despite Read’s heroics, she and the rest of Calico Jack’s crew were captured and charged with piracy. Read avoided execution by admitting she was “quick with child,” but she later came down with a fever and died in prison.
4. Grace O’Malley
Top 10 Notorious Female Pirates In History
Grace O’Malley was Born in 1530, O’Malley’s father, an Irish chieftain, educated her in seafaring. As a child, Grace shaved her head and dressed as a boy to sneak aboard her father’s ships. When he died she took to the seas, even giving birth to her first child aboard a ship.
O’Malley was a respected pirate and leader, successfully defending her lands against encroaching English power as well as other hostile clans. She fortified important coastal defenses and offered her support to Irish rebels fighting back the English, eventually meeting with Queen Elizabeth I in September 1594 to negotiate a treaty.
5. Sayyida al-Hurra
Top 10 Notorious Female Pirates In History
Sayyida al-Hurra, real name Lalla Aicha bint Ali ibn Rashid al-Alami was Hakimat Titwan (Governor of Tétouan) between 1515–1542 and a Moroccan privateer leader during the early 16th century. She became the wife of the Wattasid Sultan Ahmad ibn Muhammad. She is considered to be “one of the most important female figures of the Islamic West in the modern age”.
The life of Sayyida al-Hurra can be understood within geopolitical and religious contexts, particularly the struggle between Muslim and Christian empires during her lifetime. The Muslim Ottomans captured Constantinople in 1453, marking the end of the Roman Empire. Al-Hurra was two years old when the Portuguese started their colonial conquest by capturing some ports on the western coast of Morocco, starting in the year 1487. A few years later, Granada fell into the hands of the Catholic Monarchs Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon and forced conversions of Muslims in Spain followed.
6. Sadie the Goat
Top 10 Notorious Female Pirates In History
Sadie Farrell was an alleged semi-folklorish American criminal, gang leader, and river pirate known under the pseudonym Sadie the Goat. She is believed to have been a vicious street mugger in New York’s “Bloody” Fourth Ward. Upon encountering a lone traveler, she would headbutt like a charging goat a man in the stomach, and her male accomplice would hit the victim with a slungshot and then rob him. Sadie, according to popular underworld lore, was engaged in a long-time feud with a tough, six-feet-tall female bouncer known as Gallus Mag, who finally bit off Sadie’s ear in a bar fight, as Mag was known to do, albeit usually with male trouble-makers.
7. Jeanne de Clisson
Top 10 Notorious Female Pirates In History
Jeanne de Clisson, also known as Jeanne de Belleville and the Lioness of Brittany, was a French / Breton former noblewoman who became a privateer to avenge her husband after he was executed for treason by the French king. She crossed the English Channel targeting French ships and often slaughtering their crew. It was her practice to leave at least one sailor alive to carry her message of vengeance to the King of France
8. Jacquotte Delahaye
Top 10 Notorious Female Pirates In History
Jacquotte Delahaye was a purported pirate of legend in the Caribbean Sea. She has been depicted as operating alongside Anne Dieu-le-Veut as one of the very few 17th-century female pirates. There is no evidence from period sources that Delahaye was a real person. Stories of her exploits are attributed to oral storytelling and Leon Treich, a French fiction writer of the 1940s.
9. Anne Dieu-le-Veut
Top 10 Notorious Female Pirates In History
Anne “Dieu-Le-Veut” de Graaf also called Marie-Anne or Marianne was a French pirate. Alongside Jacquotte Delahaye, she was one of the very few female buccaneers. While Delahaye was likely fictional, Dieu-le-Veut was real; however, many of her exploits are inventions of later writers.
Anne Dieu-le-Veut lived a life that’s hard to believe. Sent to the New World to become a wife of the male colonists, Anne is believed to have already had a criminal record. In 1683, her husband was killed, and Anne challenged the killer to a duel. The killer was a famous buccaneer, Laurens de Graff, and accepted the challenge. Laurens pulled a knife and Anne pulled a gun.
10. Charlotte de Berry
Top 10 Notorious Female Pirates In History
Charlotte de Berry was a female pirate captain. Her story is generally considered fictional. Tales tell how she stowed away on a ship disguised as a man and eventually climbed the ranks to become a captain.
Top 10 Notorious Female Pirates In History
1. Anne Bonny
2. Ching Shih
3. Mary Read
4. Grace O’Malley
5. Sayyida al-Hurra
6. Rachel Wall
7. Jeanne de Clisson
8. Jacquotte Delahaye
9. Anne Dieu-le-Veut
10. Charlotte de Berry
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