Arrrr!

Because you all knew I'd have to post on Talk Like a Pirate day.

Regarding pirates, I have a new theory. We all know about those two famous women pirates, Anne Bonney and Mary Read, but that probably has to do with them being captured. I'm pretty sure the vast majority of pirates either got killed, or melted back into the general population. Anyway, I'm thinking there probably were quite a few women pirates. Here's why:

1) We always hear how hardship drove men to piracy: cruelty in the Navy, lack of opportunity, the chance to get a little loot and live as they pleased, and so forth. These same conditions hold true for women, except women also had the added harshness of watching their children die, the serious potential of death in childbirth, and the fact that their fathers and then husbands were perfectly within their rights to abuse women, as long as they didn't actually kill them.

2) Pirates did live a life of freedom, but they mostly used that freedom to drink. Pirate ships were basically disposable: when your ship rotted out you could just steal a new one, so pirates didn't do as much maintenance as merchant or Navy sailors, plus there were way more pirates per ship than a merchant or navy crew would have, so each individual pirate worked less, and partied more. Based on that, it probably wouldn't be hard to find time to sneak off to a dark corner and do "women stuff," as we sometimes need to do.

3) Pirate crews weren't long-term, in general. In most cases, pirates got together for a voyage, but as soon as they had some success, they'd be dividing the plunder and going their separate ways. A woman could claim to be a young boy (10 and 12 year olds were serving as cabin boys in the merchant ships) or teenager to explain her lack of facial hair and high voice, and then expect the crew to be disbanded before anybody noticed that "he" still hadn't started puberty.

4) Most crews were multi-national and multi-racial. Basically if you were willing to fight when the need arose, and you had some knowledge of seamanship, the pirates were happy to have you. Even if they discovered that a new recruit was female, they may have been content to have her, as long as she was a good worker. Pirates weren't too judgmental, except towards members of the aristocracy, courts and mainstream sea captains.

Its just a theory, of course, but for every crew we know about, there are probably hundreds we have no info on. Pirates were usually illiterate, so most crews didn't make any written records. We may never know the extent to which women, or Native Americans or native Africans, or ex-slaves or anybody else turned pirate, but its an interesting speculation.

A last thought: we sometimes hear about how pirates were not the dashing romantic characters we think of. They weren't. They were mostly harsh, dirty, drunken bullies. They weren't fighting for some ideal of freedom, the ability to worship as they chose and so forth, they just wanted to drink and get paid for their work and maroon the captain if he got too uppity. But that isn't the point. The idealized dream we have of pirates as dashing freedom fighters is important; it gives us the ability to imagine a different life. Sometimes historical accuracy is important, but not necessarily in our entertainment. If somebody gets all scholarly with you, make them walk the plank!