Female Pirates
Kristina A. Paxton (Shaarda)
Excelsior College

Women have been held to have particular power over the sea. There is an ancient superstition that women are not good for ships. The contradiction between woman as sea power and woman as a sea jinx is hard to understand. Women pirates however rarely brought bad luck to a ship, they were actually very good luck, and their loss to a ship often brought an end to that ships sailing days. The women that sailed the seas came from all walks of life; there were royals such as Queen Teuta of Illyria who sailed in the 200’s B.C., as well as the Irish seafaring clanswoman, Grace O’Malley, who was practically royalty in that culture in the 1500’s. There were also illegitimate daughters of maids and merchants such as Anne Bonny and Mary Read who sailed the Caribbean in the 1600’s, and finally a Chinese prostitute who controlled one of the most powerful pirate fleets the world has ever seen in the 1800’s. Female pirates were once again seen on the seas recently when a woman pirate named Sister Ping (Ching Chui Ping) smuggled Chinese immigrants to the United States and England was caught and imprisoned in 1990.

The Pirate code forbade women from being on board a pirate ship, so women typically dressed and carried themselves as a man in order to become a pirate. These women pirates were truly exceptional in their determination and strength of character to seek their fortune in what was not only a dangerous way of life, but also a make dominated occupation. In order to succeed on a pirate ship these women has to have exceptional strength, agility, and physical stamina to endure life on a ship and get their fair share of the gold.

Two of the most well-known women pirates to ever sail the seas were Mary Read and Anne Bonny. Mary Read was an illegitimate child born outside of London. Her mother dressed and