Booty: Girl Pirates on the High Seas by Sara Lorimer
Booty Contents Further Reading The Author Links	"They offered war rather than kisses" -Saxo Grammaticus For as long as ships have sailed the seas there have been pirates. And for as long as there have been pirates, some of those pirates have been women. And why not? Piracy offered everything to a woman that was denied her on land. At sea she had freedom and autonomy. She kept her own hours and spent them playing cards, drinking, gambling, sailing, eating, killing, and plundering. No household to run, no family to support, no chamber pots to empty. No arranged marriages, churchgoing, or financial dependency. Some of the women profiled here followed their lovers into piracy, others turned mercenary after a cross-dressing stint in the military, still others were born into piracy and carried out the family tradition. Fanny Campbell led a mutiny to find her fiance; bizarre twists of fate landed Charlotte de Berry and Mary Read at sea; and Cheng I Sao turned pirate to escape a grim life of prostitution. Their role in traditionally male pirate lore is that of freakish curiosities, shipboard diversions, or sexy dominatrices. But these women were real pirates who led lives just as adventurous and colorful as the male counterparts. They planned attacks, captured ships, and led fleets just as men did, in some cases even better. We know more about some of these women than about others. Most of their exploits are not well documented. Mary Read and Anne Bonny left a trial record, and Cheng I Sao's crimes were reported in the newspapers of her time. But for many of our pirates, we have to rely on local lore and handed-down gossip. Many prowled the seas during the Golden Age of Piracy, between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries -- an era that saw a great deal of trade between Europe and the Americas. Shipping lines were well established and most pirates simply had to wait patiently for a ship to sail into their traps. Several accounts of capture and pillage remain from that era, and from these come many clues to our pirates' way of live. A section at the back of this book on the "Classic Pirate Lifestyle" includes short descriptions of what life was like for women on pirate ships during the Golden Age -- the rules and regulations, punishments, victuals, fashion, and frigging. I've also included a short list of books for anyone interested in reading further about the adventures of these marauding women. Arrrr.
	Copyright 2003 Sara Lorimer