Anne Bonny (or Bonney) was a pirate who served under Calico Jack Rackham. Along with Mary Read, she has become one of the most recognized pirates in the Golden Age of Piracy.
Background information[]
Anne Bonny was mentioned throughout Disney media, including the souvenir book Walt Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean, originally published as The Story of a Robust New Adventure in New Orleans Square and later published as The Story of the Robust Adventure in Disneyland and Walt Disney World, which featured one of the concept art by Marc Davis of Anne Bonny and Mary Read dividing the stolen treasure. Further details were provided by the "Below Deck: An Interactive History Of Pirates" bonus feature for Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl and The Captain Jack Sparrow Handbook.
In the souvenir book Walt Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean:
- Anne Bonney and Mary Read were as bloodthirsty and ruthless as the worst pirates who ever sailed the Caribbean. They experienced everything from military service to piracy. Both girls were raised to act as boys so they could earn more money. Mary, disguised as a young lad, served in the army in Europe, and Anne, donning the pirate garb, fought like a true corsair. As chance would have, the two women, both masquerading as men, met aboard Calico Jack Rackham's ship. Anne, who was married to Calico Jack, fell in love with Mary but found out she also was a woman. Mary, in the meantime, took a fancy to a frail sea-artist who was the object of much abuse on board. When he was challenged to a duel, Mary immediately came to the rescue by picking a fight with the same bully. She was victorious and married her man. When Calico Jack was captured, his entire crew was tried for piracy. Mary and Anne were both sentenced to death by hanging. But Mary died in prison, and Anne, who was in a delicate condition, was released and disappeared from the pages of pirate lore and history.
In the "Below Deck" bonus feature, as hosted by maritime historian David Cordingly:
- Anne Bonny had been born in Dublin. She married a sailor called Jack Bonny, who was a rather useless sailor but took her out to Nassau, where she fell in love with a much more dashing Calico Jack.
Anne Bonny got her start as the kept woman of Calico Jack Rackham, but she wasn't a woman anyone could keep for long. After disguising herself as a man to join Rackham's crew, the incendiary Bonny became attracted to a fellow crewmember only to find that her new "fellow" was Mary Read, another woman wearing breeches and passing herself off as a male pirate. A devoted friendship bloomed between the two women, who eventually achieved notoriety in a daring, two-woman, pistol-and-cutlass defense of the ship against English privateers.
So there was Calico Jack with the two women onboard who were by far the fiercest members of his crew. Calico Jack is sailing off the coast of Jamaica. He's intercepted by somebody called Captain Barnet who'd been sent out to capture pirates. They're all captured, sent to the capital of Jamaica. A trial takes place. All the men are hanged, but the women get off because they both manage to get pregnant, and you couldn't hang a woman with an unborn child because the child was innocent.
Disney Parks[]
Pirates of the Caribbean[]
A mural of Anne Bonny and Mary Read decorates the queue for Pirates of the Caribbean in Disneyland, next to a mural depicting Captain Barbossa. The mural repurposes artwork made of the pirates by Marc Davis from an older draft of the attraction which featured more historic pirates.
Trivia[]
- In an unused script for Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, Anne Bonny would have appeared in the meeting of Pirate Lords of the Brethren Court.
- The character of Redd in the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction is based on Anne Bonny and repurposes unused concepts for her appearance in the attraction.
- An unused version of the Haunted Mansion proposed by Ken Anderson would have featured Anne Bonny as one of the ghosts haunting the manor.
- Anne Bonny and Mary Read arm-in-arm in the queue for Pirates of the Caribbean. It has been speculated that this might make them the first two explicitly LGBTQ+ characters featured in a Disney Parks property, partly due to the claim that they were lesbian lovers. Ultimately, it is impossible to determine if Mary Read was Anne Bonny's lover. Neither woman left any primary sources behind, and sources such as the trial transcript make no mention of their personal lives.
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