Swash Buckling Female Pirates?
By Frederick Hedenberg
I’m rarely surprised by something I had given little or no thought to. This happened recently when a reader asked me if I thought a blog on female pirates had merit.
So, being inquisitive, I decided to check it out. I discovered there have been female pirates sailing the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans with the majority concentrated off the shores of Europe. I’m talking hard as nails women who fought right alongside the men and in many cases owned the ships they sailed.
A couple actually built what could be called a Navy owning nearly one hundred ships and employing hundreds of marauding pirates. Because this is New England History Blogs we had our own version by the name of Rachel Wall. Born in Pennsylvania she ran away from home as a teenager and married a fisherman, George Wall. They settled in Boston and tried to earn an honest living but were plagued by money problems.
In 1781 with a small boat they took on a life of crime. With a few low-life mariners they turned to piracy. They were active up and down the New England coast. They were a clever bunch, when a storm was or had been in the area they would disguise their boat so that it appeared to have been ravaged by the storm. Rachel would then stand on deck and plead for help from passing ships. Once the ship tied alongside her boat she and the rest of the crew would go aboard and rob and plunder.
As fate would have it a storm destroyed her boat and killed her husband George. Back in port and penniless, Rachel was arrested for robbing a Boston woman. While incarcerated she penned a confession claiming she had broken every known law at the time, except murder. She pleaded for mercy. The authorities didn’t buy it and Rachel Wall became the only woman to be executed in the State of Massachusetts. She was hung in October of 1789.
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Source: Norwich Bulletin
