The Sexy Secrets of Pirates
Article by Hope Alexander
April 12 2008. Article viewed 9957 times.
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Pirates are, of course, totally awesome, but the skull and cross bones and all that hearty plundering covers some very saucy secrets. Want to find out what really went on behind closed port holes? Read on to find out...
Girl Power
Long before the Spice Girls raped and pillaged the ears of a modern generation, wild and fearsome female pirates roamed the seas. Though Disney has yet to make a series of movies on the subject, there were none the less many famous female pirates. Included in their number were Gunpowder Gertie, the terror of the British Columbian river system, Anne Bonny who sailed the Carribean, La Marquise de Fresne, who made the Mediterranean her home, and Ching Shih, a Chinese pirate who brought a force of 80,000 men and women to bear against the Chinese and British Army.
In the Chinese pirating tradition, entire families of pirates would make their home on the waves, and both men and women could be ship´s captains. Western women pirates were more rare than their Chinese counterparts, but they certainly existed, and tales of their exploits survive to this day. Charlotte de Berry was one such lady whose adventures started when she joined the English Navy by pretending to be a man. At the time she was married, and wished to be close to her husband, who also joined. Things didn´t go entirely to plan, and poor Charlotte ended up on a ship to Africa.
It would appear that Charlotte was a bit of a trouble maker, or perhaps her Captain was a nasty piece of work, either way, there was what would nowadays be called “friction in the workplace” and when the Captain of the ship attacked her, she beheaded him and announced to the crew that they would no longer be Navy men, but pirates. Evidently she was a woman to be listened to, for Charlotte and her crew then proceeded to attack ships up and down the African coastline for several years.
Anne Bonny was another infamous cross dressing pirate lady who pretended to be a man in order to take up the life of a pirate. She was notorious for her violent temper, and is said to have once beaten the hell out of a man who dared to hit on her by repeatedly hitting him with a chair. Her reputation as a swords woman was also impressive, and she is reputed to have fought bravely on many of her travels.
Her story is one of violence and passion, and she left her first pirate mate for Captain Calico Jack, but eventually fell for Captain Calico Jack´s lieutenant, who also turned out to be another woman in disguise! Anne and the woman Mary Read continued a lesbian affair until they were captured by the famous pirate hunter, Captain Barnet. What their fate was after this point is lost in the mists of history, but one hopes that the penalties were not too harsh for a pair of hot pirate lesbians.
Gay Power
I wouldn´t want to be misleading in my representation of pirate sexuality, so it is only fair that we look to the other side of the coin. It is historical fact that there were some female pirates who terrorized the high seas, dressing up in men´s clothing and fighting ferociously, but the bulk of the pirating population was still male. Crews of men would be out at sea for months or years at a time, and they quite often went great lengths of time without seeing a female. As a result of this, according to the scholar B.R Burg, Pirates were heavily into sodomy and homosexuality. His book ´Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition´ details the private lives of male pirates, and speaks of a society in which homosexual relations were not only encouraged, but seem to have been the norm for many pirates.
Oh for the days of Piracy, when men weren´t afraid to have sex with other men, who might turn out to be women after all.
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