I had the pleasure of speaking on the Carnival Glory as it cruised from Port Canaveral, Florida to Aruba, Bonaire, and back. We had a gorgeous double rainbow over the ship as we left the port.
I was particularly excited to see Bonaire as it was a new place for me and rich with history. It did not disappoint!
Most of my talks on the Glory were about female pirates (y’know, gotta celebrate Women’s History Month in March). I enjoyed sharing the stories of women who definitely misbehaved during their time. At the end of all the talks I also surveyed the crowd to see if they really thought the women featured were Pirates, Privateers, or Politicians using these definitions:
- Pirate – Someone who steals, robs, or plunders on the sea or shoreline
- Privateer – Someone who steals, robs, or plunders on the sea or shoreline with the permission of a government or a sovereign
- Politician – Someone who leads a governmental body. May use pirates or privateers to do their bidding, but leave the dirty work to others.
Much of the information we have about the pirate women I introduced on the Glory comes from sources that may have been skewed in their thinking… Sometimes the surviving sources were written by their sworn enemy! So we have to take the information we have about them with a grain of salt. Keeping that in mind, here’s what the audience decided after hearing all the evidence:
- Sayyida al-Hurra – Privateer. I still think she was more of a Politician as she was the Governor of the city of Teuton in Morocco during her time. But the crowd thought Privateer was a better moniker as Sayyida was focused on ransoming sailors (especially Spanish and Portuguese) who were captured by her ships and she shared part of that loot with the people of her city. Thus, she worked on behalf of the government.
- Anne Bonny – Pirate. No question. The 18th century cross-dressing pirate was definitely out to enrich herself.
- Mary Read – Pirate. Mary was also in cahoots with Anne Bonny and undoubtedly out for herself.
- Anne Dieu-le-Veut – Privateer. Anne had 3 husbands and while married to the third, they worked on behalf of the French and raided Jamaica (which was under British control).
- Rachel Wall – Pirate. She stole to benefit herself. Unfortunately, that also led to her demise at the end of a hangman’s noose.
- Zheng Yi Sao – Politician. This was an interesting one. The audience decided that even though Zheng Yi Sao did not have an official political position (that we know of), but ran such a huge para-military operation/shadow government in China in the late 1700s/early 1800s that she was, foremost, a politician.
- Grace O’Malley – Mixed. Grace was a politician, pirate, and privateer at different times during her life so there was no clear answer which title fit her best.
- Queen Elizabeth I – Politician. The Queen used pirates and privateers to accomplish her goals, but was not a swashbuckler herself.
I had a wonderful time presenting the information about these ladies to the Glory and interacting with everyone on the ship. I now have several more places to visit and a lot more pirate shows and books to check out! Thank you to all who shared their knowledge with me. It’s true. You learn a lot when you teach.
SEA y’all on the next ship.