Walking The Plank: Calico Jack

John Rackham was an English pirate, and likely the first equal opportunity employer in his field as well, as he was known to employ two female pirates - Anne Bonny and Mary Read - in his crew!

Despite being known for wearing a highly unique and somewhat suspicious wardrobe made of calico - thus the moniker - he was known to have had an affair with Anne Bonny, at one point even eloping with her; unless, of course, she was a top. After all, it was she who discovered Mary Read on board (disguised as a man) and their own romance must have made for quite a cuddly - not to mention innovative - little threesome all those sultry nights they spent together adrift in the Caribbean, drunk on rum.

When the crew was captured in October 1720, most of the men were too drunk to fight; it was Read and Bonny who valiantly fought to keep Captain Barnet's crew at bay, to no avail. Bonny's last words to her lover after he'd been imprisoned were: 'I am sorry to see you here Jack, but if you had fought like a man, you need not be hanged like a dog.' Oh, snap!

While Calico Jack and most of his crew were executed in Jamaica on this day in 1720, Bonny and Read pleaded their bellies and were reprieved; Read died in prison the following year, possibly in childbirth, and history does not record whatever became of Anne Bonny...
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