Bonny would join Rackham's crew, alongside another female pirate, Mary Read, and helped steal the sloop William in August 1720.

Rackham and his crew would carry out a number of attacks on merchant ships in the West Indies until they were captured following a brief naval engagement in October 1720.

Rackham, along with all the male crew members, were tried and sentenced to death, but Bonny and Read had their executions stayed due to both of them claiming to be pregnant.

All details concerning Bonny's early life stem from Captain Charles Johnson's A General History of the Pyrates (a greatly unreliable series of pirate biographies).

The attorney's mother in law died not long after, leaving a major source of income to be an allowance his estranged wife gave him out of sympathy.

Because everyone in town knew Mary had given birth to a bastard daughter, the attorney raised Anne as a boy, claiming she was the child of a friend.

The attorney in response ended the ruse and openly lived with Anne as his daughter, but this scandal damaged his reputation and few locals wished to work with him.

[14] There is no documented example of an attorney becoming a plantation owner in the Carolinas in the 17th and 18th century, not least of which one with a daughter named Anne Bonny and a history of violence.

[18] No documentation outside of A General History even confirms there was a James Bonny, making it possible he is one of Johnsons fictional creations, similar to Captain Misson.

In August 1720, Bonny, Rackham, and another woman, Mary Read, together with about a dozen other pirate crewmembers, stole the sloop William, then at anchor in Nassau harbor, and put out to sea.

[20] Bonny took part in piracy alongside the men, handing out gunpowder to fellow pirates, a job usually referred to as a powder monkey.

[21] On 5 September 1720, Governor Rogers put out a proclamation later published in The Boston Gazette, demanding the arrest of Rackham and his associates.

[17] A General History claims Bonny eventually fell in love with another pirate on board, only to discover it was Mary Read.

To abate the jealousy of Rackham, who suspected romantic involvement between the two, Bonny told him that Read was a woman and swore him to secrecy.

[24] A victim of the pirates, Dorothy Thomas of Jamaica, would describe in detail Bonny and Read's appearance during their trial: They "wore men's jackets, and long trousers, and handkerchiefs tied about their heads: and ... each of them had a machete and pistol in their hands and they cursed and swore at the men to murder her [Dorothy Thomas]."

"[25] On 22 October 1720,[26] Rackham and his crew were attacked by a sloop captained by Jonathan Barnet under a commission from Nicholas Lawes, Governor of Jamaica.

After calling three witnesses and a brief period of discussion, Governor Lawes found Bonny and Read guilty of piracy and sentenced them both to be hanged.

[29] With the judgement pronounced, Bonny and Read both "pleaded their bellies", asking for mercy,[30] a jury of matrons likely granted them a stay of execution until they gave birth, but it is debatable if they were actually pregnant.

[34] Claims of Bonny being freed by family intervention and moving to the American colonies, dying around the 1780s, are unlikely and appear to originate from John Carlova's Mistress of the Seas.

Despite already appearing in Gay's previous play The Beggars Opera, and being based on the historical Jenny Diver, her characterization in Polly is blatantly Bonny.

Swashbuckling cinema would often include a dashing redhaired woman or female pirate companion, occasionally directly naming Bonny.

[38] By the 21st century, Bonny has appeared in hundreds of books, movies, stage shows, TV programs, and video games.

This was never stated in the trial transcript or newspapers, and only begins to appear after much of Bonny's legend was written, and by highly suspect sources.

A chapbook knock off of History and Lives would again repeat the claim verbatim in 1813,[c] but discussion of Bonny's sexuality would only really begin in the 20th century.