Haul Away the Anchor

APRIL 2025

Nettie grins widely as she speaks. “She reminisced for a time, but Thomas was patient. He knew he’d be getting the story of a lifetime, so he sat in silence with her until she was ready. They remained that way for half an hour; she only looked back at him when the sky got so dark, she couldn’t see the water anymore.”

Lainey leans forward in her chair, completely enthralled with the tale. “And she began her tale?”

Nettie smirks, nodding shortly. “And she began her tale.”

1782, CHARLES TOWN, SOUTH CAROLINA

1698, Ireland; I was born in a prison cell. Scandalous, I know, yet such may be why I am what I am. My father was a prosperous attorney, my mother his maid; William McCormac and Mary Brennan.

Why a cell, you wonder. Five months prior, Mother was falsely imprisoned; Father’s scornful wife suspected the affair and wished for retribution. Her anger was misplaced; Father was the cause, yet she aimed her sights on Mother.

I still do not know if being with him, in that way, was what Mother wanted. I fear I was conceived from his attacks.

I was not in the cell for very long; word of my birth quickly reached Father’s ears and I was whisked away from Mother’s presence. She was left to rot.

Father littered his wife with gifts and praises. She soon forgave and forgot the ordeal and her suspicions, and Mother was set free from her cell. She was not allowed to see me, yet she did so in secret.

Fearful his wife would learn the truth, he hid me in sight and dressed me as a plucky boy. His wife, however, saw through the shammy ploy in my eighth year. She cut off the allowance she’d been giving and, soon after, everyone knew of the scandal. Father was the shame of the town.

No one wished to work with him further; his reputation was damaged, ruined by the scandal he placed himself within. In a year's time, we upped and left on a stormy sea; we hauled away the anchor.

Cork was where we first ventured. Even there, his reputation was known. We did not stay more than a month.

On the voyage here, though then this was the Province of Carolina, Mother developed an illness that did not go away. By my eleventh year, she was gone.

Losing her was a pain I couldn’t believe. That pain remained for years. I was mad, out of control; lashing out with violent blows. I stabbed a maid, which led to her death; she talked poorly of my long dead mother. I was fourteen when I severely beat a man with a club from nearby, crippling him; he made a pass at me.

I was bad, volatile as the sea.

In the meantime, Father attempted to continue his career in law. Ultimately, he moved on with merchandising instead. Somehow, he was more successful as a merchant than as an attorney, and that was how we ended up on a large plantation with multiple maids, one of which was the woman I murdered. I was not aiming to do so; she was stabbed in an unlucky spot.

In my sixteenth year, Father harried me to marry soon. He had someone in mind; some boring, moneyed well-to-do. Day by day, his insistence grew. It drove me out of our home one day; I went to our local tavern. It was there that I met James Bonny, Jim to his friends. He was a sailor. He had no wealth or rank or influence.

Within a fortnight, we were wed and Father was outraged. In his eyes, I was no longer his daughter. I cared not for the money he kept from me; I longed to sail on the ocean and Jim was living that life.

I did not get what I wanted. I escaped one terror, only to enter another.

I never grew to love him.

I grew to hate him.

~~~~~~~~~~

The way the story is written doesn’t matter. Professional, simple, perfect, sloppy. What matters most is that the story is being retold again for those who may have never heard of her.

Plus, Karliene is a lovely singer who deserves some more subscribers. She didn’t/doesn’t just write/sing songs for/about Anne Bonny. She also has songs about witches, middle-earth, Anne Boleyn, and others.

Originally, I was gonna actually write out the play by play of Anne Bonny’s life, kind of like what happens in the Titanic film, but I eventually realized something; doing that would make this far too complex and maybe be a bit too much to comprehend all at once. So, instead, it became more like an entry to a journal or novel, which goes along with the novelist that Anne is talking to. It seemed more befitting.

And if you haven’t caught on, lines are made bold because it’s a line from the song that’s linked; I’ve been doing this for every chapter and will continue doing it.

Bits and pieces of information about Anne Bonny come from the wikipedia page. It may be true; it may be exaggerated. That’s why I am calling this historical fiction.

And sorry that the lingo is a bit too modern; it’s very difficult to write how people once spoke when you don’t actually know much of how they spoke, even with some research.

Here are the links to part one and part two: