Anne went on board the ship of her pirate husband, and as she was sure his profession would exactly suit her wild and impetuous nature, she determined also to become a pirate.  She put on man’s clothes, girded to her side a cutlass, and hung pistols in her belt.  During many voyages Anne sailed with Captain Rackham, and wherever there was pirate’s work to do, she was on deck to do it.  At last the gallant captain came to grief.  He was captured and condemned to death.  Now there was an opportunity for Anne’s nature to assert itself, and it did, but it was a very different sort of nature from that of Mary Reed.  Just before his execution Anne was admitted to see her husband, but instead of offering to do anything that might comfort him or palliate his dreadful misfortune, she simply stood and contemptuously glared at him.  She was sorry, she said, to see him in such a predicament, but she told him plainly that if he had had the courage to fight like a man, he would not then be waiting to be hung like a dog, and with that she walked away and left him.

On the occasion when Captain Rackham had been captured, Mary Reed and her husband were on board his ship, and there was, perhaps, some reason for Anne’s denunciation of the cowardice of Captain Rackham.  As has been said, the two women were good friends and great fighters, and when they found the vessel engaged in a fight with a man-of-war, they stood together upon the deck and boldly fought, although the rest of the crew, and even the captain himself, were so discouraged by the heavy fire which was brought to bear on them, that they had retreated to the hold.

Mary and Anne were so disgusted at this exhibition of cowardice, that they rushed to the hatchways and shouted to their dastardly companions to come up and help defend the ship, and when their entreaties were disregarded they were so enraged that they fired down into the hold, killing one of the frightened pirates and wounding several others.  But their ship was taken, and Mary and Anne, in company with all the pirates who had been left alive, were put in irons and carried to England.

When she was in prison, Mary declared that she and her husband had firmly intended to give up piracy and become private citizens.  But when she was put on trial, the accounts of her deeds had a great deal more effect than her words upon her judges, and she was condemned to be executed.  She was saved, however, from this fate by a fever of which she died soon after her conviction.

The impetuous Anne was also condemned, but the course of justice is often very curious and difficult to understand, and this hard-hearted and sanguinary woman was reprieved and finally pardoned.  Whether or not she continued to disport herself as a man we do not know, but it is certain that she was the last of the female pirates.