Black Sails: 10 Pirates Who Should Appear In Season 2

6. Mary Read

Real or storybook? Real Who is she? A woman who disguised herself as a man to pursue a life of adventure, Mary Read had been dressing as a male since childhood when her mother disguised Read as her dead brother in order to keep drawing money from her grandmother. She continued her crossdressing ways to go overseas and pursue a career as a soldier, fighting in the wars with France, and then a sailor. When captured by pirates she turned pirate herself, eventually escaping hanging as she was pregnant on her arrest. The disguised Read had been part of a romantic triangle with Captain Jack Rackham and his shipmate/lover Anne Bonny. The latter's attraction to Read's male form would result in Read revealing her true gender. Where would she fit into Black Sails? Black Sails' versions of Rackham and Bonny are already at the core of the show's historical pirate narrative, so it would seem obvious that the third member of the famous trio will appear eventually. Bonny is currently the only real historical female character in the series. Apart from her, Read is the only other recorded example of a female pirate in the Golden Age of Piracy when Black Sails is set. Of course the show runners could happily pick a woman from a different time or place and insert her into the narrative or simply invent more, but if they want a real female character that fits the setting then Read is really their only option. While the relationship between Read, Bonny and Rackham is heavily mythologised, even the hints of a historically mandated bisexual three-way should be enough to attract the interest of Starz, after all the same network that made Spartacus: Blood and Sand.