Charlotte de Berry
From Defiant Women
"Charlotte de Berry disguised herself as a
man, joining the English navy with her husband. She eventually found herself
forced onto a ship to Africa, whose captain attacked her. She led a mutiny,
beheaded the captain, and turned the crew to piracy, raiding gold ships on the
African coast.
Charlotte's pirate career demonstrates not only her
own abilities, but also the thin line (or morally, no line) between then-legal
imperialism and piracy. After all, the gold she stole had originally been
stolen from Africans, who were themselves being violently kidnapped by the
slave trade-rapine of the worse possible kind. Similarly, the pirates of the
Spanish Main were taking what the conquistadores had stolen from the Aztecs,
Incas, and other Mesoamerican peoples. Charlotte's crew had been law-abiding
sailors when serving under a sadistic rapist, but outlaws when she led them.
This, of course, in no way excuses the crimes she and these other pirates
committed, it just speaks of the violence of their time, and that at least
these criminals were straightforward about what they were doing."
So goes the story of Charlotte de Berry. De Berry
appears on many websites, even more reliable and respectable sites such as
Cindy Vallar's Pirates and Privateers:
"Charlotte de Berry
Born in England in 1636, Charlotte de Berry fell in
love with a sailor. When the Royal Navy ordered him to sea, she donned male
clothes and joined him on board his ship as his brother. One version of how she
became a pirate said the two fought side by side in six major battles. An
officer discovered Charlotte's ruse, but said nothing because he wanted her for
himself. When his first attempt to get rid of her lover failed, the officer
accused him of trying to start a mutiny. He was found guilt and flogged around
the fleet, a punishment that killed him. Charlotte refused the officer's
advances, stabbed him, and fled ashore.
She became an entertainer in waterfront saloons
that sailors frequented. One sea captain kidnapped her, forced her to wed him,
then set sail for Africa. Charlotte convinced the crew to mutiny and turn to
piracy.
Another version says that sometime after the navy
ship departed England, pirates attacked it. The pirate captain discovered
Charlotte's true identity, but she engaged him in a duel and lopped off his
head. The pirates rejoiced on hearing of his death, and made Charlotte their
new captain. Rumors soon spread about her ferocity and cruelty. One claimed she
had sewn shut one captain's mouth. Throughout her life as a pirate she
pretended to be a man.
How and when she died is uncertain, but one story
claims she married a wealthy Spaniard who joined her crew. A storm sank their
ship and they survived without food and water for eight days aboard a raft. The
survivors decided the only way they would continue to live was if they drew
lots. The loser would forfeit his life to feed the others. Charlotte's husband
was the first slain just before a merchantman rescued them. Pirates attacked
that ship. Charlotte fought them off, saved her rescuers, then leapt overboard
to join her dead husband."
The Truth
The earliest known reference to Charlotte de Berry
comes not from 1636 when she was supposedly born, nor from the later part of
her life when she was one of the most terrible pirates in the Atlantic, but
from 1836, two centuries later when she appeared in Edward Lloyd's History
of the Pirates, a "penny dreadful" or "penny blood" -
cheap stories with a fairly gory or shocking theme written to entertain the
masses.
Although Lloyd intended his readers to take the
story of de Berry seriously it is difficult to believe that any part of it is
true, so many of the incidents and events mentioned are ridiculous - exactly
the kind of thing one would expect to find in a penny dreadful, and nothing like
the genuine stories of pirates from the mid-seventeenth century. Many of the
incidents included in the story have similar parallels with other events and
stories floating around in the early 19th century, and it is the lack of
credibility of Lloyd's story, together with the total and utter lack of any
evidence whatsoever prior to 1836 which leads me to conclude that Charlotte de
Berry is entirely fictional and was invented in the early 19th century to
provide subject matter for cheap shocking literature.
Since 1836 de Berry's story has appeared in print
in a number of books, but in every case her story is a re-telling of the 1836
yarn. Pretty much all of the websites since published also take their matter
(directly or indirectly) from the 1836 story.
To read the Charlotte de Berry story from the 1836 History
of the Pirates, and a fuller explanation of my reasons for believing the
story to be untrue click here.