Being a notorious pirate (not to mention a female one) during the Golden Age of Piracy, Anne's mortal life is public record, albeit skewed in some ways. She was born in Kinsale, County Cork, Ireland in 1697 to William Cormac and scandalously his maid, Mary Brennan. The trio left Ireland in disgrace and headed to the New World, Charles Town in the Carolina Province (soon to be South Carolina). Anne's mother died when she was 13 and not long after Anne fell for James Bonny a small time pirate. While her father correctly predicted Bonny was only in it for the money, Anne was stubborn and married him anyway. Cormac was a shrewd man and cut Anne off rather than let Bonny see any money, so the penniless couple ended up moving to pirate haven New Providence Island in the Bahamas.
At first they made a go of it, but eventually Bonny turned into a pirate informant for governor Woodes Rogers. Anne lost all respect for her husband and began hanging out more with the pirates he was giving up. Eventually she fell for John "Calico Jack" Rackham a handsome pirate that knew how to spend money as well as he could steal it and he in turn was smitten by the fiery red head - enough that he offered to buy her from Bonny. Bonny went to the governor instead who determined Anne should be flogged and return home with her proper husband. Not long after that Jack and Anne snuck away in the middle of the night, stole a sloop, and began their life of piracy together.
While on the ship Anne disguised herself as a man most of the time with often only Rackham and later Mary Read another female pirate who disguised herself as a man, privy to her actual gender. She was as fierce, if not more so, than any of the men on the vessel, fighting and drinking and making a name for herself - often joining the boarding parties (the most bloody work as a pirate). She was skilled with pistols and a cutlass and accounts of her exploits present her as competent, effective in combat, and respected by her shipmates.
The high life lasted until October 1720 when Rackham and his crew were attacked by a "King's ship", a sloop captained by Jonathan Barnet under a commission from Nicholas Lawes, Governor of Jamaica. Most of Rackham's pirates put up little resistance as many of them were too drunk to fight. However, Mary Read and Anne fought fiercely and managed to hold off Barnet's troops for a decent amount of time. Rackham and his crew were taken to Jamaica, where they were convicted and sentenced by Governor Lawes to be hanged. Anne and Mary Read revealed their gender and 'pleaded their bellies' claiming to be pregnant to stave off execution. Before being hung, Rackham was allowed to see Anne one last time and she famously said to him - "Had you fought like a man, you need not have been hang'd like a dog."
Mary Read died in prison and Anne...Anne disappeared from public record. Some say she had Rackham's baby and was killed, others say she had the baby after her father bailed her out.
What really happened was that eventually Anne was exposed as not being pregnant. A guard then tried to take advantage of her with disastrous results - for him. Anne killed him with her bare hands and managed to escape...ironically at the exact same time that Jack Rackham had come to break her free.
As they fled, Rackham explained to her that he was an Immortal, albeit not a very old one, He also mentioned that as soon as she faced her first death she would become one as well. After they were safely ensconced in a little hideaway Rackham had set up with his savings Anne wasted no time and promptly killed herself, deciding now was as good a time as any to halt the aging process for herself. Rackham was shocked but rolled with it best he could. Anne was already an excellent fighter, better than him really, so he mostly taught her the rules of the Game and they helped each other stay fight ready by sparring.
Retirement bored the two of them so after hiding out for a while they ended up traveling, mainly the islands at first but then the colonies. They even stayed for a time with Anne's father who was indifferent to her relationship with Rackham, who at least wasn't after her inheritance but glad to see Anne alive and well. Despite the fact that she wasn't a proper lady as he had hoped she might one day become, he reinstated her inheritance so that she would be provided for should she and Rackham ever part.
They did eventually part, completely amicably, when another Immortal tried to use them against one another. Rackham wasn't comfortable with that, though Anne saw nothing wrong with their relationship killing the other immortal with ease. Rackham went off to parts unknown and Anne remained at her father's plantation - at least for a time. She sold the plantation and let her wanderlust lead her wherever it may, eventually landing in New Orleans in the early 1800s where she met another Immortal by the name of Nicodemus. She had no quarrel with the man, finding him almost comfortable to be around given his propensity for surrounding himself with Haitian refugees and practicing their religious ways. There was also a thriving pirate culture in the area thanks to the Lafitte Brothers. All in all New Orleans felt like a place she could settle comfortably for a while.
She had to disguise herself as a man once again to do it, but she fought in the Battle of New Orleans during the War of 1812 along with Nicodemus and under the command of Andrew Jackson. Once the war was over she returned to smuggling/piracy with the Lafittes even when they moved their operation to Galveston Island in 1816. She left Galveston and the Lafittes in 1818 when they began to exploit a loophole in a new law prohibiting the import of slaves into any port in the United States. The loophole in question, gave permission to any ship to capture a slave ship, regardless of the country of origin. Slaves captured in such actions who were turned over to the customs office would be sold within the United States, with half the profits going to the people who turned them in. Anne was always of the mind that you offered freedom when you captured a slave ship and she wanted no part in the sale of people for profit. She returned to New Orleans and her own piracy/smuggling operations until "retiring" in the late 1820's when piracy finally became too difficult within the Gulf.
Word spread somehow of her actions in stepping away from the Lafittes in 1818 and suddenly her second retirement was brought to end when Anne found herself being asked to smuggle again - only this time it was to smuggle people. Slaves specifically, but not to customs or any other authority, but rather to the Caribbean islands or up north along the maritime portion of the Underground Railroad to Canada. She did this, off and on, for over a decade until Jack Rackham came back into her life. He enticed Anne away from the United States for the first time and she joined him in Europe. They stayed there while the US was embroiled in its Civil War, spending time first in Italy and Spain and then finally returning to Anne's homeland - Ireland.
At the turn of the century Anne returned to New Orleans, without Rackham, where she entered into a relationship with one of the madams in Storyville. She'd had flings with both men and women before, but this was her first long term relationship with a mortal and perhaps more importantly, someone that wasn't Rackham. She and Maxine remained together until the latter died in 1917 just as prostitution was finally made illegal in the city.
Anne returned to her wandering ways, traveling the United States and avoiding the Second World War altogether. Time, jobs, and identities passed until the 1990s when Anne settled on Key West to open a bar. It was one part a legitimate business one part a front for her smuggling operation in and out of Cuba. Some things never change as they say.
A century had passed since she last saw him in person, though through the advent of phone technology Anne was in touch with Rackham in the early 2000's. He was involved, of course, in one scheme or another in Europe. Knowing Rackham as she did and knowing that not all of his schemes ended well for him, she was expecting him to come back to her at some point in the near future.
That point never came as in June of 2002 an outbreak of the flu swept first the nation, then the globe, claiming almost everyone in its wake. Anne nursed the people closest to her until their deaths and then took to her boat - the sea as it always would, comforting her. She went along the Gulf Coast checking in now again, searching for signs of life. She found very little, some Immortals and some mortals, though no one she wanted to spend any amount of time with if she was honest. She was also beginning to go a little stir crazy from the dreams she was having. One dream beckoning her to the Great Plains and an old black woman who praised her work before the Civil War and told her she could do good in the mountains. Another beckoned her west to the desert where a man promised her riches and infamy. Both claimed to offer a place to belong.
She finally arrived in New Orleans and discovered her old friend Nicodemus had finally decamped, though where he had gone she wasn't sure. Perhaps he had given in to the pull of the dreams. Anne however, was still thinking.
