Dressing Anne Bonny and Mary Read: What Female Pirates Wore During the Golden Age of Piracy The ‘Golden Age of Piracy’ was a harsh time for many people, on land and at sea. For a brief period in the early eighteenth-century, two women, Anne Bonny and Mary Read, roved the West Indies in Jack Rackham’s pirate gang, and in doing so, entered history. These women turned away from the law and anything remotely associated with female norms of the day.