by Sally Watson
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND
HISTORICAL NOTE
I am indebted to the British Museum Reading Room, the files of the London Times, the British Admiralty Court Records, and to John Carlova’s very helpful biography (and bibliography) of Anne Bonney: Mistress of the Seas.
Readers may think that from the entry of the pirates, this story sounds highly unlikely even for fiction. I agree. The fact is, I should never have dared invent any fiction so improbable—and I didn’t. I got it from records of the time—directly or indirectly. One of the best sources, for instance, is in a book called The History of the Pyrates published in 1724 and written by a man who calls himself Captain Charles Johnson. For a long time his vivid and detailed description of Anne Bonney’s adventures was taken with quite a few grains of salt. But now even Encyclopedia Britannica says “recent research has proved again and again that. . . he had first-hand knowledge of his subject and is to be relied on in almost every detail.”
And so all of the pirates are real people culled from Captain Johnson and a number of other books that I found in the British Museum and Mr. Carlova’s biography. So are Governor Lawes, Chidley Bayard, Governor Rogers, Tom Deane, Michael Radcliffe, and even the pets. Only Jade and Rory, Domino and Joshua are fictional, and I’ve inserted them as accurately as possible into the real incidents. The trial is on record, too, and although I’ve changed it slightly, both to allow for Jade’s part and for the purpose of the novel, it’s still generally accurate.
As for Anne Bonney and Mary Read, I’ve hardly touched on their lives and adventures. Mary was brought up as a boy, joined the British Navy at fourteen, later served with the army in one of the Duke of Marlborough’s regiments, and still later signed on a Dutch ship as a seaman. When the ship was captured by the pirate Sam Bellamy, she had no choice but to carry on as a pirate. She was by no means the first or last woman to get away with this sort of masquerade; there are well documented records of at least fifteen others, and heaven knows how many that were never documented at all. In any event, Mary was an outstanding fighter, courageous, and skilled with cutlass, pistols, and the tiller. Her duel with Barton really happened—and so did the whole romance with Tom Deane.
Anne’s story is just as incredible, and I have only touched on her wild career—which ended in fact as it has here. She and Michael disappeared into the wilds of Virginia, and presumably she really did become a demure (well, more or less), law-abiding wife and mother.
But not my Jade!
About the Author
Sally Watson: Born January 1924 in Seattle, Washington. Picked up phonics from Mother’s kindergarten before I was two; the next thing anyone knew I was reading independently—which I went on doing for 12 years of public school—under my desk instead of arithmetic or geography. Rotten grades, didn’t know how to study—I just read and wrote. Mum said I wrote my first book when I was four. Four pages, lavishly illustrated, begun with total phonic accuracy: “The sun roze up.” From that, she decided that I should grow up to write books for children. Well, it was true I loved words and had a collection—just for fun—of synonyms for “said” and adverbs to accompany it. But when Mum suggested that I might write books for children, I sneered. For one thing, I’d read a book that convinced me one had to be a total genius and collect rejections for ten years. For another, I was going to travel all over Europe and study Highland Dancing and Judo and be a Prima Ballerina, I was.
At 16 or so, I discovered that I wasn’t. Not a Prima Ballerina anyhow, and darned if I was going to settle for the corps de ballet. Disgruntled, I further realized that alone among my peers I hadn’t the least interest in marriage and families. Nor in office work—the only thing going for women in the ’30’s.
Joined the Navy in 1944 and after that mess was over, I decided to go to college—and applied to Reed without knowing enough not to. They took me, it turned out, on “possible potential,” and I waltzed innocently in...and by the time I realized that I would have to commit several major and sustained miracles to stay there, it was too late to do anything else. I was hooked by the intellectual excitement. (An astrologer once told me I had “a jack-ass determination that never knew when it was beaten—and consequently seldom was.” True, I guess. A useful—albeit sometimes uncomfortable—quality.) At any rate, it was there I learned the discipline to write—but still had no idea of doing it. That childhood conviction was still with me.
But what to do? I still wanted neither marriage nor the office work I was temporarily stuck with. Moved to San Francisco, and then L.A., where (on Hollywood and Vine, true to cliché) I ran into an old high school friend who had just had a children’s story published in a real magazine! Mental barriers collapsed all around me with almost audible crashes. I rushed home and started Highland Rebel that night.
I must have had a lot of writing dammed up in me. The first draft wrote itself in three weeks, the final in another three. It was accepted by the first place I submitted it—Heniy Holt—without revision! And I was such a novice I didn’t even know this was remarkable luck. (Needless to say, it never happened again.)
After three books, I had enough money to go to Europe for five months. Three more books, and I went back to England for a year and studied Highland dancing and wrote some more books. Passport and money ran out, so back to California for five years, helping Mother put out the first-ever audio-visual phonics course (which I now see duplicated virtually everywhere I turn. Never mind, Mother had good material, and the more who use it, the better.) Once it was accepted for publication, I realized I could now live in England on royalties, whereas I couldn’t begin to in the U.S. So I went there and did that, and joined in Mensa, and went on writing books, and took up Judo at age 45, and I reckon I’m the only woman ever to do that and make Black Belt. Third Dan, at that.
Then, in a bout 1972, the bottom fell out. Up until then, my books were selling slowly but steadily, mostly to schools and libraries; and every time stocks got low, they just printed up a new edition. Now tax laws, it seems, were changed so that it was now uneconomical for publishers to keep books in stock over the turn of the year. So all twelve of my books went out of print almost simultaneously. And I was engrossed in Judo and also in copper enameling, and gardening my English country garden, and raising cats. So I stopped writing. And old fans kept writing and asking for copies of my books—and there weren’t any.
After 24 years in England, I came back to America—the Sonoma County (not Napa) wine country, and joined a catrescue-and-adoption group and helped form another; and old fans kept on pleading for copies, and I discovered that feisty heroines are more needed now than in the ’50s and ’60s...so...
