The crew was taken to Jamaica and tried for piracy in November of 1720. All of them were hanged, save for Anne and Mary, who were granted stays of execution due to the fact that they were both pregnant. Mary was brave in the face of her punishment, telling the court, “As to hanging, it is no great hardship. For were it not for that, every cowardly fellow would turn pirate and so unfit the sea, that men of courage must starve.” But as it turned out, Mary never had to face the gallows: she died in prison of a fever. As for Anne, after the piracy trial, the historical record is silent. Rumors say alternately that she was hanged a year later; that she was given a reprieve; that she reconciled with the father who disowned her, or with her first husband, whom she had left; that she gave up the pirate’s life and became instead a nun. We may never know for sure what happened to her.
CHING SHIH
Ching Shih—also known as Shi Xainggu, Cheng I Sao, Ching Yih Saou, or Zheng Yi Sao—ruled the South China Sea in the early 19th century, overseeing about 1,800 ships and 80,000 male and female pirates.
She became the commander of the infamous Red Flag Fleet of pirates after her husband Cheng Yi, the former commander from a long line of pirates, died in 1807; she went on to marry Chang Pao, formerly her husband’s right-hand man. To say that Ching Shih ran a tight ship was an understatement: pirates who committed even innocuous offenses were beheaded. Her attitude in battle was even more intense, with hundreds of ships and thousands of pirates used to engage even a small target.
Ching Shih was also a ruthless businesswoman. She handled all business matters herself, and pirates not only needed her approval to embark on a raid, they were also required to surrender the entire haul to her. She diversified her business plan by expanding beyond the raiding of commercial ships, working with shadowy businessmen in the Guangdong salt trade to extort the local salt merchants. Every
BOOKS ABOUT PIRATES
Granuaile: Ireland’s Pirate Queen, 1530-1603
by Anne Chambers
This book was made into a Broadway musical called The Pirate Queen. It tells the story of Grace O’Malley, also called Granuaile, a remarkable and notorious Irish pirate.
The Pirate Hunter: The True Story of Captain Kidd
by Richard Zacks
A vivid account of the often brutal nature of pirate life and politics in the seventeenth century.
Under The Black Flag: The Romance and the Reality of Life Among the Pirates
by David Cordingly
A look at the realities of the oft-romanticized pirate life through stories of real and fictitious pirates between 1650 and 1725.
The Pirates Own Book: Authentic Narratives of the Most Celebrated Sea Robbers
by Charles Ellms
Originally published in 1887, this book features pirates reporting in their own words.
Booty: Girl Pirates on the High Seas
by Sara Lorimer
Stories of twelve women pirates from the ninth century to the 1930s.
ship passing through her waters had to buy protection from her, and Ching Shih’s fleet of mercenaries torched any vessel that refused to pay up.
The Red Flag Fleet under Ching Shih’s rule could not be defeated—not by Chinese officials, not by the Portuguese navy, not by the British. But in 1810, amnesty was offered to all pirates, and Ching Shih took advantage of it, negotiating pardons for nearly all her troops. She retired with all her ill-gotten gains and ran a gambling house until her death in 1844.
RACHEL WALL
Rachel Schmidt was born in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, in 1760. When she was sixteen, she met George Wall, a former privateer who served in the Revolutionary War; against the wishes of her mother, she married him. The two moved to Boston, where George worked as a fisherman and Rachel worked as a maid in Beacon Hill. George, whom Rachel’s mother had considered more than slightly shady to begin with, fell in with a rough crowd and gambled away what money they had. Unable to pay the rent, and lured by the fun of his fast-living fisherman friends, he hit upon pirating as the answer to their financial woes and convinced Rachel to join in.
George and Rachel stole a ship at Essex and began working as pirates off the Isle of Shoals. They would trick the passing ships by having the blue-eyed, brown-haired Rachel pose as a damsel in distress, standing at the ship’s mast and screaming for help as the ships came near. Once the rescuing crew came aboard to help, George and his men would kill them, steal their booty, and sink their ship. Rachel and George were successful as pirates, capturing a dozen boats, murdering two dozen sailors, and stealing thousands of dollars in cash and valuables.
Their evil plan was cut short in 1782, when George, along with the rest of his crew, was drowned in a storm. Rachel, who really did need rescuing in that situation, was saved, brought ashore, and taken back to Boston, but it was hard to leave her pirating ways. She spent her days working as a maid, but by night she broke into the cabins of ships docked in Boston Harbor, stealing any goods she could get her hands on. Her luck ran out in 1789, when she was accused of robbery. At her trial, she admitted to being a pirate but refused to confess to being a murderess or a thief. She was convicted and sentenced to death by hanging. She died on October 8, 1789, the first and possibly the only woman pirate in all of New England, and the last woman to be hanged in Massachusetts.
A Short History of Women Inventors and Scientists
EVEN THOUGH it’s said that “necessity is the mother of invention,” women’s contributions to inventing and science have been, in the past, often overlooked. It’s likely women have been using their creativity and intelligence to engineer new ideas and products since the beginning of human experience, but nobody really kept track of such things until a few hundred years ago. Below we’ve assembled some of our favorite daring women inventors, scientists, and doctors—from Nobel Prize winners to crafters of practical devices, from women who revolutionized the way diapers were changed to women whose revolutionary ideas changed the world.
1715
Sybilla Masters becomes the first American woman inventor in recorded history, though in accordance with the laws of the time, her patent for “Cleansing Curing and Refining of Indian Corn Growing in the Plantations” was issued in her husband Thomas’ name by the British courts. Her husband was issued a second patent for another of her inventions, entitled “Working and Weaving in a New Method, Palmetta Chip and Straw for Hats and Bonnets and other Improvements of that Ware.”
1809
Mary Dixon Kies of Connecticut becomes the first U.S. woman to be issued a patent in her own name, for her invention of a process for weaving straw with silk or thread.
1870
Martha Knight patents a machine to produce flat-bottomed paper bags. She also becomes the first woman in the United States to fight and win a patent suit, when she defended her patent against a man who had stolen her design and filed for his own patent on it. He claimed a woman couldn’t possibly have the mechanical knowledge needed to invent such a complex machine, but Knight was able to back up her claim. After her success, she went on to develop and patent several other machines, including rotary engines and automatic tools.
1875
Susan Taylor Converse of Woburn, Massachusetts, invents a one-piece, nonrestrictive flannel undergarment. It was patented by manufacturers George Frost and George Phelps and marketed to American women (eager to free themselves from traditional tightly bound corsets) as the “Emancipation Suit.”
1876
Susan Hibbard patents the feather duster over protestations of her husband, George Hibbard, who claimed the invention was his. The patent court justly awarded ownership of the patent to her.
1876
Emeline Hart, a member of the Shaker community, invents and patents a commercial oven featuring pierced metal shelves for even heating, four separate oven compartments, isinglass (mica) windows, and a temperature gauge.
1885
Sarah E. Goode, born a slave in 1850, obtains the first patent by an African American woman
inventor for her folding cabinet bed, a spacesaver that when folded up could be used as a desk, complete with compartments for stationery and writing supplies.
1888
Miriam Benjamin, a Washington, DC, schoolteacher, becomes the second black woman to receive a patent. Her invention, “The Gong and Signal Chair for Hotels,” allowed hotel customers to summon a waiter from the comfort of their chairs and was adapted and used in the United States House of Representatives.
1889
Josephine Garis Cochran, of Shelbyville, Illinois, invents the first working automatic dishwasher. Her invention was first shown at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, Illinois, and eventually went on to become associated with the KitchenAid company.
1902
Ida Henrietta Hyde is named the first female member of the American Physiological Society. She was also the first woman to graduate from the University of Heidelberg and the first woman to do research at the Harvard Medical School. She went on to invent the microelectrode in the 1930s, which revolutionized the field of neurophysiology.
1903
Mary Anderson, of Alabama, invents the windshield wiper. Patented in 1905, windshield wipers became standard equipment on cars a decade later.
1903
Scientist Marie Curie is awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for her discovery of the radioactive elements radium and polonium. She is awarded the Nobel Price for Chemistry in 1911, making her the first person to win two Nobel prizes.
PATENT FACTS
The U.S. Patent Act of 1790 allowed anyone to protect his or her invention with a patent. However, because in many states women could not legally own property independent of their husbands, many women inventors didn’t apply for patents, or only did so under their husbands’ names.
The majority of the U.S. origin patents held by women inventors are in chemical technologies.
About 35 percent of the women granted U.S. patents between 1977 and 1996 were from California, New York, or New Jersey.
With over 125 patents in areas related to organic compounds and textile processing, Dr. Giuliana Tesoro (born in 1921) is one of the most prolific scientists in the world.
1912
Beulah Henry of Memphis, Tennessee, receives her first patent, for an ice-cream freezer. She went on to create over 100 inventions, including the first bobbinless sewing machine, an umbrella with changeable covers, and continuously attached envelopes for mass mailings. She earned a total of forty-nine patents, the last one issued in 1970.
1914
Mary Phelps Jacob invents the modern bra. She was inspired to fashion a comfortable upper-body undergarment after becoming fed up with restrictive corsets. Her brassiere, made from two silk handkerchiefs and a ribbon, became so popular that after she patented the invention, she went on to sell it to the Warner Corset Company.
1930
Ruth Graves Wakefield, proprietor of the Toll House Inn in Whitman, Massachusetts, invents chocolate chips and chocolate chip cookies. Her cookie invention was called the Toll House Cookie and used broken-up bars of semi-sweet chocolate.
1932
Hattie Elizabeth Alexander, an American pediatrician and microbiologist, develops a serum to combat Hemophilus influenzae, which at that time had a fatality rate of 100 percent in infants. In 1964, she is the first woman to be elected president of the American Pediatric Society.
1935
Irene Joliot Curie, the French scientist and daughter of Marie Curie, is awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry with her husband, for their discovery of radioactivity, making the Curies the family with most Nobel laureates to date.
1938
Katherine Blodgett, American physicist, invents a micro-thin barium stearate film to make glass completely nonreflective and “invisible.” Her invention has been used in eyeglasses, camera lenses, telescopes, microscopes, periscopes, and projector lenses.
1941
The actress Hedy Lamarr invents (along with George Anthiel) a “Secret Communications System” to help combat the Nazis in World War II.
1950
Marion Donovan invents the disposable diaper. When established manufacturers show little interest in this invention, she starts her own company, Donovan Enterprises, which she sells along with her diaper patents to Keko Corporation in 1951 for one million dollars.
1951
Bessie Nesmith invents Liquid Paper, a quickdrying white liquid painted onto paper to correct mistakes. She was a secretary in Texas when she hit upon her invention, which became so successful it grew into the Liquid Paper Company. (Fun fact: Her son, Michael Nesmith, grew up to be a member of the 1960s rock group the Monkees.)
1952
Mathematician and U.S. naval officer Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper invents the computer compiler, which revolutionized computer programming. She and her team also developed the first user-friendly business computer programming language, COBOL (COmmon Business-Oriented Language).
1953
Dr. Virginia Apgar, a professor of anesthesiology at the New York Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, devises the Apgar Scale, a test now used all over the world to determine the physical status of a newborn baby.
1956
Patsy Sherman invents Scotchgard. She was inducted into the Minnesota Inventors Hall of Fame in 1983. Patsy Sherman and her colleague Sam Smith jointly hold thirteen patents in fluorochemical polymers and polymerization processes.
1957
Rachel Fuller Brown and Elizabeth Lee Hazen, researchers for the New York Department of Health, develop the anti-fungal antibiotic drug nystatin. The scientists donated the royalties from their invention, totaling over $13 million dollars, to the nonprofit Research Corporation for the Advancement of Academic Scientific Study. They were inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1994.
1958
Helen Free, a biochemist and expert on urinalysis, invents the home diabetes test. She and her husband were inducted to the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2000.
1964
Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin, a British biochemist and crystallographer, wins the 1964 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for using X-ray techniques to determine the structures of biologically important molecules, including penicillin, vitamin B-12, vitamin D, and insulin.
1964
Chemist Stephanie Louise Kwolek invents Kevlar, a polymer fiber that is five times stronger than the same weight of steel and is now used in bulletproof vests, helmets, trampolines, tennis rackets, tires, and many other common objects.
1966
Lillian Gilbreth becomes the first woman to be elected to the National Academy of Engineering. This inventor, author, industrial engineer, industrial psychologist, and mother of twelve children patented many kitchen appliances, including an electric food mixer, shelves inside refrigerator doors, and the foot-pedal, lid-opening trash can. In her work on ergonomics, she interviewed over 4,000 women to design the proper height for stoves, sinks, and other kitchen fixtures.
1975
Physicist Betsy Ancker-Johnson becomes the fourth woman elected to the National Academy of Engineering, one of the highest honors an engineer can receive.
1975
Dr. Chien-Shiung Wu is elected the first woman president of the American Physical Society. The nuclear physicist studied betadecay, worked on the Manhattan Project, and helped develop more sensitive Geiger counters.
1983
Barbara McClintock, an American scientist and cytogeneticist, becomes the first woman to win, unshared, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, for her discovery of a genetic mechanism called transposition.
1984
Frances Gabe invents the self-cleaning house. Each room of the house has a 10-inch square “Cleaning / Drying / Heating / Cooling” device on the ceiling. At the push of a button, the cleaning unit sends a powerful spray of soapy water around the room and then rinses and blow-dries everything. Each room has a sloped floor to aid the water drainage, and all valuable objects and other things that should not g
et wet are stored under glass. The house, in the woods of Oregon, also has self-cleaning sinks, bathtubs, and toilets; a cupboard that doubles as a dishwasher; and closets that can clean and dry the clothes hung inside them.
1988
Gertrude Belle Elion is awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. The biochemist invented many life-saving drugs, now commonly used to fight leukemia and other diseases.
1991
Chemist Edith Flanigen is awarded the Perkin Medal, the nation’s most distinguished honor in applied chemistry. She was the first woman ever to have received the award. She retired in 1994, having earned 108 U.S. patents in the fields of petroleum research and product development.
1993
Ellen Ochoa becomes the first Hispanic female astronaut in space. The veteran of three space flights, who has logged over 719 hours in space, is also an electrical engineer with patents on high-tech optical recognition systems and optical systems for spacecraft automation.
1993
Betty Rozier and Lisa Vallino, a mother and daughter team, invent the intravenous catheter shield, making the use of IVs in hospitals safer and easier.
1995
Physical chemist Isabella Helen Lugoski Karle receives the National Medal of Science for her work on the structure of molecules.
1997
Dr. Rosalyn Sussman Yalow wins the Nobel Prize in Medicine for her 1959 invention of RIA, a revolutionary way to diagnose illness at the molecular level.
1999
Eye surgeon Dr. Patricia Bath becomes the first African American woman doctor to receive a patent for a medical invention: a device that removes cataracts with a fiberoptic laser.
The Daring Book for Girls Page 14
