5. Challenging Gender Roles and Superstition
Anne Dieu-le-Veut accompanied her new hubby on his buccaneering. Badass through and through, she fought by his side, and shared his work and the command of his ship. Anne differed from other female pirates of the era, in that she made no attempt to conceal her sex. Instead, she went about openly as a woman, notwithstanding the superstition that women aboard ship were bad luck. Instead, her ship’s crew saw her as a kind of mascot and lucky charm.
In 1693, Anne and her husband attacked the English in Jamaica. In retaliation, in 1695, the English attacked Port-de-Paix in Haiti, where Anne dwelt when ashore. The English captured and sacked the town, and took Anne and her children prisoner. They were kept hostage for three years, before they were finally released in 1698. Following her release from captivity, Anne Dieu-le-Veut disappears from the historic record. Unconfirmed stories have her and Laurens de Graaf settling in Mississippi or Alabama, but the last reliable mention of her is her death in 1710.