Find this story in Sept mook #52, Moi, Anne Bonny, femme d'abordage
Escape has its limits. By constantly avoiding busy routes and outsmarting royal fleets, piracy runs into its own fatigue. The holds are empty, nerves are frayed, and the promise of freedom turns into frustration. In this dangerous waiting, sedition is born. Anne Bonny recognizes it immediately for what it is: a mortal threat if not confronted head-on.
Aboard La Confiance, authority is no longer proclaimed, it is exercised. Put to a vote, the decision to change course involves all the men, and Anne accepts the risk of facing a warship to preserve the crew's cohesion. By choosing Aruba, a smuggling refuge and rebel enclave, she demonstrates once again that strategy can substitute brute force. Under Dutch protection, the buccaneers regain a time of prosperity and arrogance, like in the troubled times of New Providence.
But dissension never completely disappears. The differences with Charles Vane sharpen to the breaking point. Elsewhere, mutiny takes down those who hesitate too long. Aboard La Confiance, Anne no longer hesitates. Recognized by Rackham and endorsed by the crew, she commands without masks or pretense. Orders are followed, decisions are owned.
This power, however, comes at a price. It exposes her to the violence of men as much as it contains it. In the lower deck, facing unleashed brutality, Anne acts decisively. A gunshot is enough to remind them of the law she now embodies. Under this wind of sedition, she governs not by indulgence but by necessity. To command here means to survive without giving up, and to impose a limit where nothing seems to have one anymore.
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by Sonya Trolliet
by Gérard A. Jaeger
