There is something intriguing about the concept of pirates, but aside from seeing them dramatized in movies and television shows I can confirm that the legacy of pirates is unequivocally true, and not by personal experience, but in depth page turning research. I started a contest manuscript of five thousand words or less and I was lured into the concept of Pirates, mostly out of my usual fantasy wheel-house. I still couldn’t shake this idea that had been creeping on me about a female pirate tracking down her Captain Lover across the sea. During my research I came across the inspiration of an American Pirate, Rachel Wall, and she’s entirely everything I wish I could be. Modern America would not approve.
I connected with this woman’s story on many levels, especially the inner child in me that wants to desperately sail the seas as a Pirate. Let’s start with her childhood, shall we? Rachel Wall, otherwise known by her maiden name, Rachel Schmidt, was born into a devoted Christian family in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in 1760. In Rachel Wall’s Life, Last Words and Dying Confession of Rachel Wall, She mentions her parents as “honest and reputable parents, who were alive and in good health not long since.” This is one of the only times in her last words that she mentions her parents. Though, Rachel does mention that her father was a Farmer and she was provided a good education. I was raised in Pennsylvania, but that was 235 years later. Nearly separated by two and a half centuries, my iconic historical heroine is out of my mortal reach.
The legend of Rachel’s adventure to becoming a Pirate is one for the truest story tellers- So, I’ve decided to tell you in my own way. While the legend is passed on and slightly changes here and there I’m going to stick to the facts that history knows of.
During the 1770's, as a mere teenager the docks and ports were dangerous for women, but if we’re being entirely honest, almost everywhere was dangerous for women in those days. Yet, she was brave and ventured there anyway, enticed by the waterfront. It was said she was attacked at the dock; truly a damsel in distress, a heroine in need of a hero. George Wall happened to be in port that day and was the hero of her distress. It was love at first sight. Rachel was swooning over the heroics of her pirate hero. George Wall wasn’t new to voyaging across the sea. Rachel was 16 when, against her parent’s wishes, she married the man of her dreams. Rachel recounts her parent’s disapproval in her last words saying, “and if I had followed the good advice I should never have come to this untimely fate.”
Their journey took them from Pennsylvania to Philadelphia, on to New York, and then they finally arrived in Boston. It was here where their lives and love of the sea started. Their adventure starts with George leaving Rachel behind as he goes off on a voyage taking him away from her for two full years. She was left, a stranger in a strange place. Rachel took up being a house servant and lived in contention. Upon his return George enticed her to join him on his voyages and glamorizing his life out at sea. It’s told that they eventually ran out of funds leaving them with two choices: return to the civilized world and go back to working as a house servant, or begin pirating. Rachel refers to their motley crew as being “bad company” in her last words. As much as I’d like to say she’s a pot calling the kettle black, she’s probably not far off the marker anyways. Keeping company with her would have also been “bad company”, no matter her sex.
Rachel and George devised an incredible strategy. They didn’t chase their victims down on an incredibly fast ship with the devil’s breath in their sails; No, they lured them in. Their vessel was a stolen ship from ESSEX and named after such, but is often confused with being the actual ESSEX, which was built ironically in Massachusetts, the death place of Rachel, but was sunk by a sperm whale in 1820. George and Rachel disguised their ship as being in need of rescue, Rachel waving from the deck for aid. Any and all commercial voyagers were a target for George, and without Rachel he would have never been able to make a living bringing so many crews to their doom.
Interestingly enough, Rachel blamed George for all of her ruin. Unbeknownst to Rachel, her husband was consumed overboard by a storm that wreaked havoc over the ocean. In her last words she says, “I hope my unhappy fate will be a solemn warning to him. He went off again and left me, and where he is now I know not.” Everything about her last words screams the resentment she had built over her husband after being left behind in Boston for a second time. She continued her piracy from the docks when she was left, robbing the vessels, abandoned and sometimes right from under the crews as they slept. Her resentment for her husband ended in an unexpected way, though. In her last words she beseeches God, “forgive him, as I expect forgiveness at the bar of God, through the merits of my dear Savior and Redeemer, Jesus Christ, who is able to save all those that, by faith, come unto him, not refusing even the chief of sinners.”
As with most stories of pirates, save for the story of Captain Jack Sparrow, her pirating journey meets with a violent and lonesome end. Her arrest was made in Boston for the crime of highway robbery. Rachel denied the claims but continued on by admitting to many acts of piracy. “I acknowledge myself to have been guilty of a great many crimes, such as Sabbath-breaking, stealing, lying, disobedience to parents, and almost every other sin a person could commit, except murder; and have not lived in the fear of God, nor regarded the kind admonitions and counsels of man.” Yet, she was hanged for simple robbery of a bonnet. It was evident that Rachel Wall would not deny her acts as a Pirate and would have been satisfied as being hanged as one, instead. She says, “to the crime of Robbery, for which I am in a few hours to suffer an ignominious death. I am entirely innocent to the truth of this declaration- I appeal to that God before whom I must shortly appear, to give an account of every transaction of my life.”
Her trial just happened to attract some names of reputation, including Robert Treate Paine, who signed the Declaration of Independence. Robert asked for the death sentence of a “hardened criminal twice before convicted of felonious stealing.” Robert set the stage for Rachel’s untimely end of just 29 years old. Her hanging was signed off by the one and only John Hancock.
Thursday October 8, 1789 dawned and ended with Rachel being hung alongside William Smith and William Dunogan. History claims that Rachel was the last woman that suffered this gruesome fate in Boston. Historians also claim that Rachel was one of England’s only female Pirates.
Accounts of her story and the dates of her death seem to be debated among many historians, journalists, and reporters, but one thing will remain true: Rachel Wall lived a life of adventure and unrest, living life to its utmost fullest. Although, Rachel seemed to die regretting her choice to be a Pirate in her final hours. Many questions still remain about the legend that may never be answered: Did Rachel only go on some voyages? If she had gone on all their voyages, how was she not present during the disaster that claimed the lives of her crew and her late husband at sea? Did she simply miss the voyage or did their love dwindle and die with their constant adventures at sea?
When my research on Rachel first started I was consumed with the story book way her life unfolded before me. As I neared the end I was subject to the reality of most story-book-like lives, most of them didn’t end in a pleasant way that would be approved of in modern times. She had what started to be a Pirate Princess story that ended with her and her love mysteriously separated and his life lost to the bottomless depths of the open seas. My conclusion: Fairy tales don’t exist in reality, but Rachel was the Bada$$ woman pirate we all want to be today.
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Citations and Research:
- Evans Early American Imprint Collection; Life, last words and dying confession, of Rachel Wall, who, with William Smith and William Dunogan, were executed at Boston, on Thursday, October 8, 1789, for high-way robbery, BOSTON-GOAL,WEDNESDAY EVENING, October 7, 1789.
- New England Historical Society; Rachel Wall, New England’s Only Lady Pirate, updated in 2021.
- Walk Boston History; RACHEL WALL, THE LAST FEMALE HANGED IN MASSACHUSETTS
- The New England Pirate Museum; Pirate Biographies
- Britannica; Essex, American whaling ship [1799–1820], Amy Tikkanen
- History Collection; Female Pirates Who Were Every Bit as Fearsome as Blackbeard, D.G. Hewitt — March 1, 2018
- National Park Services; Rachel Wall, Pirate, August 28, 2018