Fanny Campbell, the Female Pirate Captain
Fanny Campbell, the Female Pirate Captain: A Tale of the Revolution is an 1844 American
Plot
Fanny Campbell, the protagonist, is a young woman who lives in
On board the ship, rumors begin to circulate that the captain's going to take the entire crew to England and force them to join the
After she's freed her fiancée and the other prisoners, Campbell asks Lovell to promise not to reveal that she's actually a woman. On the way to Cuba, they encounter the British barque the George, whose captain senses something is amiss and orders his crew to open fire. Despite the superior firepower of the George, Campbell and her crew manage to win the battle, capturing the enemy ship and taking it along with them.
The two ships stop briefly in Cuba, then capture another British
Literary style
Neil Rennie, in Treasure Neverland: Real and Imagined Pirates, calls Fanny Campbell's author Ballou a "pioneer of
"A painter should have seen her there, her person modestly veiled yet displaying her form in most ravishing distinctness; her breast heaving with suppressed emotions, and her hands clasped and raised to Heaven. Her features were after the Grecian school, with a coral lip that would have melted an anchorite. Where Fanny got those eyes from, heaven only knows, they rivaled a Circassian's. Nature seems to have delighted her with every gift it might bestow. Her teeth were regular and white as pearls, and her hair was a very dark auburn, worn parted smoothly across her brow, and gathered in a modest snood behind her head, while it was easy to see by its texture that if left to itself, it would have curled naturally. Such was Fanny Campbell."[2]
Publication and influence
Ballou originally published the book in 1844 under the pseudonym "Lieutenant Murray". It quickly became popular, selling 80,000 copies at twenty-five cents each in just a few months:[3][4] Sixteen years after its initial publication, an 1860 ad by publisher Frederic Brady said "Fanny Campbell, the heroine, is one of the most interesting characters ever delineated, and her exploits surpass in boldness and brilliancy the most gallant exploits ever performed. This book is acknowledged by all who have read it to be the very best romantic history of the stirring incidents of our Revolutionary War ever written."[5]
Literary critic Barbara Cutter described Fanny Campbell in 2003 as one of a series of books in American
The book's popularity created a fashion for female pirates in scrimshaw artwork that continued for several decades in the 19th century.[10] Fanny Campbell scrimshaw continued to be popular in the 21st century, with one 19th century whale's tooth carved with a picture of Fanny Campbell selling for $5,000 at Christie's Auction House in 2009.[11]
Some authors of works about seafaring adventurers have misidentified Fanny Campbell as a real person.[12] Ballou's novel was retold as a true tale in Edward Rowe Snow's "Fanny Campbell, Who Loved and Won", in his 1953 story collection, "True Tales of Pirates and Their Gold". Gretchen J Woertendyke who examines the novel in Hemispheric Regionalism: Romance and the Geography of Genre states that Fanny Campbell was based on actual historical figures and circumstances.[13] "Ballou's adaptation takes the true story of Fanny and makes it strange," she writes. [14] Author Dr.
Further reading
Jo Stanley, Anne Chambers, Dian H. Murray, Julie Wheelwright, Bold in Her Breeches: Women Pirates Across the Ages, Pandora, 1995
References
- ^ Maturin Murray Ballou, "Fanny Campbell, The Female Pirate Captain: A Tale of The Revolution", E.D. Long, New York, 1844
- ^ Neil Rennie, Treasure Neverland: Real and Imaginary Pirates, OUP Oxford, Sep 12, 2013, p. 162
- ^ Neil Rennie, Treasure Neverland: Real and Imaginary Pirates OUP Oxford, Sep 12, 2013
- ^ Martha Ann Clough, Zuleika: Or, The Castilian Captive. A Romance of the Time of Ferdinand and Isabella F. Gleason, 1849, p. 101
- ^ Arthur M. Grainger, Golden Feather; Or, The Buccaneer of King's Bridge: A Warlike Romance of the Rivers and the Bay of New York: Being a Tale of Love and Glory of the War of 1812-'15 F.A. Brady, 1860 - United States, advertisement, p.91
- ^ Barbara Cutter, Domestic Devils, Battlefield Angels: The Radicalism of American Womanhood 1830-1865, Dekalb: Northern University Press, 2003
- ^ Margaret Cohen, The Novel and the Sea Princeton University Press, 2010
- ^ Patricia Majher, Great Girls in Michigan History, Wayne State University Press, Mar 1, 2015
- ^ Susan Peterson Gateley, Maritime Tales of Lake Ontario, Arcadia Publishing, Jun 26, 2012
- ^ Stuart M. Frank, Ingenious Contrivances, Curiously Carved: Scrimshaw in the New Bedford Whaling Museum David R. Godine Publisher, 2012
- ^ "Scrimshaw whale's tooth depicting the female pirate Fanny Campbell", Christies.com/
- ^ John C. Appleby, Women and English Piracy, 1540-1720: Partners and Victims of Crime, Boydell & Brewer Ltd, 2013, p.189
- ^ Gretchen J. Woertendyke, Hemispheric Regionalism: Romance and the Geography of Genre, Oxford University Press, Jul 1, 2016
- ^ Gretchen J. Woertendyke, Hemispheric Regionalism: Romance and the Geography of Genre, Oxford University Press, Jun 2, 2016
- ^ Dr. Linda Grant DePauw, Seafaring Women, Peacock Press, 1998