Moray author Martha Bertrand pens a novel to shiver your timbers
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The amazing true story of a female pirate who disguised herself as a man has become the subject of a novel by a former Moray teacher.
Martha Bertrand, who until recently lived near Elgin, has long been fascinated by the life and times of the notorious Anne Bonny.
Brandishing a machete and a pair of pistols, Anne along with her pirate crew terrorised the Caribbean during the early 1700s.
What's more, she did all this while posing as a man due to the widespread superstition amongst sailors that it was bad luck for a woman to be on board a ship.
Wearing a man's jacket, long trousers and with a handkerchief tied about her head, Anne was eventually captured by the Royal Navy.
While most of the male pirates were too drunk on rum to defend themselves properly, she had fought bravely.
Yet now she faced execution along with the rest.
Anne's life was saved, however, by the fact that she was pregnant.
History lost track of Anne Bonny after she was imprisoned.
But that didn't deter Martha, who taught French at Gordonstoun for 16 years and now lives in Spain with her husband Christopher Hughes.
No Requiem for a Dead Pirate is the title of Martha's newly published novel.
Part fact, part fiction, the book takes up the story of Anne and her baby and relates what might have happened to them next.
Martha said: "I knew very little about Anne Bonny until we went on holiday to Nassau in the Caribbean when the boys were young.
"We visited the pirate museum there on the island and that's when I first learned the story of this incredible woman."
No Requiem for a Dead Pirate is Martha's debut novel, although she had already penned several factual books beforehand.
Martha said: "This has definitely been the one that I've enjoyed writing the most because Anne is such a fascinating character.
"The actual story came to me so quickly that it only took six months to complete – although I spent a lot longer than that on all the research."
More than one company was interested in the finished novel, however No Requiem for a Dead Pirate has been released by Olympia Publishers.
Martha's other books include Little Angel Don't Cry, which was published in 2005.
This tells her own moving story of being raised in an orphanage in France, having being abandoned by both her parents in Vietnam.
Her back catalogue also includes Flares and Graces ... and Carnaby Street, which tells of her adolescence in 1960s Paris and elsewhere.
As well as being available online No Requiem for a Dead Pirate is in stock at Waterstones.
