Haul Away the Anchor

APRIL 2025

Nettie grins widely. “She reminisced for a time, but Thomas was patient. He knew he’d be getting the story of a lifetime, so he sat in silence until she was ready. They remained that way for half an hour; she only looked back at him when the sky got so dark, she couldn’t see the water anymore.”

Lainey leans forward in her chair, completely enthralled. “And she began her tale?”

Nettie smirks, nodding shortly. “And she began her tale.”

1782

1698, Ireland; I was born in a cell. Scandalous, I know, yet such may be why I am what I am. My father was a prosperous attorney, my mother his maid; William McCormac and Mary Brennan.

Why a cell, you wonder. Five months prior, Mother was falsely imprisoned; Father’s scornful wife suspected the affair and wished for retribution. Her anger was misplaced; Father was the cause, yet she aimed her sights on Mother.

I still do not know if being with him, in that way, was what Mother wanted. I fear I was conceived from attacks.

I was not in the cell for very long; word of my birth quickly reached Father’s ears and I was whisked away from Mother’s presence. She was left to rot.

Father littered his wife with gifts and praises. She soon forgave and forgot the ordeal and her suspicions, and Mother was set free from her cell. She was not allowed to see me, yet she did so in secret.

Fearful his wife would learn the truth, he dressed me as a plucky boy. His wife, however, saw through the sham in my eighth year. She cut off the allowance she’d been giving and, soon after, everyone knew of the scandal. Father was the shame of the town.

No one wished to work with him further; his reputation was damaged, ruined by the scandal he placed himself within. In a year's time, we upped and left on a stormy sea; we hauled away the anchor.

Cork was where we first ventured. Even there, his reputation was known. We did not stay more than a month.

On the voyage here, though then this was the Province of Carolina, Mother developed an illness that did not go away. By my eleventh year, she was gone.

Losing her was a pain I couldn’t believe. That pain remained for years. I was mad, out of control; lashing out with violent blows. I stabbed a maid, which led to her death; she talked poorly of Mother. I was fourteen when I severely beat a man with a club, crippling him; he'd made a pass at me.

I was bad, volatile as the sea.

In the meantime, Father attempted to continue his career in law. Ultimately, he moved on with merchandising instead. Somehow, he was more successful as a merchant than as an attorney, and that was how we ended up on a large plantation with multiple maids, one of which was the woman I murdered.

In my sixteenth year, Father harried me to marry soon. He had someone in mind; some boring, moneyed well-to-do. Day by day, his insistence grew.

It drove me out of our home one day; I went to our local tavern. It was there that I met James Bonny, Jim to his friends. He was a sailor. He had no wealth or rank or influence.

Within a fortnight, we were wed and Father was outraged. In his eyes, I was no longer his daughter. I cared not for the money he kept from me; I longed to sail on the ocean and Jim was living that life.

I did not get what I wanted. I escaped one terror, only to enter another.

I never grew to love him.

I grew to hate him.

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Here are the links to part one and part two: