I was able last week, to name a pirate Gunpowder Gertie.
"A poor woman, Gertrude Stubbs dressed as a man so that she could work aboard as a coalman on the steamships traveling along the inland rivers of Whitby, an east coast port town in Britain. After an injury blinded her in one eye, the doctor discovered she was a woman and she was immediately fired from her job.
In revenge, she stole a police patrol boat, customized it into a fast-moving, reinforced gunboat which she named the Witch. Hoisting her Jolly Roger, she attacked paddleboats up and down the river using this boat, and was nicknamed Gunpowder Gertie.
One of her crew eventually betrayed her for a reward and clemency, and in a final battle with the law, he was killed along with most of her crew. Gertie was imprisoned and died of pneumonia. The location of her booty was never discovered."
Unfortunately it seems she is probably not an actual historical pirate. (From the same site...)
"The truth is, Gertie only exists as a figment of my overactive imagination. I made her up to explain a treasure hunt for some schoolchildren I was working with and in order to make her more credible, added a lot of the local history I've grown to love. We used her to take a tour of the area learning local history (true stuff as well ) and then dug up one of her treasures at the beach before we told them the truth. It was when the parents believed it (guess what, we had a lady pirate on Kootenay Lake in 1898 and everyone just forgot!), that it seemed too good not to have a little fun with it. A local paper, The Kootenay Review, ran the story as an April Fool's joke along with the explanation of how she'd been "lost" to history. It was amazing how many people fell for it hook, line and sinker! Best joke I've ever played and to my knowledge nobody got hurt (ok, disappointed, maybe)-end of story- I thought. Then, a few years later, Gertie turned up on her own, somehow, the story got sent to the CBC -not me, honest- and was used in a segment of Bob Johnson's program, This Day in History and they thought it was a true story. And that's how I ended up becoming an historical storyteller. I have much more of her life written out, and several adventures that I can tell, as well as the original legend, and have told her story as far as the Yukon International Storytelling Festival and England. She's taken on a life of her own. The Tyrant Queen has floated down Baker St. in the local parade, I have a treasure chest with treasure, there was a traveling exhibit of "artifacts and fiction". There's even a mockumentary of her life available on video. It's been lots of fun and ten years later, I still run into people who think she was real. And now, in a twisted way, she is real local history. When my father built my treasure chest when I was 5, I don't think he imagined I'd still be playing with it when I turned 40!
Carolyn McTaggart"
I knew this before I named my pirate Gunpowder Gertie, but that's ok. See, Gertrude was my Grandma's name, and her nickname was Gertie. So I thought I would have a little fun and run with a not really historical pirate who shared her first name.
