Saltblood by Francesca De Tores

In a rented room outside Plymouth in 1685, a daughter is born as her half-brother is dying. Her mother makes a decision: Mary will become Mark, and Ma will continue to collect his inheritance money.

Mary’s dual existence as Mark will lead to a role as a footman in a grand house, serving a French mistress; to the navy, learning who to trust and how to navigate by the stars; and to the army and the battlegrounds of Flanders, finding love among the bloodshed and the mud. But none of this will stop Mary yearning for the sea.

Drawn back to the water, Mary must reinvent herself yet again, for a woman aboard a ship is a dangerous thing. This time Mary will become something more dangerous than a woman.

She will become a pirate.

Breathing life into the Golden Age of Piracy, Saltblood is a wild adventure, a treasure trove, weaving an intoxicating tale of gender and survival, passion and loss, journeys and transformation, through the story of Mary Read, one of history’s most remarkable figures.

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I’m fascinated by the lives of Mary Read and Anne Bonny, notorious female pirates in the so-called Golden Age of Piracy, and so Francesca De Tores’ novel, Saltblood, appealed as soon as I heard about it.  Mary Read was born in the late 17^th century, and while her days of piracy mean that some records of her life remain where many women have been largely written out of history, some of the details of her life are left open to the author to imagine and create for herself. 

Mary Read and Anne Bonny are real historical figures – but I am not a historian.

Author’s note

From a young age, Mary was presented as her deceased half-brother, Mark, to allow her mother to continue to collect Mark’s inheritance money after his father disappeared.  It’s a pretence that they keep up even in private, and it becomes so ingrained in their routines that it becomes more fact than fiction to them both, even when the payments cease after the death of Mark’s grandmother.  Given the drudgery of her mother’s life, one can’t help but feel that Mary has had a lucky escape in taking on her half-brother’s life, and she experiences a greater degree of freedom than she might have done otherwise.  It’s something that Mary herself recognises as she grows older, and even though she must take pains to avoid being caught in the lie, it seems that many accept what they’re told with only a few bothering to look beyond the surface. 

As Mary becomes old enough to work, she continues with the ruse and joins a household as a footman, later joining the navy, and then becoming a soldier.  It’s a fascinating life, even before she becomes a pirate.  Throughout, Mary remains wary of the constant risk of discovery, particularly aboard the naval ship and in the army, finding ways to hide what she does and doesn’t have from those around her.  In the army, she falls in love with a fellow soldier, and the two marry (with Mary admitting to her gender) and leave the army to run an inn in the Netherlands.  We know that this period can’t last, and if it’s a happier time for Mary, it’s short-lived, and she returns to the sea after her husband’s death, eventually making it to the pirate stronghold of Nassau. 

While there might be freedom in presenting as a man at this time, De Tores portrays Mary as an individual who struggles with their identity throughout the novel, never seeming entirely comfortable as either a man or a woman, despite putting on a good show externally.  This struggle with who she is and what she wants is very well-portrayed throughout, and Mary’s gender fluidity gives Saltblood a timely feel despite its historical setting.  It’s not stated, and it would be entirely incongruous to the setting of the novel if it were, but there’s a real sense that Mary would choose gender-neutral pronouns given the opportunity to do so, and it adds a modern-day relevance to the novel that I wasn’t expecting.  It is conjecture, and Mary may well have been entirely comfortable as she was, but it adds depth to the character that De Tores portrays to the reader.

While the novel was enjoyable, I have to admit that it didn’t live up to my expectations.  As a novel charting the life of one of the few women to step outside of the role expected of them, it lacked the danger and excitement that I was hoping for.  While the naval ship she was on wasn’t one that would have been sent into battle, her time in the army would have been fraught with danger, and there’s no sense, even in the midst of battle, that anything untoward might happen.  We know that she makes it through that time, but I can’t believe that she was never in harm’s way.  This continues in her time as a pirate.  De Tores doesn’t glamourise piracy in anyway, but I think that there must have been a thrill in commandeering a vessel and whatever they’re carrying, and that just doesn’t come across at all.

Similarly, I didn’t like the portrayal of Anne Bonny, the other most notorious female pirate of the age, in this novel.  Bonny is presented here as a something of a whimsical individual, albeit one with a knack for survival, who takes up with “Calico” Jack Rackham, and is happy to wield a sword or shoot a pistol from time to time.  There’s no sense that she is a pirate in her own right, and it felt to me that she was reduced to the role of a lover.  She may well have been that, but I can’t help but see it as a relegation in status when there’s the potential for so much more from that character.

Mary Read’s story will never not be fascinating to me, and De Tores writes beautifully.  But for me, Saltblood lacked the excitement that I feel should be a given in a novel about piracy, and I’d recommend Julie Walker’s Bonny and Read over this novel for those looking for a fictional account of the lives of these two notorious women.