Posts by Pamela
From the Archives: The Most Successful Pirate in History
Any guesses? Edward Teach, commonly known as Blackbeard? Captain Kidd? Captain Morgan?* Grace O Malley, aka the Pirate Queen? Sir Francis Drake?** None of them are even close, though Drake has the distinction of capturing what may well have been the largest prize taken in a single raid: the Spanish galleon Cacafuego. The title goes…
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From the History in the Margins Archives: Before Rosie the Riveter…
A generation before Rosie the Riveter, munitionettes “manned”* Britain’s factories and mines, replacing the men who volunteered for General Kitchener’s New Army in 1914 and 1915. Women were initially greeted in the work force with hostility. Male trade unionists argued that the employment of women, who earned roughly half the salary of the men they…
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Bess of Hardwick–Merry Widow?
As I mentioned recently, I’ve been thinking about widows in the context of writing about women warriors. As a result, I took a little side trip through the concept of the merry widow*–which brought me to someone I haven’t thought about in a long time, Bess of Hardwick, the Countess of Shrewsbury. (Or more formally,…
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