Morgan Adams (born 1629) was a notorious female pirate who captained the vessel Morning Star during the Golden Age of Piracy. She was best-known for her discovery of the treasure of Cutthroat Island in 1668.
Biography[]
Morgan Adams was born in 1629, the daughter of Black Harry and the niece of Douglas Brown and Mordechai Adams. Morgan was known to flinch when she was brought near her uncle Douglas while she was a toddler; he would later become one of her enemies. Adams became a pirate like her father, and she became a notorious person, using her beauty to deceive her opponents and to mask her ruthlessness. Governor Patrick Ainslee issued a bounty of £100 for her capture, but she constantly eluded him and his bounty hunters. In 1668, her father was mortally wounded by Brown, who sought to discover the location of the treasure of Cutthroat Island from his other two brothers, who were said to have pieces of a map to the island. Black Harry died in Morgan's arms after they made it to a cave, and Harry had Morgan scalp him, as his piece of the map was tattooed on his skull. Morgan continued the hunt for the map as the captain of her father's ship, the Morning Star, buying the Latin-speaking doctor William Shaw as a slave and having him help her with translating the maps; they would later start a romance. When she made it to the island, the chronicler John Reed sent her coordiantes to her uncle Brown and the Governor of Jamaica Patrick Ainslee, and Adams and Shaw managed to escape, while their crew, their ship, and their treasure were taken by Brown. However, Adams and Shaw managed to sneak aboard the Morning Star, free its crew from English soldiers in the brig, and retake the ship from the mutineers. They proceeded to engage Brown's Reaper in battle, and Adams killed Brown with a cannon. She then returned to her ship, reclaimed the treasure from the bottom of the ocean, and decided to set sail for Madagascar with the rest of her crew to embark on a new adventure.