As far back as 480 BC, when Artemisia commanded her Greek trireme, women have taken to the high seas in pursuit of life and liberty. Simultaneously revered and reviled by superstitious male mariners, the realities of these women pirates' lives have been lost in a murky fog of sexual and racial preconceptions.

Bold in her Breeches takes a wholly fresh look at these mythical figures and places them in their true historical and cultural contexts. From Artemisia to the contemporary women pirates of today, via eighteenth-century Grace O'Malley and nineteenth-century Cheng I Sao, we learn why women took to piracy, what it was actually like, how they were regarded by people of their own time and what history has done to their stories.

What emerges, by virtue of insight, intuition and some wonderful research, is a retrieval of an entire women's seafaring history, culled from trial reports, from journalists' stories, and from the margins of history books. With contributions from Anne Chambers, Dian H. Murray and Julie Wheelwright as well as editor Jo Stanley, Bold in her Breeches is a riveting insight into a wild and salty world hitherto all but obscured from view.