Mary Read practical clothing that solidified their working place on board the ship among the other seamen. When Bonny told Read that she was a woman (apparently because she was attracted to her), Read revealed that she too was a woman. To abate the jealousy of her lover, Rackham, who suspected romantic involvement between the two, Bonny told him that Read was a woman. Speculation over the relationship between Bonny and Read led to images depicting the two in battle together. A victim of the pirates, Dorothy Thomas, left a description of Read and Bonny: They "wore men's jackets, and long trousers,
Ern Malley of surrealist poetry in their own right, lauded by poets and critics such as John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch and Robert Hughes. The poems of Ern Malley are now more widely read than those of his creators, and the affair has inspired works by major Australian writers and artists, such as Peter Carey and Sidney Nolan. American poet and anthologist David Lehman called Ern Malley "the greatest literary hoax of the twentieth century". James McAuley and Harold Stewart were both, in 1944, in the Army Directorate of Research and Civil Affairs. Before the war they had been part of Sydney's Bohemian