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 "Angry Penguins" group, received a severe setback, and the conservative element was undoubtedly strengthened." Controversy over Ern Malley continued for more than twenty years. It spread beyond Australia when it was learned that the British literary critic Herbert Read had been taken in by the hoax. Modernist novelists like Patrick White and abstract painters found themselves tarred with the Ern Malley brush. Since both McAuley and Stewart and the left-wing nationalist school around Vance and Nettie Palmer disliked the "Angry Penguins" version of modernism with equal venom, though for different reasons, Ern Malley cast a long shadow over Australian cultural