History's most successful pirate may have been a woman who retired rich.
In the early 1800s, Zheng Yi Sao led a pirate confederation in the South China Sea that at its height counted hundreds of junks and tens of thousands of pirates. She fought the Qing, Portuguese and British. Then she negotiated a surrender that let her keep ships and avoid prosecution, and retired to run a gambling house.
She was born Shi Yang around 1775 near Xinhui in Guangdong. In 1801 she married the pirate Zheng Yi, and became known as Zheng Yi Sao, 'wife of Zheng Yi'; in the West she is often called Ching Shih. In 1805 her husband united rival pirate gangs into a confederation of six fleets, each flying a different coloured flag. Even then it reportedly numbered about 400 junks and between 40,000 and 70,000 pirates.
When Zheng Yi fell overboard in a gale in 1807, she took control, balancing the rival factions and relying on Zhang Bao, her husband's adopted son, who commanded the largest fleet. A Qing official who later negotiated with them reported that Zhang Bao obeyed her orders and consulted her before acting. The two became partners and later married. Under their leadership the confederation grew more active, defeating Qing forces and clashing with European ships.
The tide turned in 1809. The Qing cut off supplies and allied with the Portuguese at Macau, whose ships carried modern cannon, and rivalries split the confederation. In April 1810, to break a stalemate in negotiations, she led a delegation of women and children to the viceroy's office in Guangzhou herself and won her terms. The pirates surrendered more than 17,000 people and 226 ships, and she kept 24 vessels and her freedom. Zhang Bao went on to serve as a Qing officer. She died in 1844, aged about 68, as the proprietor of a gambling house.
Some famous details are wrong. The strict pirate codes often credited to her, including rules protecting female captives, were actually issued by Zhang Bao according to a Qing account based on first-hand testimony. The misattribution probably began with Philip Gosse's 1932 History of Piracy, which drew on a flawed 1831 translation. Jorge Luis Borges fictionalised her in a 1935 story, and she inspired a character in a Pirates of the Caribbean film.
Source: Wikipedia — Zheng Yi Sao · Text summarised from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
