Madame Ching, History’s Most Successful Pirate
Ching Shih, also known as Madame Ching (1775 – 1844), was a Chinese Qing Dynasty pirate who terrorized South China in the early 19th century, and was arguably history’s most successful pirate, commanding tens of thousands of outlaws. Despite challenging the British Empire, the Portuguese Empire, as well as the Chinese Qing Dynasty, she survived to retire from piracy and into a peaceful life.
She was a former prostitute who married a powerful pirate named Cheng, and participated fully in his piratical activities. Upon his death she inherited his outlaw realm, and became known as Ching Shih, Chinese for “Cheng’s Widow”. However, she was not just a widow who lucked into a huge inheritance: her own legacy as a pirate far exceeded that of her departed husband.
Her success owed much to her talent at choosing capable subordinates. The most formidable of them was Cheung Po Tsai (1783 – 1822), whose name translates as “Cheung Po, the Kid”. He was a poor fisherman’s son who was kidnapped at age 15 by Madame Ching and her husband, and pressed into their crews. The teenager exhibited a precocious talent for the new career suddenly thrust upon him, and rose swiftly through the ranks.
Before long, Cheung had become the Chings’ favorite protege and subordinate, and ended up getting adopted by them. After Cheng’s untimely death by drowning, Madame Ching took over his pirate fleet, and she selected Cheung as her right-hand man. The pirate queen and her adoptive son soon developed an incestuous affair and eventually married.
Madame Ching’s scale of piratical operations far exceeded anything seen in the Caribbean during the Golden Age of Piracy. At the height of her power, she controlled over 300 sailing ships, and commanded up to 80,000 outlaws. To put that in perspective, Blackbeard, the Age of Piracy’s most notorious villain, commanded no more than 4 ships and 300 men.
With her massive armada, Madame Ching effectively controlled and held for ransom the shipping lanes around southern China. Her widespread depredations and the resultant outcry finally compelled the Chinese authorities to launch a commensurately massive campaign to eradicate piracy and restore order. In 1810, seeing the writing on the wall and deciding that discretion was the better part of valor, she accepted a pardon. Madame Ching abandoned piracy, and returned to her hometown, where she opened a gambling house and brothel. She died peacefully in bed in 1844, surrounded by her family.
