8. History’s Most Extreme Female Pirate
Zheng Yi Sao, also known as Ching Shih or Madame Chin (1775 – 1844), was a Chinese Qing Dynasty pirate who terrorized South China in the early nineteenth century. She commanded tens of thousands of outlaws, and was arguably history’s most successful pirate. She challenged the British Empire, the Portuguese Empire, as well as the Chinese Qing Dynasty, and still survived to retire from piracy and into a peaceful life. A former prostitute who married a powerful pirate named Cheng, she 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”.
She was not just a widow who lucked into a huge inheritance: her own legacy as an infamous pirate far exceeded that of her departed husband. Her success owed much to her talent for 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 fifteen 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.
