Since the last two women we talked about were both actresses from the early 1900’s, I thought we could use a change of pace from colorless film stars. So this week we focus on one of the most amazing rags to riches (or beds to battleships) stories in history: The Story of Ching Shih.

Ching Shih has been named the greatest pirate of all time, blowing Blackbeard, Henry Morgan, and Sir Francis Drake clear out of the water. At the height of her power, she ruled over 1,800 ships with about 80,000 pirates in her crew. For comparison, Blackbeard’s highest crew count was about 300 men. While the sheer size of her rule is enough to grant her this title, it was actually the way she ruled that put her above the rest. However, before we examine the code of conduct for the Red Fleet, let’s look at how Ching Shih rose to her position.

At the age of 26, Shih was abducted by pirates from the brothel she worked for. Soon after this life (and world) altering event, she married Captain Cheng I, the commander of the Red Fleet pirates. Most people would have expected her to shrink into the shadows of his chambers, a quiet wife to one of the world’s most powerful men, but Shih ruled the fleet by his side as his equal (apparently it was a part of their marriage agreement). However, she remarried Cheng’s first mate a few years later after his sudden death, of which the cause still remains a mystery. From here, she became the most powerful woman in the world with a crew of 80,000 under her command. Her fleet controlled the southern China seas and made quite a profit selling safe passage through their waters to merchants. Yet it wasn’t the profit or size of her fleet that made her the greatest pirate of all time, it was the strictly enforced rules she put in place that kept her crew in line:

• She must approve all raids 
• Loot will be distributed fairly
• Zero-tolerance policy for rape or even con-sexual sex between pirates and female captors, unless they were willing to marry and be faithful (punishable by beating or death)
• Deserters, if caught, would have their ears cut off and passed around the ship as a form of shame

It was this code of conduct that allowed Shih to control the “Terror of South China”, spending 9 years ruling the southern asian seas, at which the entire crew retired with full pockets and a full pardon from the Qing emperor as a peace treaty. While it has yet to be confirmed, most sources believe that Shih spent the rest of her years running a gambling house and brothel in southern China until her death in 1844 at the age of 69. Yet even centuries after her rule, her legacy lives on, inspiring a character in The Pirates of the Caribbean movies : Mistress Ching, one out of nine pirate lords in the films. One of the biggest lessons we can learn from her extremely impactful life is how deception and passion  is not always the answer. Ching Shih rose to power through honesty, intelligence, and reasoning. Her crew may have feared her, but they also respected her, something that was virtually unheard of at the time. Ching Shih showed the world that a woman can do any job just as well and even better than a man just by being the most level-headed person in the room (or brig).

References

Shen, Ann. “Ching Shih .” Bad Girls throughout History: 100 REMARKABLE Women Who Changed the World, by Ann Shen, Chronicle Books, 2016, pp. 44–45.

𝐕𝐢𝐬𝐡𝐧𝐮 “Ching Shih: A Prostitute Who Became History’s Deadliest Pirate.” History of Yesterday, 25 Sept. 2020, historyofyesterday.com/ching-shih-a-prostitute-who-became-historys-deadliest-pirate-f596f7fcff23.