-AT THE
DAWN OF THE 19th century, a former
prostitute from a floating brothel in the city of Canton was wed to Cheng I, a fearsome pirate who operated in the South China Sea in the Qing dynasty.
-commanded over 1,800 pirate ships, and an estimated 80,000 men. In comparison, the famed Blackbeard commanded four ships and
300 pirates.
-She pirated longer. She made more money. She surrendered of her own free will, got to keep her money, and live out the rest of her days in freedom, as opposed to being murdered by a
government like Blackbeard.
-Ching Shih unified her enormous fleet of pirates using a code of laws. The code was strict: any pirate giving his own orders or disobeying those of a superior was to be beheaded on the spot. The code was particularly unusual in its laws regarding
female captives. If a pirate raped a
female captive, he would be put to
death. If the sex between the two was consensual, both would be put to
death. There are further accounts of Ching Shih’s code that state that if a pirate took a captive as his wife, he was required to be faithful to her
-The Red
Flag Fleet under Ching Shih’s rule went undefeated
-Ching Shih died in 1844, at the ripe old age of 69. The legacy she left behind from the time of her rule has penetrated popular culture. She even inspired a character in the The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise: the powerful Mistress Ching, one of the nine Pirate Lords.