When people talk about the most
successful pirate that ever lived, it better
be about one particular badass
that commanded a fleet of as many
as 80,000 sailors aboard 1,500
ships during the early 1800s.
This pirate’s name was Chang Shih,
who didn’t exactly look the part by our
Disneyfied standards for one fairly
obvious reason: she was a lady.
Plucked from a brothel in Canton by
invading pirates, she was married off to
a notorious pirate named Zheng Yi in
1801. But she didn’t resign to the idle
life of a house ship wife, opting instead
to help her husband be even better at
piracy than he already was.
Together, they patched together a
coalition of competing pirates groups into
the the Red Flag Fleet, which became an
incontestable naval force in the South
China Sea at its height. When Zheng Yi
died in 1807, there was no other choice
but for Chang Shih to take the reins.
As head of the Red Flag Fleet, she
imposed a strict code of conduct and
ensured those who broke the rules
received a punishment befitting her brutal
reign over the region’s seas. Shih was
notorious for pillaging seaside villages,
but maintained strict protection over
villagers who supported her cause,
beheading her own pirates if they defied
this rule.
Her side hustle was a lucrative string of
brothels, and all women, prostitute or
not, were protected from rape by her
sword during her reign. If a pirate took
a wife, he had to be faithful. Cheating,
raping and even consensual sex with
captive women was punishable by death.
But apart from plundering the Guandong
coast, she established elaborate spy
networks and even allied with farmers to
keep her fleet fed, employing her late
husband’s right-hand man (and new
lover) Chang Po Tsai.
Needless to say, besides the
nickname “The Terror of the South
China Sea,” she earned the unwanted
attention of the Qing dynasty’s navy. But
even they buckled after three years of
chasing her, and gave her amnesty in
1810 — letting the saltiest pirate to ever
roam the seas retire like a boss.
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