From the Archives: The Most Successful Pirate in History
Any guesses? Edward Teach, commonly known as Blackbeard? Captain Kidd? Captain Morgan?* Grace O Malley, aka the Pirate Queen? Sir Francis Drake?** None of them are even close, though Drake has the distinction of capturing what may well have been the largest prize taken in a single raid: the Spanish galleon Cacafuego.
The title goes to Cheng I Sao (aka Hsi Kai Ching, Ching Shih, Lady Ching, or Mrs. Ching depending on the vintage and quality of the account you read), who terrorized the South China Seas in the first half of the nineteenth century--a time when many Chinese women were literally hobbled by bound feet.***
Piracy was a family business in nineteenth century China. Pirate clans lived on their boats--some of them lived their entire lives without setting foot on land. Within the world of the pirates. some women held rank, commanded ships, and fought shoulder to shoulder with their male counterparts. Cheng I Sao took female participation in the family business to a new level.
According to popular accounts, Cheng I Sao was a Canton prostitute who married the successful pirate Cheng I in 1801 and soon became his partner in building a successful confederation of pirates from competing clans. When Cheng I died in 1807, his widow took over. She avoided succession struggles by appointing her adopted stepson as her second in command and later marrying him.
At the height of her success, Cheng I Sao controlled 1500 ships and more than 70,000 men, organized in six fleets, each with its own flag and commander. (Talk about a pirate queen!) Her fleets attacked ships of all kinds, from small traders to imperial war ships, and ran a protection racket along the coast.
By 1809, Cheng I Sao was powerful enough to threaten the port city Canton (now Guangzhou). The Chinese government turned to the European powers for help, leasing the 20-gun ship HMS Mercury and six Portuguese men-of-war. Big guns were not enough to defeat the pirate admiral's fleet. In 1810, the Chinese changed tactics and offered the pirates amnesty.
Cheng I Sao decided it was in her best interests to negotiate peace terms with the Chinese empire. She proved to be as effective at the bargaining table as she was on the deck of a ship: the Chines granted her pirates universal amnesty, the right to keep the wealth they had accumulate, and jobs in China's military bureaucracy. Cheng I Sao retired in Canton, where she reportedly lived a peaceful life until her death at 69 "so far as was consistent with the keeping of an infamous gambling house." ****
* Not just a brand of rum
**After all, a privateer is just a pirate with a license to steal
***They were also barred from holding public office and had limited opportunities for education and employment, but this didn't make China unique.
****What? You expected her to take up knitting and mahjong?
From the History in the Margins Archives: Before Rosie the Riveter…
A generation before Rosie the Riveter, munitionettes "manned"* Britain's factories and mines, replacing the men who volunteered for General Kitchener's New Army in 1914 and 1915.
Women were initially greeted in the work force with hostility. Male trade unionists argued that the employment of women, who earned roughly half the salary of the men they replaced, would force down men's wages.** Some argued that women did not have the strength or the technical skills to do the work.
When universal male conscription was passed in 1916, need out-weighed social resistance. By the 1918, 950,00 women worked in Britain's munitions industry, outnumbering men by as much as three to one in some factories.
The hours were long and the work was dangerous. Munitionettes were popularly known as "canary girls" because prolonged exposure to toxic sulphuric acid tinged their skin yellow. Deadly explosions were common.
Munitionettes were not the only women to enter Britain's work force in World War I. Another 250,000 joined the work force in jobs that ranged from dockworkers and firefighters*** to government clerks, nurses, and ambulance drivers. The number of women in the transport industry alone increased 555% during the war.
At the end of the war, most of the munitionettes and their fellow war workers were replaced by returning soldiers. Many of them were probably glad to go. But the definition of "women's work" had been permanently changed. The thin edge of the wedge had been inserted.
* So to speak.
** Evidently the simple solution of negotiated for women to be paid an equal wage for equal work did not occur to male dominated unions. As a consequence, women's trade unions saw an enormous increase in membership during the war.
*** Imagine fighting a fire in a long skirt and petticoats.
Bess of Hardwick–Merry Widow?
As I mentioned recently, I've been thinking about widows in the context of writing about women warriors. As a result, I took a little side trip through the concept of the merry widow*--which brought me to someone I haven't thought about in a long time, Bess of Hardwick, the Countess of Shrewsbury. (Or more formally, Elizabeth Talbot, Countess of Shrewsbury)
Bess of Hardwick at the time of her third marriage
Bess of Hardwick ends up in academic discussions of merry widows because of a scurrilous little verse penned in the eighteenth century by Horace Walpole:**
Four times the nuptial bed she warmed,
And every time so well performed,
That when death spoiled each husband’s billing
He left the widow every shilling.
Like all the best pieces of character assassination, Walpole's verse is true in its essentials.
Bess of Hardwick was one of the most successful social climbers of the Tudor period. She was born Elizabeth Hardwick, the third daughter of five surviving children in a family of respectable but impoverished gentry. She rose to become the Countess of Shrewsbury and the most powerful and wealthiest woman in England next to Queen Elizabeth, though a series of four marriages. She married her way up--each husband richer and more important than the last, ending with the powerful Earl of Shrewsbury.*** While they may not have left her every shilling, she certainly became a little wealthier as each husband died. Unlike many widows of the time, she fought for the right to control her inheritance(s). She managed her own finances. She invested wisely. (Basically, she believed that real estate, not diamonds, is a girl's best friend.)
She also became embroiled in the convoluted power politics of the Tudor court. While married to her third husband, she ended up in the Tower for seven months for the crime of being a friend of Lady Catherine Grey--and not spilling the beans to Elizabeth about Catherine's secret marriage of Edward Seymour. As the wife of the Earl of Shrewsbury, she served for fifteen years as the companion and jailer of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scotland, with whom she gossiped and practiced new embroidery techniques.**** (She also spied on her for Queen Elizabeth and Elizabeth's chief advisor, Lord Cecil. ) During this period, Bess ended up in the Tower again for a brief period because she allowed (or encouraged) her daughter to marry Charles Lennox--a member of the Stuart family in line to succession to the throne--without Queen Elizabeth's permission. (The Queen was not amused)
Eventually, the stress of guarding Mary destroyed the Shrewsbury marriage. Bess and her husband were estranged at the time of his death. Now 63, she chose not to marry a fifth time. Instead she flung herself into her true passion: building and renovating houses. The most famous of these was Hardwick New Hall--described at the time as being more "more glass than wall." Mies Van der Rohe would have approved.
*A fascinating social trope that ultimately played no role in the chapter, though it did inhabit a footnote for a few drafts. This is how I end up with chapters that are 30% too long. Luckily My Own True Love is merciless at pointing out when I've gone off on an historical toot.
**Exactly the kind of man who would try to whittle down powerful women. Not that I’m opinionated on the subject.
***Just to complicate matters, Bess and the Earl arranged for two of Bess's children from her third marriage married two of the Earl's children from his first marriage. Talk about a blended family!
****In addition to being intelligent and ambitious, Bess was also one heck of a needlewoman.***** In fact, she first caught my attention many years ago thanks to my lifelong interest in embroidery. (Even history buffs need other hobbies.) She is best known in needleworking circles as the creator of five embroidered hangings titled Noblewomen of the Ancient World, among whom are included two of the women warriors in my widows chapter, Artemisia II and Zenobia. How's that for bringing things round full circle?
*****So was Mary, for that matter. Perhaps she would have been better off if she stuck to her knitting?