*Cheng I Sao* -Historical Pirate
Cheng I Sao was born around 1775 in China. In 1801 at the age of 26, she was working as a prostitute when she caught the eye of the notorious pirate captain, Cheng I. The dashing pirate captain asked her to marry him, but even at that young age, Cheng I Sao was a shrewd wheeler-dealer. She agreed to marry him on the condition that they were to share power equally and that she would have the opportunity to help him build more wealth. Cheng was more than willing to have his new bride use her business acumen on his behalf, and for the next six years they terrorized the South China Coast from Macao to Canton. Coastal villages paid Cheng and his bride to keep them from raiding and pillaging in their area, and the pirate fleet even joined in a Vietnamese rebellion. Six years of wedded bliss, and Cheng and his lady were the most feared pirates in the South China Seas with a fleet of 400 junks and over 70,000 men.
In 1807, tragedy struck. Cheng was killed in a gale at sea, leaving the Lady Cheng a widow. At this point, Cheng I Sao might well have gone into retirement, leaving her husband’s adopted son Chang Pao to take up the captain’s position. But Lady Cheng was only 32, at the height of her power, and no slouch. Instead of stepping aside, she took up the reins of her husband’s empire, took her adopted son Chang Pao as her lover, and proceeded to build her fleet into the largest on the South China Seas.
Lady Cheng realized that despite her previous power beside her husband, it was likely that the men in her pirate fleet would not easily take the rule of a woman. She made Chang Pao her lieutenant and gave him direct command over her pirates while running the political, business, and strategic aspects of the fleet. She developed a strict code of laws that were brutally enforced. Many rules, if broken, incurred capital offenses punished by execution; commands were only to be given by the leaders, female captives were not to be raped, villages that paid their protection money were not to be raided, and the treasury was not to be touched. Even female captives who supposedly consented to relations with their pirate captors were chained about the legs and thrown overboard, while their captors were beheaded. Desertion was punished by the removal of an ear and public humiliation.
For a year Cheng I Sao attacked weak merchant vessels, coastal villages and inland villages along rivers, building her fleet and treasury, at the mercy of none except the weather. In 1808, the Chinese Imperial Navy attempted to reign in her depredations, but she destroyed fleet after fleet sent against her, and actually ended up with more ships in her fleet. She was known to have captured Imperial Navy officers tortured and killed. One man was nailed to a deck and beaten until he vomited blood, then taken ashore and cut to pieces. Others committed suicide when capture seemed imminent, to avoid a slow painful death. Villages who attempted to raise militias against her raids were punished in horrific fashion. In 1809, 80 men of the Sanshan village were beheaded and their wives and children held for ransom or sold into slavery for attempting to defend themselves against her fleet.
Shrewd, disciplined, and merciless, Lady Cheng seemed unstoppable. Then, in 1810, a rival appeared on the scene. O-Po-Tae, in a series of epic battles against Lady Cheng’s fleet, forced her to retreat, although he could not destroy her entirely. At a stalemate, both pirate leaders were ready and willing to accept the Chinese government’s generous pardon when it came in 1810. O-Po-Tae, fearing Lady Cheng’s revenge on him, accepted first, but Cheng I Sao was quick to follow, using her business acumen and power to negotiate a very sweet deal indeed for her men and herself.
Chang Pao and many of her pirates received military government positions, while the Lady Cheng retired from piracy and opened a successful gambling hall (and some sources also claim an opium smuggling operation) in Guangzhou.
Sao I Cheng died peacefully in 1844 at the age of 69, a wealthy business owner and grandmother as well as one of the most feared and respected pirates of her day.
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