March 9, 2011 • 28 mins
When people think of pirates, they usually picture male, western scoundrels flouting the law throughout the Caribbean. However, piracy is not a solely western pursuit. Listen in as Deblina and Sarah recount the exploits of pirates in the South China Sea.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm their Dowdy and I'm to blay a truck reporting.
And you know, when you think about historical pirates, you
usually picture the Pirates of the Caribbean Johnny Depp variety scoundrels,
(00:25):
social deviants, basically working by themselves and every ship for
itself type capacity, trying to add to or protect their
store of bounty. Usually in my imagination at least, that's
some big treasure chest Spanish galleon. Yeah, anything like that,
overflowing with gold. And the pirates of the past that
(00:45):
we hear about, they're also most often from the West,
and they're usually men. Yeah, I guess unless Karen Nightly
turns pirates than like the second or third movie, that's true,
there's always sequels to help out. But piracy also flourished
for a while on the other side of the world
in the South China Sea. It was kind of during
the end of the eighteenth century the beginning of the
(01:07):
nineteenth around seventeen eighteen ten there in that range, and
it grew at that time to become this great menace
in that area. Transformed from being just a few small
scale Chinese pirates who were working on their own to
a huge pirate confederation that was actually a big lucrative business.
And dion H Murray, who was the author of a
(01:29):
book called Pirates of the South China Coast, he gives
us a few reasons for why that happened. Why did
this really take off at this time? The first reason
is that there were some particular ecological conditions that contributed
to it. Um the ecological conditions they allowed petty piracy,
the piracy that existed before it really blew up to
kind of flourish small scale pirates, small scale exactly. Also,
(01:52):
pirate participation in a Vietnamese rebellion around seventeen eighty six
helped the situation as well, because Chinese pie rates they
learned to work together. They got together to help the
Vietnamese rebels and saw that cooperation between them was finally possible.
But perhaps most importantly, there were several far sighted leaders
(02:12):
that emerged around this time who were able to kind
of bring all these pirate gangs, so to speak, together,
And the most notable and influential among these was probably
Chung Sau, who, as a woman was definitely not your
typical pirate leader. Yeah. And if you've listened to Molly
and Kristen's recent episode on female pirates for stuff Mom
(02:34):
never told you, you know that she's not the only
female pirate in history. There's a Bonnie Mary Read. You know,
they're probably the more famous names. In fact, we got
a lot of suggestions for those two as well, um
Rachel Wall who worked off the coast of Maine. I mean,
they're definitely definitely a few other famous female pirates. But
(02:55):
chung Esau, who was also known as Madam Chong and
sometimes all the Dragon Lady thus the title, was definitely
one of the most successful of these female pirates, and
that was partly because she had some really really good
business sense, and she was brutal about it, but she
she knew what she was doing, and she knew how
(03:15):
to get a team of pirates to work together, and
that ultimately, that good business sense ultimately helped her run
this entire pirate confederation and eventually come out of it
a lot better than not just most women pirates, but
most pirates in general. Definitely, that said, though she did
appear to have some humble beginnings. Although we were not
(03:37):
really sure about them. We don't really know much about
her early life. She was born in seventeen seventy five,
but she enters the pirate world by becoming the wife
of pirate leader Chung E. Now Changese family had been
involved in piracy since the seventeenth century. He himself, according
to some, was the son of a peasant hunchback who
was turned out and forced to turn pirate because his
(03:58):
father basically couldn't feed him could pay to support him anymore.
So he became one of the principal founders of this
pirate confederation and eventually emerged as its leader. Yeah, and
accounts vary here, but most of them say that Chungy's
bride was a prostitute named either She Young or Si
Kai Um, depending on which account you're looking at Um,
(04:20):
And supposedly she worked on one of the flower boats
which were floating brothels in the harbor and came into
contact with this pirate leader that way. Um. Author Myra
Weatherly wrote in Women Pirates, Eight Stories of Adventure that
she had another sort of background, maybe something a little
more interesting than just a random lady off of one
(04:41):
of these flower boats. Right, here's another story about how
chuny and chungy Saal could have gotten together. When Chung
E was ready to take a wife, twenty bound and
captured females were brought to him. One was a peasant
girl named Chi Kai, who had the skin the tint
of rich cream, but at the cheek was deep rose.
This is how she was described, and was said that
before the beauty of her face, the eyes of men
(05:03):
grew confused. So quite the knockout. Smitten with her, Chung
has her untied. But what he doesn't realize is that
her feet aren't deformed by binding like some Chinese women
at the time's feet were, so once she was free,
she lunged and attacked him and had to be pulled
away by other people. Future pirate indeed right, So somehow
(05:24):
this doesn't deter her suitor at all. He offers her
everything that you would think a girl at that time
would want, jewelry, cosmetics, brightly colored silks, and slaves of
her home, if only she will promise to marry him.
But she holds out, doesn't she she does, she wants more.
She only agrees to marry him if he'll give her
half of his wealth and joint command of his entire
(05:46):
pirate fleet. So it makes a good story, and we
don't know for sure whether it's all true or not.
But what we do know is that Chunghy's wife, who
became known as chungy Thou, which literally means the wife
of Long. Pretty straightforward there. Um, she did come to
help him run the Pirate Confederation, whether or not she
(06:07):
owns half of it officially. And the Pirate Confederation is
really quite impressive. It's composed of six principal fleets, red, yellow, blue, green, black,
and white. They have sort of a Captain Planet kind
of vibe, I guess. And um, she's not just a
silent partner in this this confederation either. She really plays
(06:29):
an active role. Yeah, she actually ran one of the fleets,
I think one of the bigger ones, and she was
really good at it too. By most accounts. Her signature
strategy was to take the enemy by surprise and then
overpower them with hand to hand combat. So here's kind
of what she did. Basically, the vessels that they used
were called junks. They were these flat bottomed boats that
(06:49):
had sales and you'll hear us refer to them like
that throughout the podcast. And these were really great for
speed and navigation and shallow waters. Pirates, by the way,
often preferred the shallow water because it was less treacherous
than being out at sea and also something that doesn't
really jive with how we normally think of pirates sailing
across the ocean, right we imagine these big battles that
(07:10):
happened in the middle of the ocean, But no, actually
they stick stuck a lot closer to the coast because
that was actually part of their business too. They would
have team up with bandits and have raids on land
as well. So Madam Chung would conceal most of her
junks behind a long strip of land jutting out into
the sea and send a couple out as decoys. Then
after making initial contact with whatever both they're about to attack,
(07:33):
she would send out the remaining ships to attack. So
a big surprise attack all of a sudden with all
of these junks coming out. And another thing that not
just she did, but other Chinese pirates of the time,
they'd use these bamboo pikes with faber like blades, so
that would be pretty scary if you suddenly had a
bunch of junks surprisingly coming out of nowhere with these
(07:56):
spike blades, and then they'd also fill large boats with
straw and set them on fire and just sort of
push them out into the middle of combat, so their um,
their enemies would be frightened by boats the flame. Yeah,
that also sounds pretty intimidating. They would also hurl firebrands
at enemy sales, so not something that you would want
(08:17):
to see coming your way if you're on the water.
And the pirates would also get themselves hyped up for
these events. They would drink a mixture of wine and
gunpowder when going into battle, and apparently they would just
look crazy coming at you. Whether maybe it's just the line,
I don't know, Maybe it was just the gunpowder would
(08:38):
have what positive book backed gunpowder would have. You seem
to have some special knowledge of this, Perhaps they're thankfully not.
Another thing I fortunately don't have any special knowledge of
is eating the hearts of vanquished foes, which is that
are really unfortunate that you don't have any knowledge. I
think I'd be in a lot of trouble if I
had knowledge about that. Um. But yeah, they would do
(08:59):
the to work up their courage, you know, So have
some hearts, have some wine and gunpowder and then go
out there with your bamboo pikes. Yeah, and you wouldn't
be going out there without any sort of luck on
your side either, because the pirates actually sprinkled themselves with
garlic water as a charm to ward off bullets. So
they are pretty well covered. They're not taking any chances now,
(09:21):
and and clearly they're successful with all of these strategies
because by eighteen o four, the Chung's Pirate Confederation included
about four hundred junks and seventy thousand men, so that
is quite a fleet of pirates to man. And they
even draw up a constitution in eighteen o five, because
(09:42):
if you have all of these different pirates, you know
it's a good idea to have some sort of document
that governs them. All of the different pirate leaders signed
the constitution and it makes Chung E the chief admiral. Yeah,
so we can see them getting more and more organized
as they go along. And that was just a few
year is into it. By seven though, Chungy dies and
(10:05):
it's likely that he was blown overboard in a gale
and drowned. That's the story that you see around protect again, No,
it doesn't protect against the gals. Apparently so the Chinese
pirates they met to elect a new leader. And again
this is kind of legend. We're not exactly sure how
accurate this is, but it said that Madam Chung showed
up at this meeting dressed in a chief's uniform, in
(10:27):
the chief's uniform, that is, her husband's former uniform, which
was a robe of purple, blue, red, and gold, and
it was embroidered all over with dragons, which suits her
nickname right. And she wore some of her dead husband's
swords along with us and his war helmet. And when
she appeared before the men, she told them, quote, look
(10:47):
at me, Captain's, your departed chief sat in council with me.
Your most powerful fleet, the White under my command took
more prizes than any others did. Do you think I
will bow to any other chief? Okay? And they did not.
She took command virtually uncontested. But to secure her position,
she knew that she needed to get someone to assist
(11:08):
her in managing the daily operations of the Red Fleet. Specifically,
it was especially large head anywhere from twenty thousand to
forty thousand men, and she needed this to be someone
who could win over the rank and file pirates and
who would remain absolutely loyal to her. So these two
things were essential. So for this role, she picked Chung Pao,
her adopted son. Chung Pau was a fisherman's son who
(11:32):
had joined the pirates at fifteen after having been captured
by Chungy, and Chungy really took a liking to Chong Pao.
He liked him so much. In fact, this was a quote,
he liked him so much that he could not depart
from him. So it seems like there's a little bit
of emotional tie there, to say the least. And he
becomes this protege, so there's maybe a dual relationship going on. Yeah,
(11:54):
he becomes his protege. And it's also said that they
might have had some sort of homosexual liaison or relationship.
I'm not sure how extensive it was, if it was
just something to kind of draw Chunk Pou into the yeah,
into the pirate fold, or or if it was an
actual relationship, but there was that there. Yeah, and Madam
Chung also takes a liking to this young man and
(12:16):
selects him. She thinks he will be boyle and to
seal the deal, she also has sex with him and
they become lovers and later even husband and wife. So
it's another pirate partnership again. Yeah, and just a strange
twist since he goes from being her adopted son. Yeah.
(12:37):
I know, it's kind of a little uncomfortable. I don't
want to think about that one too much. But such
as it was, Chung Poo actually proved to be a
really business like and effective leader. It said that he
was charismatic and he wore this flamboyant outfit. It was
a purple silk robe along with a black turban. And
he was also really superstitious. Like all pirates, he would
(12:58):
pray before they out for any sort of attack or plundering,
and if the omens were bad, they basically wouldn't go.
That would be a sign that the mission was no.
I mean, I think that's interesting. That's another thing you
can think of pirates is just being kind of drunken
in craze, but a lot of planning and superstition going
into something and religion here too. I mean, they prayed diligently. Yeah,
(13:21):
it's it's kind of surprising to see. But once um
Madam Chung's position was secure, you know, once she had
this this number two, and the confederation was solid. She
consolidated the confederation further by issuing a code of laws
that regularized operations, just regularized operations regarding just about everything
(13:41):
in pirate life, really keeping people in check. And the
code was severe too, as you would expect a pirate
code to be, a few examples from it. Anyone caught
giving commands on his own or disobeying those of a
superior was to be immediately decapitated, no flogging, no warning,
or something immediately off with their heads. Yeah, and a
(14:04):
pirate who went ashore without permission would have his ear
slit doing it again meant certain death. And pilfering from
the common treasury was also frowned upon, as was stealing
from villagers who were on the pirates side, you know
who who supplied them, uh, had worked out some sort
of arrangement with the pirates. Those were capital offenses. Yeah,
(14:26):
and interestingly, if a pirate raped a female captive, he
was put to death. And you know this goes back
to your saying you imagine pirates that they're just all
really rough mannered and they you expect for things to
go on like that, raping and so forth, But nope,
that was not allowed. And even if they had sex
by mutual consent, the man was beheaded and the woman
(14:47):
was cast overboard with a weight attached to her legs.
So low tolerance for any sort of funny business, definitely.
And we should mention the concubines and the wives and
and the women they captured a little more too, especially
because we are talking about a woman pirate. But usually
pirates would take the most beautiful captives as their concubines
or wives, and the less pretty ones would be returned
(15:11):
to the shore, and others might be ransomed if they
had some kind of good family connections. And if a
pirate chose a wife from one of the captives, he
was supposed to be loyal to her. And I mean
that's another surprise. These pirates are just like loaded with surprises,
like these boats coming out of nowhere. Um, it's interesting
that promiscuity was not encouraged, it was not even allowed. Yeah,
(15:35):
it makes me wonder. And I wasn't able to find
too much on this, but whether Madam Chung herself was
holding fidelity in such high esteem or if it was
just a pirate rule that was more ubiquitous, Yeah, that
would be interesting to find out in this situation. Male captives,
on the other hand, were kept as manpower. They weren't
(15:55):
really released besides the Westerners who are being held for ransom,
so they kind of became part of the pirate fold too,
although it doesn't seem like they had many rights. The
other major thing that Madam Chung did as leader was
really make piracy function as a business. So we want
to get into that a little bit, just a little
background on how the pirates need their profits in the
first place. They did so through as you would imagine,
(16:18):
outright piracy plundering ships for example, which Chang referred to
as the trans shipping of goods, which sounds like some
term you'd learned in the business class. It sounds like
it's supposed to be a real term, but um it
was one that she coined, I think. And she also
ransom prisoners, so that's how they made a little bit
of money. They would capture westerners off of the East
(16:38):
India Company ships, for example. An officer on such a ship,
Richard Glasspool, was one of them, and it's through his
diary and through the diaries of other people like him,
that we actually have records of how these Chinese pirates lived.
So yeah, that's the outright piracy side of the business.
But there was also some other other deals going on, um,
(16:59):
other hustles. Madam Chung had a massive protection racket where
she sold quote safe passage protection on land and by sea.
So basically, we the pirates won't mass with you if
you if you pay us a certain amount of money.
And Glasspool recounts being on one of these fee collecting
(17:19):
missions in eighteen o nine when the pirates took in
five hundred junks and sailed up the Pearl River anchored
by a village and basically threatened to burn down the
town and murder all of its inhabitants unless they agreed
to pay a fee. And this is a little funny,
a fee of six thousand dollars. Yeah, we're not really
(17:40):
sure what currency he's referring to at the time eighteen
o nine. Um, and he was a captive at this time,
so I'm not really sure how he got the exact
figures of the agreement. You know that he was forced
to participate in this, but um, he that's the figure
he threw out there. Um, But I mean it gives
us an idea at least of of these rackets that
(18:01):
they would pull, not actually doing the burning and pillaging,
but threatening to do so. Yeah, that's some protection, right, Yeah,
thank you for not burning it down or else. So,
because the pirates operated on such a large scale, Madam
Chung required written records of everything. All of their loot
(18:21):
that they got was entered into a warehouse register by
the pirates purser. So here were some rules. No pirate
could retain anything without submitting it for inspection. So you
couldn't just go plunder some ship and then shove stuff
in your poet in your own chest, right, you had
to submit it and have it reviewed, declare it essentially,
(18:44):
and then about of that went to the original captor
and the rest was put into a public fund. After that,
any pirate who wanted to withdraw from the common fund
made a written application to the secretary of the storehouse,
who was known as the ink and writing Master. So
it was very business like. Yeah, and you can imagine
that would be for boat repairs or maybe if you
(19:07):
hadn't brought in any loot for a while and you
still needed to keep basic operations going. Yeah, that was
what the public fund was used for. I think everything
that didn't go to the captors. It was sort of
spread out among the people who maybe hadn't plundered a
ship recently. I mean, I think that's really interesting. And
again it doesn't quite fit with how we think of pirates,
(19:28):
but it all seems very civilized, and I guess that's
why it doesn't. It doesn't add up exactly in our
in our own viewing the pirates. But I don't think
it's too businesslike either. There's still plenty that's that's bloody.
There's still plenty of carnage and glasspool. For instance, we
(19:48):
just mentioned him. He recalls seeing entire villages destroyed and men,
women and children mascred. Um. Madam Chung certainly didn't shy
away from that kind of thing. No, she didn't at all.
And fact it said that she paid her pirates cash
for each head that they brought back from any of
their assaults. So you could find these pirates fighting with
(20:09):
as many as five or six bloody heads thrown over
their shoulders, tied together by their hair. Yeah, that's that's
an image kind of thinking of onions or something, but bloodier. Um.
But I mean, she definitely had effective methods that that
was an effective program for the pirates. Yeah, I would
say so. At the height of her reign on the
(20:30):
South China Sea in eighteen o nine, she controlled about
two thousand ships and more than eighty thousand people. So
this a lot of people say, this makes her perhaps
the greatest pirate of all time by the numbers at least. Yeah,
And that kind of greatness, of course, does attract the
attention of the law, including the Chinese government, who wanted
to hunt Chung down and and put a stop to
(20:53):
her operation. And they try several times to stage carefully
planned attacks, and they just couldn't make a dent on
Chung's forces because there were so many of them, and
they were well organized, and they were sneaky and hard
to find. Yeah. So then the emperor, the Chinese emperor
had to change his too, and it was basically a
(21:14):
shift from we want to get you too, Okay, if
we can't beat them, then you guys join us. So
they started offering the pirates amnesty instead of trying to
just get them out right. There are settlements that they
offered included a pardon, cash, and land. So this started
to custom dissension among the pirates. A lot of them
(21:35):
wanted to take the offer and started surrendering. Even Chong
Poo wanted to and eventually Chung Ethal comes around to
the idea too. She saw the advantages of surrender and
so finally she relented. On April eighteenth, eighteen ten, she
went with a delegation, totally unarmed, delegation of seventeen women
and children to see the Governor General of Canton and negotiate,
(22:01):
and a few days later the surrender happened, and the
term she got were extraordinary. You think, at best she'd
be allowed to to live freely or something, or maybe
get to keep a tiny little bit of her money,
but she does quite well for herself. They get to
keep several of their junks, and they got a large
(22:21):
sum of money too. And now several pirates were actually
made legitimate and allowed to join the army. But Chung
Po was actually given the rank of lieutenant, and he
ends up having this illustrious military career in China after that,
rising to the post of colonel. He dies in eighteen
twenty two at the age of thirty six, reportedly of
(22:41):
natural causes, but this was really considered this great meteoric
rise for someone who started out as a fisherman's son,
and really twice because he rose up the ranks as
a pirate and then he came out as a civilian
and rose at the ranks as a military guy. Totally legit.
And Madam Chung did pretty well for herself too. She
(23:04):
spent the rest of her years in Canton, quote, leading
a peaceful life so far as was consistent with the
keeping of an infamous gambling house. So I mean, how
appropriate is that. Yeah, she's still a bad girl. What
are you gonna do if you are a retired pirate
keep a house of ill repute? It makes sense. She
died in eighteen forty four at the age of sixty nine,
(23:27):
And um, yeah, I think that's a pretty amazing pirate story.
They so often end in the gallows. It's it's interesting
to see one that has kind of a happy ending
for pirates. For all the decapitated people along the way, Yeah,
except for them, we feel bad for them. But for her,
she ended up in a lot a much better place
(23:48):
I think than other female pirates did that. Molly and
Kristen focused, like we said, on um An Bonnie and
Mary Reid, and they ended up getting captured as many
pirates tended to and ended up. You know, the law
caught up and caught up with them in the end. Yeah,
but I guess Madam Chung she knew when to to
get out of the pirrating business and to take the
good offer and luck with on her side. And that
(24:11):
brings us to a listener mail. We have a letter
here from Samuel in Philadelphia, and he says, Hi, Sarah Bablina,
I'm a big fan of your show and enjoy your podcasts.
Usually I don't have much to say, but I want
you to reconsider your admiration for the quote. Do you
know who I am? When the Black Millionaires was stopped
(24:33):
by a policeman? Would you have the same admiration for
the quote if it were said by a white male millionaire.
I think that kind of attitude is actually pretty remprehensible
no matter who says it. Submitted for your reconsideration, best Sam. So, Yeah,
we thought this was very interesting. I thought this was
a really interesting letter, and it was one that I
really thought about for a long time. And I think
(24:56):
Sarah and I both went back to that quote and
thought about, you know, the feelings that we expressed when
we said it. And I guess I didn't really think
of it as admiration for what she was saying. I
think we were both just sort of marveling and impressed
to find a quote, a direct quote from this woman
who history seems to know so little about, so just
(25:18):
to be able to hear something in her own voice.
I think, Sarah, you put it well, and you said
it's like almost like hearing Hollywood gossips in a way
you can appealed to my my secret love for celebrity gossip.
But I mean I like the word you chose marveling too.
I mean I was kind of marveling at the situation
because in a way it's so ironic. Of course, the
policeman knows who she is. How many female black millionairess
(25:43):
were They're driving around in silver plated cars at the time,
you know, I think he knew who she was already
without her having to even say anything. But just I
think it's a fascinating situation that it could even develop,
and that she'd be able to even say something like that, Yeah,
that's a great way to play it. I think we
were both rather than really admiring the words themselves, we
(26:04):
were both fascinated to hear her say this in nine
in the United States and a time when women like her,
Black women didn't really have much of a voice, and
she could say this, do you know who I am?
And it really meant something. So that was more how
we were coming at it, I think, and definitely not
encouraging anyone to be a jerk and try to get
(26:24):
out of their traffic ticket. It's funny too, because the
day we received this email, I went home and I
was watching, you know, just pudging out in front of
an episode of Sex in the City or something, and
one of the characters said that she said, do you
know who I am? You know, fancy rich New York lady,
And I thought, oh, well, I can totally see how
(26:44):
that is just reprehensible. Yeah. Well, anyways, thank you for
giving us something to mull over for a bit. It's
always fun too to look back on an episode and
and think about what you said a little more carefully,
and and think about what the first black millionaires said too,
because it is an interesting quote anyway you look at it. Definitely,
(27:06):
thank you for the letter. If you want to send
us more email, give us more stuff to think about,
and send us your ideas maybe send us your favorite
pirates story to go along with today's episode. Feel free
to email us It's history podcast at how stuff works
dot com or you can look us up on Facebook
and we're also at Twitter at Myston History. And if
you want to learn a little bit more about how
(27:28):
pirates work, we have a story with that exact title
on our website. You can look at it by visiting
our homepage at www dot how stuff works dot com.
We're more on this and thousands of other topics. Visit
how stuff works dot com. To learn more about the podcast,
click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner
(27:48):
of our homepage. The how stuff Works iPhone app has
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Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm their Dowdy and I'm to blay a truck reporting.
And you know, when you think about historical pirates, you
usually picture the Pirates of the Caribbean Johnny Depp variety scoundrels,
(00:25):
social deviants, basically working by themselves and every ship for
itself type capacity, trying to add to or protect their
store of bounty. Usually in my imagination at least, that's
some big treasure chest Spanish galleon. Yeah, anything like that,
overflowing with gold. And the pirates of the past that
(00:45):
we hear about, they're also most often from the West,
and they're usually men. Yeah, I guess unless Karen Nightly
turns pirates than like the second or third movie, that's true,
there's always sequels to help out. But piracy also flourished
for a while on the other side of the world
in the South China Sea. It was kind of during
the end of the eighteenth century the beginning of the
(01:07):
nineteenth around seventeen eighteen ten there in that range, and
it grew at that time to become this great menace
in that area. Transformed from being just a few small
scale Chinese pirates who were working on their own to
a huge pirate confederation that was actually a big lucrative business.
And dion H Murray, who was the author of a
(01:29):
book called Pirates of the South China Coast, he gives
us a few reasons for why that happened. Why did
this really take off at this time? The first reason
is that there were some particular ecological conditions that contributed
to it. Um the ecological conditions they allowed petty piracy,
the piracy that existed before it really blew up to
kind of flourish small scale pirates, small scale exactly. Also,
(01:52):
pirate participation in a Vietnamese rebellion around seventeen eighty six
helped the situation as well, because Chinese pie rates they
learned to work together. They got together to help the
Vietnamese rebels and saw that cooperation between them was finally possible.
But perhaps most importantly, there were several far sighted leaders
(02:12):
that emerged around this time who were able to kind
of bring all these pirate gangs, so to speak, together,
And the most notable and influential among these was probably
Chung Sau, who, as a woman was definitely not your
typical pirate leader. Yeah. And if you've listened to Molly
and Kristen's recent episode on female pirates for stuff Mom
(02:34):
never told you, you know that she's not the only
female pirate in history. There's a Bonnie Mary Read. You know,
they're probably the more famous names. In fact, we got
a lot of suggestions for those two as well, um
Rachel Wall who worked off the coast of Maine. I mean,
they're definitely definitely a few other famous female pirates. But
(02:55):
chung Esau, who was also known as Madam Chong and
sometimes all the Dragon Lady thus the title, was definitely
one of the most successful of these female pirates, and
that was partly because she had some really really good
business sense, and she was brutal about it, but she
she knew what she was doing, and she knew how
(03:15):
to get a team of pirates to work together, and
that ultimately, that good business sense ultimately helped her run
this entire pirate confederation and eventually come out of it
a lot better than not just most women pirates, but
most pirates in general. Definitely, that said, though she did
appear to have some humble beginnings. Although we were not
(03:37):
really sure about them. We don't really know much about
her early life. She was born in seventeen seventy five,
but she enters the pirate world by becoming the wife
of pirate leader Chung E. Now Changese family had been
involved in piracy since the seventeenth century. He himself, according
to some, was the son of a peasant hunchback who
was turned out and forced to turn pirate because his
(03:58):
father basically couldn't feed him could pay to support him anymore.
So he became one of the principal founders of this
pirate confederation and eventually emerged as its leader. Yeah, and
accounts vary here, but most of them say that Chungy's
bride was a prostitute named either She Young or Si
Kai Um, depending on which account you're looking at Um,
(04:20):
And supposedly she worked on one of the flower boats
which were floating brothels in the harbor and came into
contact with this pirate leader that way. Um. Author Myra
Weatherly wrote in Women Pirates, Eight Stories of Adventure that
she had another sort of background, maybe something a little
more interesting than just a random lady off of one
(04:41):
of these flower boats. Right, here's another story about how
chuny and chungy Saal could have gotten together. When Chung
E was ready to take a wife, twenty bound and
captured females were brought to him. One was a peasant
girl named Chi Kai, who had the skin the tint
of rich cream, but at the cheek was deep rose.
This is how she was described, and was said that
before the beauty of her face, the eyes of men
(05:03):
grew confused. So quite the knockout. Smitten with her, Chung
has her untied. But what he doesn't realize is that
her feet aren't deformed by binding like some Chinese women
at the time's feet were, so once she was free,
she lunged and attacked him and had to be pulled
away by other people. Future pirate indeed right, So somehow
(05:24):
this doesn't deter her suitor at all. He offers her
everything that you would think a girl at that time
would want, jewelry, cosmetics, brightly colored silks, and slaves of
her home, if only she will promise to marry him.
But she holds out, doesn't she she does, she wants more.
She only agrees to marry him if he'll give her
half of his wealth and joint command of his entire
(05:46):
pirate fleet. So it makes a good story, and we
don't know for sure whether it's all true or not.
But what we do know is that Chunghy's wife, who
became known as chungy Thou, which literally means the wife
of Long. Pretty straightforward there. Um, she did come to
help him run the Pirate Confederation, whether or not she
(06:07):
owns half of it officially. And the Pirate Confederation is
really quite impressive. It's composed of six principal fleets, red, yellow, blue, green, black,
and white. They have sort of a Captain Planet kind
of vibe, I guess. And um, she's not just a
silent partner in this this confederation either. She really plays
(06:29):
an active role. Yeah, she actually ran one of the fleets,
I think one of the bigger ones, and she was
really good at it too. By most accounts. Her signature
strategy was to take the enemy by surprise and then
overpower them with hand to hand combat. So here's kind
of what she did. Basically, the vessels that they used
were called junks. They were these flat bottomed boats that
(06:49):
had sales and you'll hear us refer to them like
that throughout the podcast. And these were really great for
speed and navigation and shallow waters. Pirates, by the way,
often preferred the shallow water because it was less treacherous
than being out at sea and also something that doesn't
really jive with how we normally think of pirates sailing
across the ocean, right we imagine these big battles that
(07:10):
happened in the middle of the ocean, But no, actually
they stick stuck a lot closer to the coast because
that was actually part of their business too. They would
have team up with bandits and have raids on land
as well. So Madam Chung would conceal most of her
junks behind a long strip of land jutting out into
the sea and send a couple out as decoys. Then
after making initial contact with whatever both they're about to attack,
(07:33):
she would send out the remaining ships to attack. So
a big surprise attack all of a sudden with all
of these junks coming out. And another thing that not
just she did, but other Chinese pirates of the time,
they'd use these bamboo pikes with faber like blades, so
that would be pretty scary if you suddenly had a
bunch of junks surprisingly coming out of nowhere with these
(07:56):
spike blades, and then they'd also fill large boats with
straw and set them on fire and just sort of
push them out into the middle of combat, so their um,
their enemies would be frightened by boats the flame. Yeah,
that also sounds pretty intimidating. They would also hurl firebrands
at enemy sales, so not something that you would want
(08:17):
to see coming your way if you're on the water.
And the pirates would also get themselves hyped up for
these events. They would drink a mixture of wine and
gunpowder when going into battle, and apparently they would just
look crazy coming at you. Whether maybe it's just the line,
I don't know, Maybe it was just the gunpowder would
(08:38):
have what positive book backed gunpowder would have. You seem
to have some special knowledge of this, Perhaps they're thankfully not.
Another thing I fortunately don't have any special knowledge of
is eating the hearts of vanquished foes, which is that
are really unfortunate that you don't have any knowledge. I
think I'd be in a lot of trouble if I
had knowledge about that. Um. But yeah, they would do
(08:59):
the to work up their courage, you know, So have
some hearts, have some wine and gunpowder and then go
out there with your bamboo pikes. Yeah, and you wouldn't
be going out there without any sort of luck on
your side either, because the pirates actually sprinkled themselves with
garlic water as a charm to ward off bullets. So
they are pretty well covered. They're not taking any chances now,
(09:21):
and and clearly they're successful with all of these strategies
because by eighteen o four, the Chung's Pirate Confederation included
about four hundred junks and seventy thousand men, so that
is quite a fleet of pirates to man. And they
even draw up a constitution in eighteen o five, because
(09:42):
if you have all of these different pirates, you know
it's a good idea to have some sort of document
that governs them. All of the different pirate leaders signed
the constitution and it makes Chung E the chief admiral. Yeah,
so we can see them getting more and more organized
as they go along. And that was just a few
year is into it. By seven though, Chungy dies and
(10:05):
it's likely that he was blown overboard in a gale
and drowned. That's the story that you see around protect again, No,
it doesn't protect against the gals. Apparently so the Chinese
pirates they met to elect a new leader. And again
this is kind of legend. We're not exactly sure how
accurate this is, but it said that Madam Chung showed
up at this meeting dressed in a chief's uniform, in
(10:27):
the chief's uniform, that is, her husband's former uniform, which
was a robe of purple, blue, red, and gold, and
it was embroidered all over with dragons, which suits her
nickname right. And she wore some of her dead husband's
swords along with us and his war helmet. And when
she appeared before the men, she told them, quote, look
(10:47):
at me, Captain's, your departed chief sat in council with me.
Your most powerful fleet, the White under my command took
more prizes than any others did. Do you think I
will bow to any other chief? Okay? And they did not.
She took command virtually uncontested. But to secure her position,
she knew that she needed to get someone to assist
(11:08):
her in managing the daily operations of the Red Fleet. Specifically,
it was especially large head anywhere from twenty thousand to
forty thousand men, and she needed this to be someone
who could win over the rank and file pirates and
who would remain absolutely loyal to her. So these two
things were essential. So for this role, she picked Chung Pao,
her adopted son. Chung Pau was a fisherman's son who
(11:32):
had joined the pirates at fifteen after having been captured
by Chungy, and Chungy really took a liking to Chong Pao.
He liked him so much. In fact, this was a quote,
he liked him so much that he could not depart
from him. So it seems like there's a little bit
of emotional tie there, to say the least. And he
becomes this protege, so there's maybe a dual relationship going on. Yeah,
(11:54):
he becomes his protege. And it's also said that they
might have had some sort of homosexual liaison or relationship.
I'm not sure how extensive it was, if it was
just something to kind of draw Chunk Pou into the yeah,
into the pirate fold, or or if it was an
actual relationship, but there was that there. Yeah, and Madam
Chung also takes a liking to this young man and
(12:16):
selects him. She thinks he will be boyle and to
seal the deal, she also has sex with him and
they become lovers and later even husband and wife. So
it's another pirate partnership again. Yeah, and just a strange
twist since he goes from being her adopted son. Yeah.
(12:37):
I know, it's kind of a little uncomfortable. I don't
want to think about that one too much. But such
as it was, Chung Poo actually proved to be a
really business like and effective leader. It said that he
was charismatic and he wore this flamboyant outfit. It was
a purple silk robe along with a black turban. And
he was also really superstitious. Like all pirates, he would
(12:58):
pray before they out for any sort of attack or plundering,
and if the omens were bad, they basically wouldn't go.
That would be a sign that the mission was no.
I mean, I think that's interesting. That's another thing you
can think of pirates is just being kind of drunken
in craze, but a lot of planning and superstition going
into something and religion here too. I mean, they prayed diligently. Yeah,
(13:21):
it's it's kind of surprising to see. But once um
Madam Chung's position was secure, you know, once she had
this this number two, and the confederation was solid. She
consolidated the confederation further by issuing a code of laws
that regularized operations, just regularized operations regarding just about everything
(13:41):
in pirate life, really keeping people in check. And the
code was severe too, as you would expect a pirate
code to be, a few examples from it. Anyone caught
giving commands on his own or disobeying those of a
superior was to be immediately decapitated, no flogging, no warning,
or something immediately off with their heads. Yeah, and a
(14:04):
pirate who went ashore without permission would have his ear
slit doing it again meant certain death. And pilfering from
the common treasury was also frowned upon, as was stealing
from villagers who were on the pirates side, you know
who who supplied them, uh, had worked out some sort
of arrangement with the pirates. Those were capital offenses. Yeah,
(14:26):
and interestingly, if a pirate raped a female captive, he
was put to death. And you know this goes back
to your saying you imagine pirates that they're just all
really rough mannered and they you expect for things to
go on like that, raping and so forth, But nope,
that was not allowed. And even if they had sex
by mutual consent, the man was beheaded and the woman
(14:47):
was cast overboard with a weight attached to her legs.
So low tolerance for any sort of funny business, definitely.
And we should mention the concubines and the wives and
and the women they captured a little more too, especially
because we are talking about a woman pirate. But usually
pirates would take the most beautiful captives as their concubines
or wives, and the less pretty ones would be returned
(15:11):
to the shore, and others might be ransomed if they
had some kind of good family connections. And if a
pirate chose a wife from one of the captives, he
was supposed to be loyal to her. And I mean
that's another surprise. These pirates are just like loaded with surprises,
like these boats coming out of nowhere. Um, it's interesting
that promiscuity was not encouraged, it was not even allowed. Yeah,
(15:35):
it makes me wonder. And I wasn't able to find
too much on this, but whether Madam Chung herself was
holding fidelity in such high esteem or if it was
just a pirate rule that was more ubiquitous, Yeah, that
would be interesting to find out in this situation. Male captives,
on the other hand, were kept as manpower. They weren't
(15:55):
really released besides the Westerners who are being held for ransom,
so they kind of became part of the pirate fold too,
although it doesn't seem like they had many rights. The
other major thing that Madam Chung did as leader was
really make piracy function as a business. So we want
to get into that a little bit, just a little
background on how the pirates need their profits in the
first place. They did so through as you would imagine,
(16:18):
outright piracy plundering ships for example, which Chang referred to
as the trans shipping of goods, which sounds like some
term you'd learned in the business class. It sounds like
it's supposed to be a real term, but um it
was one that she coined, I think. And she also
ransom prisoners, so that's how they made a little bit
of money. They would capture westerners off of the East
(16:38):
India Company ships, for example. An officer on such a ship,
Richard Glasspool, was one of them, and it's through his
diary and through the diaries of other people like him,
that we actually have records of how these Chinese pirates lived.
So yeah, that's the outright piracy side of the business.
But there was also some other other deals going on, um,
(16:59):
other hustles. Madam Chung had a massive protection racket where
she sold quote safe passage protection on land and by sea.
So basically, we the pirates won't mass with you if
you if you pay us a certain amount of money.
And Glasspool recounts being on one of these fee collecting
(17:19):
missions in eighteen o nine when the pirates took in
five hundred junks and sailed up the Pearl River anchored
by a village and basically threatened to burn down the
town and murder all of its inhabitants unless they agreed
to pay a fee. And this is a little funny,
a fee of six thousand dollars. Yeah, we're not really
(17:40):
sure what currency he's referring to at the time eighteen
o nine. Um, and he was a captive at this time,
so I'm not really sure how he got the exact
figures of the agreement. You know that he was forced
to participate in this, but um, he that's the figure
he threw out there. Um, But I mean it gives
us an idea at least of of these rackets that
(18:01):
they would pull, not actually doing the burning and pillaging,
but threatening to do so. Yeah, that's some protection, right, Yeah,
thank you for not burning it down or else. So,
because the pirates operated on such a large scale, Madam
Chung required written records of everything. All of their loot
(18:21):
that they got was entered into a warehouse register by
the pirates purser. So here were some rules. No pirate
could retain anything without submitting it for inspection. So you
couldn't just go plunder some ship and then shove stuff
in your poet in your own chest, right, you had
to submit it and have it reviewed, declare it essentially,
(18:44):
and then about of that went to the original captor
and the rest was put into a public fund. After that,
any pirate who wanted to withdraw from the common fund
made a written application to the secretary of the storehouse,
who was known as the ink and writing Master. So
it was very business like. Yeah, and you can imagine
that would be for boat repairs or maybe if you
(19:07):
hadn't brought in any loot for a while and you
still needed to keep basic operations going. Yeah, that was
what the public fund was used for. I think everything
that didn't go to the captors. It was sort of
spread out among the people who maybe hadn't plundered a
ship recently. I mean, I think that's really interesting. And
again it doesn't quite fit with how we think of pirates,
(19:28):
but it all seems very civilized, and I guess that's
why it doesn't. It doesn't add up exactly in our
in our own viewing the pirates. But I don't think
it's too businesslike either. There's still plenty that's that's bloody.
There's still plenty of carnage and glasspool. For instance, we
(19:48):
just mentioned him. He recalls seeing entire villages destroyed and men,
women and children mascred. Um. Madam Chung certainly didn't shy
away from that kind of thing. No, she didn't at all.
And fact it said that she paid her pirates cash
for each head that they brought back from any of
their assaults. So you could find these pirates fighting with
(20:09):
as many as five or six bloody heads thrown over
their shoulders, tied together by their hair. Yeah, that's that's
an image kind of thinking of onions or something, but bloodier. Um.
But I mean, she definitely had effective methods that that
was an effective program for the pirates. Yeah, I would
say so. At the height of her reign on the
(20:30):
South China Sea in eighteen o nine, she controlled about
two thousand ships and more than eighty thousand people. So
this a lot of people say, this makes her perhaps
the greatest pirate of all time by the numbers at least. Yeah,
And that kind of greatness, of course, does attract the
attention of the law, including the Chinese government, who wanted
to hunt Chung down and and put a stop to
(20:53):
her operation. And they try several times to stage carefully
planned attacks, and they just couldn't make a dent on
Chung's forces because there were so many of them, and
they were well organized, and they were sneaky and hard
to find. Yeah. So then the emperor, the Chinese emperor
had to change his too, and it was basically a
(21:14):
shift from we want to get you too, Okay, if
we can't beat them, then you guys join us. So
they started offering the pirates amnesty instead of trying to
just get them out right. There are settlements that they
offered included a pardon, cash, and land. So this started
to custom dissension among the pirates. A lot of them
(21:35):
wanted to take the offer and started surrendering. Even Chong
Poo wanted to and eventually Chung Ethal comes around to
the idea too. She saw the advantages of surrender and
so finally she relented. On April eighteenth, eighteen ten, she
went with a delegation, totally unarmed, delegation of seventeen women
and children to see the Governor General of Canton and negotiate,
(22:01):
and a few days later the surrender happened, and the
term she got were extraordinary. You think, at best she'd
be allowed to to live freely or something, or maybe
get to keep a tiny little bit of her money,
but she does quite well for herself. They get to
keep several of their junks, and they got a large
(22:21):
sum of money too. And now several pirates were actually
made legitimate and allowed to join the army. But Chung
Po was actually given the rank of lieutenant, and he
ends up having this illustrious military career in China after that,
rising to the post of colonel. He dies in eighteen
twenty two at the age of thirty six, reportedly of
(22:41):
natural causes, but this was really considered this great meteoric
rise for someone who started out as a fisherman's son,
and really twice because he rose up the ranks as
a pirate and then he came out as a civilian
and rose at the ranks as a military guy. Totally legit.
And Madam Chung did pretty well for herself too. She
(23:04):
spent the rest of her years in Canton, quote, leading
a peaceful life so far as was consistent with the
keeping of an infamous gambling house. So I mean, how
appropriate is that. Yeah, she's still a bad girl. What
are you gonna do if you are a retired pirate
keep a house of ill repute? It makes sense. She
died in eighteen forty four at the age of sixty nine,
(23:27):
And um, yeah, I think that's a pretty amazing pirate story.
They so often end in the gallows. It's it's interesting
to see one that has kind of a happy ending
for pirates. For all the decapitated people along the way, Yeah,
except for them, we feel bad for them. But for her,
she ended up in a lot a much better place
(23:48):
I think than other female pirates did that. Molly and
Kristen focused, like we said, on um An Bonnie and
Mary Reid, and they ended up getting captured as many
pirates tended to and ended up. You know, the law
caught up and caught up with them in the end. Yeah,
but I guess Madam Chung she knew when to to
get out of the pirrating business and to take the
good offer and luck with on her side. And that
(24:11):
brings us to a listener mail. We have a letter
here from Samuel in Philadelphia, and he says, Hi, Sarah Bablina,
I'm a big fan of your show and enjoy your podcasts.
Usually I don't have much to say, but I want
you to reconsider your admiration for the quote. Do you
know who I am? When the Black Millionaires was stopped
(24:33):
by a policeman? Would you have the same admiration for
the quote if it were said by a white male millionaire.
I think that kind of attitude is actually pretty remprehensible
no matter who says it. Submitted for your reconsideration, best Sam. So, Yeah,
we thought this was very interesting. I thought this was
a really interesting letter, and it was one that I
really thought about for a long time. And I think
(24:56):
Sarah and I both went back to that quote and
thought about, you know, the feelings that we expressed when
we said it. And I guess I didn't really think
of it as admiration for what she was saying. I
think we were both just sort of marveling and impressed
to find a quote, a direct quote from this woman
who history seems to know so little about, so just
(25:18):
to be able to hear something in her own voice.
I think, Sarah, you put it well, and you said
it's like almost like hearing Hollywood gossips in a way
you can appealed to my my secret love for celebrity gossip.
But I mean I like the word you chose marveling too.
I mean I was kind of marveling at the situation
because in a way it's so ironic. Of course, the
policeman knows who she is. How many female black millionairess
(25:43):
were They're driving around in silver plated cars at the time,
you know, I think he knew who she was already
without her having to even say anything. But just I
think it's a fascinating situation that it could even develop,
and that she'd be able to even say something like that, Yeah,
that's a great way to play it. I think we
were both rather than really admiring the words themselves, we
(26:04):
were both fascinated to hear her say this in nine
in the United States and a time when women like her,
Black women didn't really have much of a voice, and
she could say this, do you know who I am?
And it really meant something. So that was more how
we were coming at it, I think, and definitely not
encouraging anyone to be a jerk and try to get
(26:24):
out of their traffic ticket. It's funny too, because the
day we received this email, I went home and I
was watching, you know, just pudging out in front of
an episode of Sex in the City or something, and
one of the characters said that she said, do you
know who I am? You know, fancy rich New York lady,
And I thought, oh, well, I can totally see how
(26:44):
that is just reprehensible. Yeah. Well, anyways, thank you for
giving us something to mull over for a bit. It's
always fun too to look back on an episode and
and think about what you said a little more carefully,
and and think about what the first black millionaires said too,
because it is an interesting quote anyway you look at it. Definitely,
(27:06):
thank you for the letter. If you want to send
us more email, give us more stuff to think about,
and send us your ideas maybe send us your favorite
pirates story to go along with today's episode. Feel free
to email us It's history podcast at how stuff works
dot com or you can look us up on Facebook
and we're also at Twitter at Myston History. And if
you want to learn a little bit more about how
(27:28):
pirates work, we have a story with that exact title
on our website. You can look at it by visiting
our homepage at www dot how stuff works dot com.
We're more on this and thousands of other topics. Visit
how stuff works dot com. To learn more about the podcast,
click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner
(27:48):
of our homepage. The how stuff Works iPhone app has
a rise. Download it today on Ipunes, EA
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