May 6, 2020 • 38 mins
Blackbeard and Jack Sparrow can’t hold a candle to Cheng I Sao. Ferocious and ambitious, the most successful pirate in the South China Sea innovated the piracy business model, and inspired fear around the world even as she established strict rules about the treatment of women on her ships. The Chinese government enlisted foreign powers to take Cheng I Sao, a former prostitute, down,, but she had other plans.
Afterwards, we'll be talking to Tracy Edwards, a sailor who fought her way into the man's world of racing to skipper the first all-female crew to race around the world.
Main Sources:
- Pirate Women: The Princesses, Prostitutes, and Privateers who Ruled the Seven Seas by Laura Sook Duncombe
- And the article, ‘One Woman's Rise to Power: Cheng I's Wife and the Pirates’ by Dian Murray, published by Berghahn Books in the academic journal ‘Historical Reflections’ in 1981
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
The Chinese government was desperate. By eighteen o nine, pirates
had taken over their shipping roots, their trade deals were
in jeopardy. Two navy admirals committed suicide rather than face
being captured by the pirate leader who had a stranglehold
on the South China Sea, the one who controlled a
fleet of sixty thousand men, a crew at least twice
as large as the Spanish Armada. Desperate times called for
(00:29):
desperate measures, and the Chinese government asked the British and
Portuguese navies for help to defeat the pirates. The Portuguese
men of war, backed up by the Chinese navy, rendezvous
on the ocean side of the island of Land Tau,
hoping to sneak up on the pirates. They tried to
take them down with a cannon attack from the sea,
but couldn't get close enough. They edged on to the shore,
(00:53):
hoping to corner the pirate ships, and then out of nowhere,
the pirates came bearing out on the Portuguese, driving their
ships directly into the Imperial fleet. The pirates never should
have survived, but after a six day battle they hadn't
lost a single ship. The Portuguese again tried to take
(01:13):
them down with a cannon attack from the sea, but
once again their boats couldn't get close enough. The pirates escaped.
With the Portuguese hot on their heels. The men of
war unleashed fire vessels literal burning boats after the pirates,
hoping to blow them out of the water, but the
pirate fleet managed to organize around the floating fire bombs,
(01:36):
extinguish them and break them up for firewood. When the
wind shifted, the pirates once again escaped. The most successful
pirate of all time would continue her reign of terror
on the Chinese government for another day. Yes, her reign
of terror. From I Heart Radio and Tribeca Studios, This
(02:14):
is Fierce I Can't Type. Women Problems a podcast about
the incredible women who never made it in your history
books and the modern women carrying on their legacies today.
Yours to the ladies, the fair and the week. I
can't find women workers don't mind routine, repetitive working. Will
you make a copy of this naturally? Each week we're
(02:36):
bringing you the story of a groundbreaking woman from the
past who made huge contributions to the present, but whose
name still isn't on the tips of our tongues for
whatever reason, maybe it's because men wrote most of history.
At the end of each episode, I'll be joined by
a woman living today who's standing on the shoulders of
this historical figure. Whether she knows it or not, today's
(03:15):
story changes the greatest pirate the world has ever known,
the pirate who reigned supreme over the Chinese government during
the nineteenth century. Afterwards, we'll be talking to Tracy Edwards,
a sailing captain who fought her way into the man's
world of racing. The Skipper, the first all female crew
to race around the world, but first changes in China.
(03:42):
During the nineteenth century, a woman's most important job, her
only job, in fact, was to get married and bear
children for her husband, hopefully boy children. Women had no
direct access to money or to power unless they somehow
obtained it through sex or marriage. It was at the
end of the eighteenth century. The little Girl with no
(04:02):
name or at any rate and name forgotten in history,
was born on a floating village in the South China
Sea near Guangdong Province. We don't know much about her
early life. There are a few stories, but not that
many written documents. We know Her family probably belonged to
the ethnic Tanka group. They were considered c gypsies, a
(04:22):
group of people treated as no better than slaves in
the Chinese class system. She was likely poor and illiterate,
which means she had almost no options except to marry
early or find some way to support herself. The options
for supporting herself were few and far between, and somehow
the girl found herself working as a prostitute on a
flower boat. The flower boats were like a floating entertainment village.
(04:47):
Think of a cruise ship with illegal activities like gambling
and prostitution. Even though she was likely illiterate, she was
clearly smart. She found ways to gain small amounts of
power and make extra money on the boat from a
very early age. One story claims that the girl would
extract money from clients by blackmailing them with secrets they
(05:08):
divulged during their vulnerable time with the prostitutes on the
flower boat. It was a strategy that one our money,
power and the small amount of respect that a prostitute
could hope for at the time. One day, when this
woman was about a rich and powerful pirate named Cheeny
(05:29):
came to visit the floating brothel. There are two versions
of this story. In one, the pirate takes the woman captive, but,
overcome by the young woman's beauty, asks her to marry
him on the spot. In the other, the pirate finds
out about her side hustle extorting cash for secrets. He's
(05:49):
impressed by her savvy and her brains, and then he
asked her to be his wife. In both versions, this
nameless girl saw an opportunity, not just a way out,
but away into something bigger. See. She wanted off that boat.
She wanted more power than she'd ever get selling secrets.
The pirate king was smitten, whether by her beauty or
(06:12):
her brains, and the girl knew it. She used that
leverage to her advantage. So she said she'd marry him,
but only if she got half his business, half his
pirate hall, and an equal voice in running his pirrating empire.
As a twenty six year old newlywed, that nameless girl
took on a derivation of her husband's name. History would
(06:33):
remember her as Chengy saw. She was not content to
have a subordinate role to her husband. That's Laura Sook Duncan.
She's a pirate storyteller. The author of two books, pirate women,
the Princesses, prostitutes and privateers who ruled the Seven Seas,
and a pirate's life For she, she wanted to be
an equal business partner, and she wanted to rule their
(06:56):
pirate empire by his side, and change E allowed her
to do so, probably because she was so good at it. Now,
there were other female pirates in the world prior tour.
Some of my favorites are Anne Bonnie and Mary Reid,
the women who crewed with Calico Jack in the Bahamas.
Both of them were captured and sentenced to death. They
(07:19):
escaped hanging when they were both found to be pregnant,
but changy Sou likely wouldn't have been aware of them,
and they were never as powerful as she became. Over
the next nine years, the young prostitute from the Flower
Boat went on to become one of the most powerful
pirates the world has ever seen. Piracy was a dominant
force in the South China Sea, so much so that
(07:42):
during the Qing dynasty, the Chinese government didn't even consider
the deep sea as a place belonging to them. It
was a separate space entirely, and one to be feared.
Changi saw in. Her contemporaries operated about a hundred years
after what we typically consider the golden age of piracy
in the West, the age of black Beard, Captain Morgan,
Captain Kidd, and Calca Jack, all those men who plundered
(08:05):
the Caribbean. Chinese pirates were a little different. Instead of
operating in far away colonies, they worked in direct proximity
to the Chinese coast, terrorizing the Chinese government where they
lived and worked, upsetting many of their legitimate trade routes,
and wreaking havoc on the economy by plundering ships and
coastal villages and towns for cash and commodities. The pirates
(08:29):
were also thugs for hire. They often worked as privateers
for the King of Vietnam to fight against the Chinese government.
But until Chineseau came along, the Chinese pirates were a
rag tag bunch of opportunists. They had very little organization.
It's not even really a controversial opinion that she's the
(08:51):
greatest pirate of all time. In her career, she was
in command of somewhere between forty thousand and sixty thousand pirates,
and she had around a thousand ships. Uh, you know,
black Beard in contrast, was active for two years. He
had at the most around five ships. Her fleet was
bigger than many of the legitimate navies of the time.
(09:13):
She outclasses every other known pirate by every metric he
would use to discover success. By orders of magnitude. There's
just no comparison to what she did to what any
other pirate was able to accomplish. Cheny Sal wasn't like
the other women on the South China see the ones
who at the mercy of the men in their lives.
(09:33):
She came on board as an equal. The men were
at her mercy. She made sure of that. When Cheny
Sau came into her husband's operation, he had about two
hundred boats. I was impressive, but not impressive enough for her.
She had plans to grow, to innovate, and she didn't
want to waste time duking it out with the other
(09:53):
pirates for the same booty. So less than a year
into her marriage, Changy Style proposed something right dical, something
she'd learned in previous battles they'd fought together in Vietnam.
She proposed cooperation. Piracy at this point was sort of
you know, every man for himself, every boat for himself,
and they learned that when you work together, you are
(10:15):
more of a force to be reckoned with, and so
they started building their fleet. She was a magnificent manager,
and under her guidance, the pirate fleet just grew by
leaps and bounds. I was able to become the successful
force that no one was able to take down. Here's
what she proposed to the other pirates. You can steal
(10:38):
all you want from Imperial China and the barbarian merchant ships,
just don't steal from the other pirates in our confederation.
The same goes for battle. We fight the Chinese government,
we don't fight each other. Next up, changes Sau tackled organization,
taking the bands of pirates from ragtag marauders to something
closer to an actual navy. Cheeny Sao and Cheeny color
(11:03):
coded the squadrons. The Changs took the red flag, which
is how they became the feared Red Flag Fleet. The
other squadrons in the confederation Black, Green, Yellow, White, and
Blue were able to remain somewhat autonomous, but they all
kind of tied for a second. Chany Saw and her
husband crafted familial alliances through adoptions and marriages, making sure
(11:25):
that each squadron's leader had some kind of family allegiance
back to the Changs. It was a system that would
keep the Red Flag fleet decidedly on top. And in
the midst of it all, Changes Sa managed to give
birth to two sons who she raised on her ships. Cooperation, structure,
and organization paid off. Within the year, the commander in
(11:47):
chief of the Guangdong Province, the coastal region the Pirates terrorized,
had been sacked and his general, Old Tiger Huang was dead.
The Pirates were firmly in control of the South China
to see, all because of Changes Sad. In eighteen oh seven,
(12:08):
Changy felt to his watery death during a terrible typhoon.
Another story claims he was killed in a rebellion in Vietnam,
but the details don't actually matter that much either way.
At thirty two, Changes Saw was suddenly a widow. In
Confucian culture, that meant one thing. Widow chastity. Changes Saw
(12:29):
was supposed to go in the morning and remain unmarried forever.
This would have meant giving up all her power and
likely all of her wealth too, everything she'd fought so
hard for, worked so hard for. The deal she'd made
with her husband when they first started out was for
radical equality, profits and power slipped right down the middle.
That deal died with Changy. There's no reason to believe
(12:52):
that anyone would hand over half the Red Fleet fortune
and let her sail off into a life of virtuous chastity.
Her life, the one she'd meticulously crafted for herself, could
have been over, but she hadn't been a good Confusian
wife to date. She wasn't going to start now. Instead,
(13:15):
changes saw acted quickly and with the opposite of chastity.
There were plenty of relatives and lieutenants who could have
claimed they were her husband's rightful heirs. Cheni Sau decided
to hand select the one who would make the best
puppet for her to retain her power. Her best option
was her husband's adopted son, Chung Pao Si. It was
(13:36):
common practice back then to adopt lieutenants as heirs. It
made them loyal to the family. This meant that Chung
Pausi had a legitimate claim to power if he wanted it.
So Changi Sau decided it was worth her while to
cement his loyalty to her. She seduced her husband's adopted
son to keep him on her side, but also squarely
(13:56):
under her. Her biographer Dion Murray outed she seems to
have acted in open defiance of Confucian behavioral norms. She
was anything but a docile, submissive, and homebound wife. Within
weeks she had everything wrapped up. Changes Sau was the
undisputed commander in chief of the Red Flag Fleet. That's
(14:18):
when she went about making it the most dominant and
successful pirate operation history had ever seen. Under Changes Sou's
soul command, the Red Flag Fleet continued to grow and thrive.
At its height, the red flag was flown on eight
ships in the South China Sea. Changes Sound knew she
needed to continue to unify her pirates solidify her power. So,
(14:41):
like Hammurabi and Genghis Khan before her, Chenghesau developed some codes,
and like her fellow warlords, hers were brutal. Go off
shore without asking, lose your ears for not listening. Do
it again. Instant death by beheading, don't turn over your
(15:02):
fleet share of the booty first time of beating, second
time your head. There were no trials for these offenses.
The justice was immediate right there on the deck. You
just hope the cutlass was sharp. That wasn't all she did.
Changes sound did something else that was completely revolutionary, something
(15:25):
that was entirely unheard of. More on that after a
quick break. Changi Sa was brutal and meticulous in her
control over her men. You don't become more successful than
Blackbeard without being a little bit brutal. And she had
(15:47):
one final rule for them, something no male pirate had
ever done before. She protected women. She outlawed all rape
within her fleet. If a male pirate saw a female
captiv liked, he had to marry her before he could
touch her. Similarly, if a man mistreated his wife, neglected her,
or otherwise harmed her in any way, he got his
(16:09):
head cut off. This is just not something we've seen
any other pirate do before and certainly not since. So
she is protecting women. It's orders of magnitude better than
what they could expect if they were captured by other
pirates and any other time of history. Not all was
rosie for the women captives. The wealthy ones were still
(16:31):
often ransomed off. The poor ones were still sold to
other pirates as wives. Changes Sau had thousands of ships
working across the South China Sea. She couldn't be on
all of them at once. It was her codes that
did the work of making sure every ship had the
same culture, the same laws, and the same respect for
one woman changes. For it to work, she needed ironclad obedience,
(16:58):
and she was able to bring this about by her code.
There's one more rule that's set the Red flag fleet
up for total dominance. And there was another stroke of
Chinese Sou's genius. Of every hall went to the house.
Each ship's purser reported directly to her, and her accounting
(17:18):
was exact and merciless. This created a kind of centralized
bank that bolstered the pirates in bad times as well
as good. It meant they didn't have to be reactionary anymore.
Piracy prior to Chinese Seal was opportunistic. It was all
about whatever ship happened across your path or didn't, and
(17:39):
that meant you were often hungry and poor and desperate.
When pirate ships got too hungry or poor, they are
prone to mutiny or taking on battles they couldn't win.
This economic system allowed changes Sau to keep all the
ships equally well stocked and repaired, to keep her crew happy.
Having money and security meant they could choose their battles,
(18:00):
and when they planned their battles, they won. But she
wanted even more, and so she learned to diversify. She
started a protection racket. Here's how it worked. Imagine you
have a nice family fishing operation or assault trade. You're
regularly sailing between Macau and the deep waters of the
(18:23):
South China Sea. You have two main problems, typhoons and pirates.
For a long time, you had no way of stopping
either from destroying you. Changi Sao had a brilliant solution
to the pirate problem. Fishermen and traders could come to
her and buy themselves a protection card. Then when a
(18:45):
pirate stopped them and boarded their ship, they could simply
pull out their card, say I'm under your protection, and
they'll be on their way. Caught without a card, the
pirates would plunder the boat. Anyone foolish enough to resist
was often brutally murdered. The protection was a steady source
of income because everyone is afraid of pirates in the
whole South China Sea, most of them are afraid of her,
(19:07):
and so that dependable source of income was what allowed
her to maintain her fleet. You know, you can imagine
someone getting a little bit of power, um, you know,
getting greedy and building their empire bigger than they can
actually logistically maintain. But she had the foresight to realize,
it's going to take a lot of money to keep
(19:27):
my massive empire afloat. It's a great myth at pirates
buried treasure because they spent it as soon as they
had it, and sometimes before they had it. Uh So
this is another way in which Changhy Sao is just
thinking steps ahead and doing way better than other pirates.
She has the foresight to establish this steady stream of
(19:50):
income so her pirates don't go hungry and her empire collapses.
Cheny says focus was the salt trade here as everywhere
she was being strategic. Salt was in the top three
tax exports for the Chinese government. It was a cash cow,
and Changes sound exactly how to attack every single piece
of the supply chain. At the height of her power,
(20:12):
she had two hundred and sixty six of the two
hundred and seventy ships in the Chinese salt trade under
her protection. Changes Sa became the scourge of the Chinese government.
They tried everything at one point, they even moved every
village inland by ten miles to try to cut off
the pirates resources, but still she remained undefeated. In eighteen
(20:36):
o eight, for example, she wipes out about half of
the Chinese navy in one year. She's able to do that.
Naval captains would commit suicide rather than be captured by her,
So everyone is absolutely terrified of her and completely unable
to stop her. The government began calling her pirates the
(20:56):
foam on the sea because they literally had the water
is covered. Chany Sao, who at that point was a
more powerful pirate than either black Beard or Captain Morgan,
became known as the Terror of the South China seas.
There's no doubt she was a strategic genius. She planned
all the red flag fleets battles, and they won nearly
(21:17):
every battle. Their numbers were so big that even the
few times they lost, there was another ship to sail
more pirates to add to their fight. So by eighteen
o nine, only two years in the changes Sau's reign
as commander in chief, China was on its knees. But
then Changi Saw went and surprised everyone all over again.
(21:38):
She did something else that her more famous male counterparts
like black Beard and Captain Kidd couldn't or wouldn't do.
She retired. See, Changi Saw had something most pirates lacked,
foresight and self preservation. She had had a good run,
(21:58):
an amazing one, and she knew it. She had the
foresight to see that the golden age of piracy couldn't
last much longer. She wasn't defeated, not even with three
world powers conspired against her did she go down. But
having to fight more was making the piracy less lucrative.
She miraculously survived battle after battle, but she wasn't sure
(22:20):
she wanted to fight for the rest of her life.
You know, all good things come to an end. Nobody
stays on top forever, and chenes Saw understands this. So
she decides that she's going to get out while the
beginning is good, you know, while the Chinese government is
still terrified of her. And like so many other things
that she did, she had to write her own rules
because no one had ever done it before. On April eighth,
(22:46):
eighteen ten, Cheni Sau entered the office of Pie Ling,
the Chinese governor General. She was on foot, she was unarmed,
and she brought with her just seventeen women and children
from her fleet. Imagine the contrast between the pirate tyrant
who terrorized, brutalized, and murdered out on the open ocean
(23:07):
for the past nine years, with this weaponless woman surrounded
by innocence. Changes sau knew how to put on a show.
The government wanted her to surrender peacefully in return for
a pardon. Now that would hardly be worth it, not
after she'd worked so hard for all those years. She
refused to leave until she got exactly what she wanted.
(23:30):
She wanted to retain her fortune and eighty ships in
five thousand subordinates under her command. She wasn't just negotiating
for herself, she was negotiating on behalf of her men too.
She wanted the government to promise to provide a path
to legitimacy for the men who had worked under her,
either within civil service or within the Chinese military, complete
with government finance pensions. Changes refused to leave her people
(23:53):
high and dry, terrified of what she'd be able to
do if she continued in piracy. The Chinese government conceded.
They gave her everything she asked for, a plus forty
extra ships, to make her own foray into the self
trade legitimate. Basically, the government is paying these pirates to
go straight. So you know, most pirates ended their career
(24:15):
at the business end of a cannon or on the
end of a noose, and these pirates get a government
check when they retire. So if that doesn't demonstrate how
incredibly successful and unprecedented Changy Sou's reign as a pirate
queen was, I don't know what does. She received amnesty
for her family, great many of her crew, and she
(24:36):
kept every last piece of silver she'd won. She was
just thirty five, she had decades of the good life
ahead of her. Sources are different how she lived out
her retirement, but everyone agrees she made money of some kind.
Some people said she opened up a brothel. Some people
said that she started a casino. Some people say she
(24:58):
lived a quiet life in the country. But she died
at the age of sixty nine years old, one of
the few pirates, certainly one of the few notorious pirates
who was able to die of old age. We're gonna
take a quick break here. When we get back, we'll
have Tracy Edwards with us in the studio. She's the
modern sailor who took on the patriarchy of the high seas.
(25:31):
Changes Sao took on the patriarchy of both the Chinese
government in the world of pirating. In order to survive,
she had to be successful in order to live her
life the way she wanted to live it. With power
and agency, she brought a decidedly female point of view
to the Chinese seas, introducing cooperation and collaboration to complement
her strategic genius and at times brutality. Nearly two hundred
(25:56):
years later, another woman took to the seas to infiltrate
and con are a world of men. Tracy Edwards was
the captain and navigator of Maiden, the first sailing vessel
with an all female crew to race around the world.
In order for Tracy to survive in competitive sailing, she
had to prove she deserved to be taken seriously in
a male dominated industry. It was a feat that seemed
impossible even as recently as the nineteen eighties. It's extraordinary,
(26:21):
isn't it that we are still having this conversation? It
does who feel as if it's going round around circles,
isn't it? My name is Tracy upwards. I used to
be around the world sailor and now I'm a social exist.
In nine, Tracy Skipper the first all female crew and
the Whitbread Round the World yacht Race. It's a grueling
nine month challenge that takes place over thirty three thousand
(26:42):
nautical miles and involves sailing to the literal ends of
the earth. Welcome to the solvent, where we're only minutes
away from one of the most spectacular sites in sport,
the start of the Whitbread Round the World Race. A
documentary also called Maiden, chronicles both Tracy's journey around the
world in her battle for survival in a sport and
industry mired in misogyny and sexism. We'll be playing some
(27:06):
clips from Maiden throughout this interview. There are the girls.
Tracy tried to break into the whip Bread Race for
the first time. At the time, there were only four
women sailors participating on any of the twenty three boats.
(27:27):
Tracy had to fight to even get a place on
a boat, and even then she was offered the only
job they thought a woman should have, the position of cook.
But she took it. So you know, I did learn
a lot. I I absorbed information from them, and I thought,
I would love to do this again. But I'm a navigator,
you know, and I don't want to cook again. So
(27:48):
you know, my mom, as you say to me, if
you don't like the way the world looks, change it,
don't mean about it. So I thought, how do I
change what this looks like? I wanted to be navigator
on my own boat, and I thought the only way
can do that is to actually create my own project,
because no male crewise up going to let me do that.
And it's really only in the last couple of years
that women have sailed around the world on men's boats
(28:09):
as navigators. So I was right. The second thing was
the all female crew bit, because let's prove that women
can do this, and I guess really the whole female
empowerment thing, and the way we've ended up feeling about
that was because we had so much anti sentiment about
us during the race, so it went from being a
starfish reason to do it being right, that's it. I
(28:30):
want to fight for all the women of the world,
and we all ended up feeling like that, Well, it
was an all woman crew. Yes, I'm not surprised people
have prepared a better guess than there was nothing to
show that they would ever be really acknowledged for anything
other than failure. What told you that you could be
(28:56):
a leader on this belt, that you could lead this
our female crew? I guess I had no preconceived ideas.
So I just kind of did it, and I just
had the best team in the entire world who let
me learn as I was going along. I mean, you
would never be able to do that under man's boat ever.
I mean it was hard because the skipper and navigator
(29:18):
are two very different rules. Um doing them both it
was interesting. So yes, I was the skipper, but I
mean I did the navigation, then discussed with Dawn and
Michelle what we would do about where we were going
and how we were going to get there, and we
would make a joint decision about tactics and the best course. Yeah,
it was a real joint venture. T had to me
(29:39):
a little bit about organization of your crew and what
it was like to sail with an our female crew
versus and mostly male crew. It's so different. It's not
better or worse for me. It was much better. You know,
they listen, we communicate better, We look after each other,
we respect each other. We talk a lot. Sometimes there'd
be days on the guy's boat and no one would anything,
(30:00):
and I'd be like, I find that really hard. We
were a sisterhood and and there was this huge sense
of responsibility for each other. You know, you'd always notice
if someone was looking a little bit quiet or down,
you know, and pick your arm around the shoulder of great,
thanks very much. That was brilliant for me. I loved
signing with all female crews, and I was well aware
(30:20):
that people wouldn't be anxious to have us in the race,
but I was not prepared for, you know, sort of
the barrage of criticism and then the great comments like
you will die, you know not you might, or you
know you might be taking a bit of a risk. Also,
my other favorite from men, women don't get on. That's
what we had the most of. More than you're not
strong enough, you're not skilled enough, you'll you know you'll die,
(30:42):
or whatever else the other things they said. It was
a huge uphill battle, but we did change minds, so
that was the good past about it. Not only did
Tracy's crew not die out there on the water, they
wildly exceeded everyone's ridiculously low expectations. The race that year
was divided into six different legs. That meant that each
(31:02):
boat had the chance to quote win a leg. Treacy's
boat made and ended up winning the most difficult leg
of the race, the one that traversed the bottom of
the world. So when we set out on the second leg,
we were more than a little determined, and I think
as well, you know, we had to fight so hard
to be there that we were such tight enknit, bonded
(31:24):
team by that point. By the time we set off
into the Southern Ocean, we were ready. It was a
hard leg, you know, it's it's seven thousand, eight hundred
miles longest leg the Whitbread has ever had. Because of
the partite in South Africa, we can't go there because
of the sanctions, so you pretty much go across the
bottom of the world. So it was six nearly seven
weeks at sea, which is a long time, and it's
(31:48):
you know, you've got conditions minus twenty monas, thirty degrees
blow freezing, you're dodging icebergs, You've got this cold, You're
constantly wet because salt water doesn't dry, so the clothing
you're wearing fills damp all the time, so it's not
for the faint hearted. We didn't see the first, but
(32:12):
party not the line that is a bit. And then
coming up out of the Southern Ocean, coming up towards land,
it's an extraordinary thing because it's been wet and cold
and dark and gray, and then suddenly you see blue
sky and sun and birds and it gets warmer and
you start drying stuff, and as you get closer to
(32:35):
land you can smell land, and there's always a competition
see who can see it first. You know, everyone's sitting there,
eyes peeled a can see land. We didn't know we
were in the lead at that point until we crossed
the finishing line and people in the support boats who
come out to see us, Okay, your first, I thought,
they said your third. I'm like dead again. What turns
(32:57):
out we were first and it was amazing, absolutely fancy.
The first time in twelve years a British boat there's one,
a leg of the Whitbread Round the World Race. As
they crossed the line, the anation was obvious as the
crew celebrated the victory, many who said it was impossible,
and soon afterwards they've replaced maidens sales with the battle
(33:19):
flag that fund out the spirit of female defiance. The
girls say the victory is a victory for all women sailors.
Your woman, You're thought you have to look like this.
They like that. You have to use this, use that.
You can't just suppose the cart of this. You have
to wear the right things. The elation. He spends twenty
eight days and had to wash and add a dress cloth,
(33:40):
lead added in your hair. It's great to be loved
it the person you want to get drunk, get drunk
and eat a bacon sabage. I have to say that
coming into New Zealand, a lot more people did start
to take her seriously. Bob Fisher, who had previously called
us a tinful of tart, decided that we were not
(34:00):
just a tin full of tarts. We were a tin
full of smart fast tarts. Better. Yeah, better, much better,
much better. But you know, we had a little bit
longer to get rid of the word tarts. But anyway,
but he was one yussing journalist that really did go well.
I was so wrong. Very few did, very yusing journalists.
The guys on the race very much did a wow
(34:21):
that was pretty amazing. And ye we underestimated you, which
was good, but the questions at the press conferences still
exactly the same. So did you get on this leg?
Oh my god Almighty, never ask guys that. And we
were actually the only crew that had stayed together the
whole time. Everyone else had people coming and going the
(34:42):
whole way around. The only other boat that did that
was the boat that came first. We came second. So
that's really proof of keeping a great team together and
not having these rock stars come on and off the boat,
which is what some of the other boats did after
the race is over. You didn't die two legs and amazing.
What were the attitudes like then? What Doris did that
open for the women who came after you. So at
(35:06):
the end of the days, we had this extraordinary welcome
coming into Southampton. Hundreds of boats came out to see us,
fifty people on the dock. I mean, we were instant celebrities.
It was quite extraordinary and a little daunting. But we've
done what we set out to do. Maybe we hadn't won,
but no one really seemed to care about that. We've
done so much better than anyone thought we would, so
(35:26):
that was great. The legacy from Maiden is that we
inspiled a lot of women to get out there on
the water, and there was amazing women sailors out there
at the moment. I mean, they are legendary, They're so
good at what they do. So I'm very proud of
that you had said something and Maiden about being on
the sea and doing this race. It gave you the
sense of freedom. And we saw that a lot in
(35:50):
cheny sound story. That she earned her freedom, her actual
literal freedom by working on this belt and by leading
this belt. What was freeing about it for you? I
love her story so much. I mean, I just love
what she did. She was so smart, you know, and
I've just fascinated by it. And of course I'm going
(36:11):
why I happened? I heard about it, and why don't
I know it? As so much a female history I'm
finding out now. But I did not know about Maiden.
So many people say to me, I didn't know about it.
I had no idea. So really not much has changed. No,
women are still being written nows of history, you know,
un as we scream and shout about and then we
get called hysterical Harrodins, you know, always absolutely, And if
(36:35):
I can link back to this amazing lady. I always
feel when I'm out on the ocean that I'm seeing
what every historical sailor before me saw as long as
we can't see land, you know, Columbus, everyone who sailed
before me, so exactly what I'm seeing. That blows my mind.
(37:01):
And I've never forgotten. We've never forgotten sailing in through
the harbor. I did that. Excuse me, I did that.
Thanks so much to Laura sup Duncom and Tracy Edwards
for joining us on this odyssey. Don't forget to watch
the documentary Maiden about Tracy Edwards Landmark sail around the World,
(37:23):
and order Laura Suck Duncan's latest book, A Pirate's Life
for she Swashbuckling Women through the Ages. Fierce is hosted
and written by Joe Piazza, produced and directed by me
Anna Stump. Our executive producers are Joe Piazza, Nikki Etre,
Anna Stump, and from Tribeca Studios LEAs RB. This episode
(37:45):
was edited and soundscaped by Julian Weller, with additional editing
support from Aaron Kaufman. Our associate producer is Emily Marinoff.
Fact checking by Austin Thompson Research by Lizzie Jacobs. The
Fierce theme is by Hamilton Lighthouser and Anna Stump. Additional
music for this episode by Blue Dots. Sessions are very
sincere thanks to Mangesha ticket Or for making this series
(38:05):
possible and to Nikki etre Are, co executive producer who
literally moved mountains on a daily basis to make this
all happen. We are very very grateful to you. Sources
for this episode Pirate Women, The Princess's Prostitutes and Privateers
who ruled the Seven Seas by Laura Suke Duncan and
the article One Woman's Rise to Power, Chang's Wife and
the Pirates by Dion Murray, published by Bergen Books in
(38:27):
the academic journal Historical Reflections. For more podcasts for my
Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
The Chinese government was desperate. By eighteen o nine, pirates
had taken over their shipping roots, their trade deals were
in jeopardy. Two navy admirals committed suicide rather than face
being captured by the pirate leader who had a stranglehold
on the South China Sea, the one who controlled a
fleet of sixty thousand men, a crew at least twice
as large as the Spanish Armada. Desperate times called for
(00:29):
desperate measures, and the Chinese government asked the British and
Portuguese navies for help to defeat the pirates. The Portuguese
men of war, backed up by the Chinese navy, rendezvous
on the ocean side of the island of Land Tau,
hoping to sneak up on the pirates. They tried to
take them down with a cannon attack from the sea,
but couldn't get close enough. They edged on to the shore,
(00:53):
hoping to corner the pirate ships, and then out of nowhere,
the pirates came bearing out on the Portuguese, driving their
ships directly into the Imperial fleet. The pirates never should
have survived, but after a six day battle they hadn't
lost a single ship. The Portuguese again tried to take
(01:13):
them down with a cannon attack from the sea, but
once again their boats couldn't get close enough. The pirates escaped.
With the Portuguese hot on their heels. The men of
war unleashed fire vessels literal burning boats after the pirates,
hoping to blow them out of the water, but the
pirate fleet managed to organize around the floating fire bombs,
(01:36):
extinguish them and break them up for firewood. When the
wind shifted, the pirates once again escaped. The most successful
pirate of all time would continue her reign of terror
on the Chinese government for another day. Yes, her reign
of terror. From I Heart Radio and Tribeca Studios, This
(02:14):
is Fierce I Can't Type. Women Problems a podcast about
the incredible women who never made it in your history
books and the modern women carrying on their legacies today.
Yours to the ladies, the fair and the week. I
can't find women workers don't mind routine, repetitive working. Will
you make a copy of this naturally? Each week we're
(02:36):
bringing you the story of a groundbreaking woman from the
past who made huge contributions to the present, but whose
name still isn't on the tips of our tongues for
whatever reason, maybe it's because men wrote most of history.
At the end of each episode, I'll be joined by
a woman living today who's standing on the shoulders of
this historical figure. Whether she knows it or not, today's
(03:15):
story changes the greatest pirate the world has ever known,
the pirate who reigned supreme over the Chinese government during
the nineteenth century. Afterwards, we'll be talking to Tracy Edwards,
a sailing captain who fought her way into the man's
world of racing. The Skipper, the first all female crew
to race around the world, but first changes in China.
(03:42):
During the nineteenth century, a woman's most important job, her
only job, in fact, was to get married and bear
children for her husband, hopefully boy children. Women had no
direct access to money or to power unless they somehow
obtained it through sex or marriage. It was at the
end of the eighteenth century. The little Girl with no
(04:02):
name or at any rate and name forgotten in history,
was born on a floating village in the South China
Sea near Guangdong Province. We don't know much about her
early life. There are a few stories, but not that
many written documents. We know Her family probably belonged to
the ethnic Tanka group. They were considered c gypsies, a
(04:22):
group of people treated as no better than slaves in
the Chinese class system. She was likely poor and illiterate,
which means she had almost no options except to marry
early or find some way to support herself. The options
for supporting herself were few and far between, and somehow
the girl found herself working as a prostitute on a
flower boat. The flower boats were like a floating entertainment village.
(04:47):
Think of a cruise ship with illegal activities like gambling
and prostitution. Even though she was likely illiterate, she was
clearly smart. She found ways to gain small amounts of
power and make extra money on the boat from a
very early age. One story claims that the girl would
extract money from clients by blackmailing them with secrets they
(05:08):
divulged during their vulnerable time with the prostitutes on the
flower boat. It was a strategy that one our money,
power and the small amount of respect that a prostitute
could hope for at the time. One day, when this
woman was about a rich and powerful pirate named Cheeny
(05:29):
came to visit the floating brothel. There are two versions
of this story. In one, the pirate takes the woman captive, but,
overcome by the young woman's beauty, asks her to marry
him on the spot. In the other, the pirate finds
out about her side hustle extorting cash for secrets. He's
(05:49):
impressed by her savvy and her brains, and then he
asked her to be his wife. In both versions, this
nameless girl saw an opportunity, not just a way out,
but away into something bigger. See. She wanted off that boat.
She wanted more power than she'd ever get selling secrets.
The pirate king was smitten, whether by her beauty or
(06:12):
her brains, and the girl knew it. She used that
leverage to her advantage. So she said she'd marry him,
but only if she got half his business, half his
pirate hall, and an equal voice in running his pirrating empire.
As a twenty six year old newlywed, that nameless girl
took on a derivation of her husband's name. History would
(06:33):
remember her as Chengy saw. She was not content to
have a subordinate role to her husband. That's Laura Sook Duncan.
She's a pirate storyteller. The author of two books, pirate women,
the Princesses, prostitutes and privateers who ruled the Seven Seas,
and a pirate's life For she, she wanted to be
an equal business partner, and she wanted to rule their
(06:56):
pirate empire by his side, and change E allowed her
to do so, probably because she was so good at it. Now,
there were other female pirates in the world prior tour.
Some of my favorites are Anne Bonnie and Mary Reid,
the women who crewed with Calico Jack in the Bahamas.
Both of them were captured and sentenced to death. They
(07:19):
escaped hanging when they were both found to be pregnant,
but changy Sou likely wouldn't have been aware of them,
and they were never as powerful as she became. Over
the next nine years, the young prostitute from the Flower
Boat went on to become one of the most powerful
pirates the world has ever seen. Piracy was a dominant
force in the South China Sea, so much so that
(07:42):
during the Qing dynasty, the Chinese government didn't even consider
the deep sea as a place belonging to them. It
was a separate space entirely, and one to be feared.
Changi saw in. Her contemporaries operated about a hundred years
after what we typically consider the golden age of piracy
in the West, the age of black Beard, Captain Morgan,
Captain Kidd, and Calca Jack, all those men who plundered
(08:05):
the Caribbean. Chinese pirates were a little different. Instead of
operating in far away colonies, they worked in direct proximity
to the Chinese coast, terrorizing the Chinese government where they
lived and worked, upsetting many of their legitimate trade routes,
and wreaking havoc on the economy by plundering ships and
coastal villages and towns for cash and commodities. The pirates
(08:29):
were also thugs for hire. They often worked as privateers
for the King of Vietnam to fight against the Chinese government.
But until Chineseau came along, the Chinese pirates were a
rag tag bunch of opportunists. They had very little organization.
It's not even really a controversial opinion that she's the
(08:51):
greatest pirate of all time. In her career, she was
in command of somewhere between forty thousand and sixty thousand pirates,
and she had around a thousand ships. Uh, you know,
black Beard in contrast, was active for two years. He
had at the most around five ships. Her fleet was
bigger than many of the legitimate navies of the time.
(09:13):
She outclasses every other known pirate by every metric he
would use to discover success. By orders of magnitude. There's
just no comparison to what she did to what any
other pirate was able to accomplish. Cheny Sal wasn't like
the other women on the South China see the ones
who at the mercy of the men in their lives.
(09:33):
She came on board as an equal. The men were
at her mercy. She made sure of that. When Cheny
Sau came into her husband's operation, he had about two
hundred boats. I was impressive, but not impressive enough for her.
She had plans to grow, to innovate, and she didn't
want to waste time duking it out with the other
(09:53):
pirates for the same booty. So less than a year
into her marriage, Changy Style proposed something right dical, something
she'd learned in previous battles they'd fought together in Vietnam.
She proposed cooperation. Piracy at this point was sort of
you know, every man for himself, every boat for himself,
and they learned that when you work together, you are
(10:15):
more of a force to be reckoned with, and so
they started building their fleet. She was a magnificent manager,
and under her guidance, the pirate fleet just grew by
leaps and bounds. I was able to become the successful
force that no one was able to take down. Here's
what she proposed to the other pirates. You can steal
(10:38):
all you want from Imperial China and the barbarian merchant ships,
just don't steal from the other pirates in our confederation.
The same goes for battle. We fight the Chinese government,
we don't fight each other. Next up, changes Sau tackled organization,
taking the bands of pirates from ragtag marauders to something
closer to an actual navy. Cheeny Sao and Cheeny color
(11:03):
coded the squadrons. The Changs took the red flag, which
is how they became the feared Red Flag Fleet. The
other squadrons in the confederation Black, Green, Yellow, White, and
Blue were able to remain somewhat autonomous, but they all
kind of tied for a second. Chany Saw and her
husband crafted familial alliances through adoptions and marriages, making sure
(11:25):
that each squadron's leader had some kind of family allegiance
back to the Changs. It was a system that would
keep the Red Flag fleet decidedly on top. And in
the midst of it all, Changes Sa managed to give
birth to two sons who she raised on her ships. Cooperation, structure,
and organization paid off. Within the year, the commander in
(11:47):
chief of the Guangdong Province, the coastal region the Pirates terrorized,
had been sacked and his general, Old Tiger Huang was dead.
The Pirates were firmly in control of the South China
to see, all because of Changes Sad. In eighteen oh seven,
(12:08):
Changy felt to his watery death during a terrible typhoon.
Another story claims he was killed in a rebellion in Vietnam,
but the details don't actually matter that much either way.
At thirty two, Changes Saw was suddenly a widow. In
Confucian culture, that meant one thing. Widow chastity. Changes Saw
(12:29):
was supposed to go in the morning and remain unmarried forever.
This would have meant giving up all her power and
likely all of her wealth too, everything she'd fought so
hard for, worked so hard for. The deal she'd made
with her husband when they first started out was for
radical equality, profits and power slipped right down the middle.
That deal died with Changy. There's no reason to believe
(12:52):
that anyone would hand over half the Red Fleet fortune
and let her sail off into a life of virtuous chastity.
Her life, the one she'd meticulously crafted for herself, could
have been over, but she hadn't been a good Confusian
wife to date. She wasn't going to start now. Instead,
(13:15):
changes saw acted quickly and with the opposite of chastity.
There were plenty of relatives and lieutenants who could have
claimed they were her husband's rightful heirs. Cheni Sau decided
to hand select the one who would make the best
puppet for her to retain her power. Her best option
was her husband's adopted son, Chung Pao Si. It was
(13:36):
common practice back then to adopt lieutenants as heirs. It
made them loyal to the family. This meant that Chung
Pausi had a legitimate claim to power if he wanted it.
So Changi Sau decided it was worth her while to
cement his loyalty to her. She seduced her husband's adopted
son to keep him on her side, but also squarely
(13:56):
under her. Her biographer Dion Murray outed she seems to
have acted in open defiance of Confucian behavioral norms. She
was anything but a docile, submissive, and homebound wife. Within
weeks she had everything wrapped up. Changes Sau was the
undisputed commander in chief of the Red Flag Fleet. That's
(14:18):
when she went about making it the most dominant and
successful pirate operation history had ever seen. Under Changes Sou's
soul command, the Red Flag Fleet continued to grow and thrive.
At its height, the red flag was flown on eight
ships in the South China Sea. Changes Sound knew she
needed to continue to unify her pirates solidify her power. So,
(14:41):
like Hammurabi and Genghis Khan before her, Chenghesau developed some codes,
and like her fellow warlords, hers were brutal. Go off
shore without asking, lose your ears for not listening. Do
it again. Instant death by beheading, don't turn over your
(15:02):
fleet share of the booty first time of beating, second
time your head. There were no trials for these offenses.
The justice was immediate right there on the deck. You
just hope the cutlass was sharp. That wasn't all she did.
Changes sound did something else that was completely revolutionary, something
(15:25):
that was entirely unheard of. More on that after a
quick break. Changi Sa was brutal and meticulous in her
control over her men. You don't become more successful than
Blackbeard without being a little bit brutal. And she had
(15:47):
one final rule for them, something no male pirate had
ever done before. She protected women. She outlawed all rape
within her fleet. If a male pirate saw a female
captiv liked, he had to marry her before he could
touch her. Similarly, if a man mistreated his wife, neglected her,
or otherwise harmed her in any way, he got his
(16:09):
head cut off. This is just not something we've seen
any other pirate do before and certainly not since. So
she is protecting women. It's orders of magnitude better than
what they could expect if they were captured by other
pirates and any other time of history. Not all was
rosie for the women captives. The wealthy ones were still
(16:31):
often ransomed off. The poor ones were still sold to
other pirates as wives. Changes Sau had thousands of ships
working across the South China Sea. She couldn't be on
all of them at once. It was her codes that
did the work of making sure every ship had the
same culture, the same laws, and the same respect for
one woman changes. For it to work, she needed ironclad obedience,
(16:58):
and she was able to bring this about by her code.
There's one more rule that's set the Red flag fleet
up for total dominance. And there was another stroke of
Chinese Sou's genius. Of every hall went to the house.
Each ship's purser reported directly to her, and her accounting
(17:18):
was exact and merciless. This created a kind of centralized
bank that bolstered the pirates in bad times as well
as good. It meant they didn't have to be reactionary anymore.
Piracy prior to Chinese Seal was opportunistic. It was all
about whatever ship happened across your path or didn't, and
(17:39):
that meant you were often hungry and poor and desperate.
When pirate ships got too hungry or poor, they are
prone to mutiny or taking on battles they couldn't win.
This economic system allowed changes Sau to keep all the
ships equally well stocked and repaired, to keep her crew happy.
Having money and security meant they could choose their battles,
(18:00):
and when they planned their battles, they won. But she
wanted even more, and so she learned to diversify. She
started a protection racket. Here's how it worked. Imagine you
have a nice family fishing operation or assault trade. You're
regularly sailing between Macau and the deep waters of the
(18:23):
South China Sea. You have two main problems, typhoons and pirates.
For a long time, you had no way of stopping
either from destroying you. Changi Sao had a brilliant solution
to the pirate problem. Fishermen and traders could come to
her and buy themselves a protection card. Then when a
(18:45):
pirate stopped them and boarded their ship, they could simply
pull out their card, say I'm under your protection, and
they'll be on their way. Caught without a card, the
pirates would plunder the boat. Anyone foolish enough to resist
was often brutally murdered. The protection was a steady source
of income because everyone is afraid of pirates in the
whole South China Sea, most of them are afraid of her,
(19:07):
and so that dependable source of income was what allowed
her to maintain her fleet. You know, you can imagine
someone getting a little bit of power, um, you know,
getting greedy and building their empire bigger than they can
actually logistically maintain. But she had the foresight to realize,
it's going to take a lot of money to keep
(19:27):
my massive empire afloat. It's a great myth at pirates
buried treasure because they spent it as soon as they
had it, and sometimes before they had it. Uh So
this is another way in which Changhy Sao is just
thinking steps ahead and doing way better than other pirates.
She has the foresight to establish this steady stream of
(19:50):
income so her pirates don't go hungry and her empire collapses.
Cheny says focus was the salt trade here as everywhere
she was being strategic. Salt was in the top three
tax exports for the Chinese government. It was a cash cow,
and Changes sound exactly how to attack every single piece
of the supply chain. At the height of her power,
(20:12):
she had two hundred and sixty six of the two
hundred and seventy ships in the Chinese salt trade under
her protection. Changes Sa became the scourge of the Chinese government.
They tried everything at one point, they even moved every
village inland by ten miles to try to cut off
the pirates resources, but still she remained undefeated. In eighteen
(20:36):
o eight, for example, she wipes out about half of
the Chinese navy in one year. She's able to do that.
Naval captains would commit suicide rather than be captured by her,
So everyone is absolutely terrified of her and completely unable
to stop her. The government began calling her pirates the
(20:56):
foam on the sea because they literally had the water
is covered. Chany Sao, who at that point was a
more powerful pirate than either black Beard or Captain Morgan,
became known as the Terror of the South China seas.
There's no doubt she was a strategic genius. She planned
all the red flag fleets battles, and they won nearly
(21:17):
every battle. Their numbers were so big that even the
few times they lost, there was another ship to sail
more pirates to add to their fight. So by eighteen
o nine, only two years in the changes Sau's reign
as commander in chief, China was on its knees. But
then Changi Saw went and surprised everyone all over again.
(21:38):
She did something else that her more famous male counterparts
like black Beard and Captain Kidd couldn't or wouldn't do.
She retired. See, Changi Saw had something most pirates lacked,
foresight and self preservation. She had had a good run,
(21:58):
an amazing one, and she knew it. She had the
foresight to see that the golden age of piracy couldn't
last much longer. She wasn't defeated, not even with three
world powers conspired against her did she go down. But
having to fight more was making the piracy less lucrative.
She miraculously survived battle after battle, but she wasn't sure
(22:20):
she wanted to fight for the rest of her life.
You know, all good things come to an end. Nobody
stays on top forever, and chenes Saw understands this. So
she decides that she's going to get out while the
beginning is good, you know, while the Chinese government is
still terrified of her. And like so many other things
that she did, she had to write her own rules
because no one had ever done it before. On April eighth,
(22:46):
eighteen ten, Cheni Sau entered the office of Pie Ling,
the Chinese governor General. She was on foot, she was unarmed,
and she brought with her just seventeen women and children
from her fleet. Imagine the contrast between the pirate tyrant
who terrorized, brutalized, and murdered out on the open ocean
(23:07):
for the past nine years, with this weaponless woman surrounded
by innocence. Changes sau knew how to put on a show.
The government wanted her to surrender peacefully in return for
a pardon. Now that would hardly be worth it, not
after she'd worked so hard for all those years. She
refused to leave until she got exactly what she wanted.
(23:30):
She wanted to retain her fortune and eighty ships in
five thousand subordinates under her command. She wasn't just negotiating
for herself, she was negotiating on behalf of her men too.
She wanted the government to promise to provide a path
to legitimacy for the men who had worked under her,
either within civil service or within the Chinese military, complete
with government finance pensions. Changes refused to leave her people
(23:53):
high and dry, terrified of what she'd be able to
do if she continued in piracy. The Chinese government conceded.
They gave her everything she asked for, a plus forty
extra ships, to make her own foray into the self
trade legitimate. Basically, the government is paying these pirates to
go straight. So you know, most pirates ended their career
(24:15):
at the business end of a cannon or on the
end of a noose, and these pirates get a government
check when they retire. So if that doesn't demonstrate how
incredibly successful and unprecedented Changy Sou's reign as a pirate
queen was, I don't know what does. She received amnesty
for her family, great many of her crew, and she
(24:36):
kept every last piece of silver she'd won. She was
just thirty five, she had decades of the good life
ahead of her. Sources are different how she lived out
her retirement, but everyone agrees she made money of some kind.
Some people said she opened up a brothel. Some people
said that she started a casino. Some people say she
(24:58):
lived a quiet life in the country. But she died
at the age of sixty nine years old, one of
the few pirates, certainly one of the few notorious pirates
who was able to die of old age. We're gonna
take a quick break here. When we get back, we'll
have Tracy Edwards with us in the studio. She's the
modern sailor who took on the patriarchy of the high seas.
(25:31):
Changes Sao took on the patriarchy of both the Chinese
government in the world of pirating. In order to survive,
she had to be successful in order to live her
life the way she wanted to live it. With power
and agency, she brought a decidedly female point of view
to the Chinese seas, introducing cooperation and collaboration to complement
her strategic genius and at times brutality. Nearly two hundred
(25:56):
years later, another woman took to the seas to infiltrate
and con are a world of men. Tracy Edwards was
the captain and navigator of Maiden, the first sailing vessel
with an all female crew to race around the world.
In order for Tracy to survive in competitive sailing, she
had to prove she deserved to be taken seriously in
a male dominated industry. It was a feat that seemed
impossible even as recently as the nineteen eighties. It's extraordinary,
(26:21):
isn't it that we are still having this conversation? It
does who feel as if it's going round around circles,
isn't it? My name is Tracy upwards. I used to
be around the world sailor and now I'm a social exist.
In nine, Tracy Skipper the first all female crew and
the Whitbread Round the World yacht Race. It's a grueling
nine month challenge that takes place over thirty three thousand
(26:42):
nautical miles and involves sailing to the literal ends of
the earth. Welcome to the solvent, where we're only minutes
away from one of the most spectacular sites in sport,
the start of the Whitbread Round the World Race. A
documentary also called Maiden, chronicles both Tracy's journey around the
world in her battle for survival in a sport and
industry mired in misogyny and sexism. We'll be playing some
(27:06):
clips from Maiden throughout this interview. There are the girls.
Tracy tried to break into the whip Bread Race for
the first time. At the time, there were only four
women sailors participating on any of the twenty three boats.
(27:27):
Tracy had to fight to even get a place on
a boat, and even then she was offered the only
job they thought a woman should have, the position of cook.
But she took it. So you know, I did learn
a lot. I I absorbed information from them, and I thought,
I would love to do this again. But I'm a navigator,
you know, and I don't want to cook again. So
(27:48):
you know, my mom, as you say to me, if
you don't like the way the world looks, change it,
don't mean about it. So I thought, how do I
change what this looks like? I wanted to be navigator
on my own boat, and I thought the only way
can do that is to actually create my own project,
because no male crewise up going to let me do that.
And it's really only in the last couple of years
that women have sailed around the world on men's boats
(28:09):
as navigators. So I was right. The second thing was
the all female crew bit, because let's prove that women
can do this, and I guess really the whole female
empowerment thing, and the way we've ended up feeling about
that was because we had so much anti sentiment about
us during the race, so it went from being a
starfish reason to do it being right, that's it. I
(28:30):
want to fight for all the women of the world,
and we all ended up feeling like that, Well, it
was an all woman crew. Yes, I'm not surprised people
have prepared a better guess than there was nothing to
show that they would ever be really acknowledged for anything
other than failure. What told you that you could be
(28:56):
a leader on this belt, that you could lead this
our female crew? I guess I had no preconceived ideas.
So I just kind of did it, and I just
had the best team in the entire world who let
me learn as I was going along. I mean, you
would never be able to do that under man's boat ever.
I mean it was hard because the skipper and navigator
(29:18):
are two very different rules. Um doing them both it
was interesting. So yes, I was the skipper, but I
mean I did the navigation, then discussed with Dawn and
Michelle what we would do about where we were going
and how we were going to get there, and we
would make a joint decision about tactics and the best course. Yeah,
it was a real joint venture. T had to me
(29:39):
a little bit about organization of your crew and what
it was like to sail with an our female crew
versus and mostly male crew. It's so different. It's not
better or worse for me. It was much better. You know,
they listen, we communicate better, We look after each other,
we respect each other. We talk a lot. Sometimes there'd
be days on the guy's boat and no one would anything,
(30:00):
and I'd be like, I find that really hard. We
were a sisterhood and and there was this huge sense
of responsibility for each other. You know, you'd always notice
if someone was looking a little bit quiet or down,
you know, and pick your arm around the shoulder of great,
thanks very much. That was brilliant for me. I loved
signing with all female crews, and I was well aware
(30:20):
that people wouldn't be anxious to have us in the race,
but I was not prepared for, you know, sort of
the barrage of criticism and then the great comments like
you will die, you know not you might, or you
know you might be taking a bit of a risk. Also,
my other favorite from men, women don't get on. That's
what we had the most of. More than you're not
strong enough, you're not skilled enough, you'll you know you'll die,
(30:42):
or whatever else the other things they said. It was
a huge uphill battle, but we did change minds, so
that was the good past about it. Not only did
Tracy's crew not die out there on the water, they
wildly exceeded everyone's ridiculously low expectations. The race that year
was divided into six different legs. That meant that each
(31:02):
boat had the chance to quote win a leg. Treacy's
boat made and ended up winning the most difficult leg
of the race, the one that traversed the bottom of
the world. So when we set out on the second leg,
we were more than a little determined, and I think
as well, you know, we had to fight so hard
to be there that we were such tight enknit, bonded
(31:24):
team by that point. By the time we set off
into the Southern Ocean, we were ready. It was a
hard leg, you know, it's it's seven thousand, eight hundred
miles longest leg the Whitbread has ever had. Because of
the partite in South Africa, we can't go there because
of the sanctions, so you pretty much go across the
bottom of the world. So it was six nearly seven
weeks at sea, which is a long time, and it's
(31:48):
you know, you've got conditions minus twenty monas, thirty degrees
blow freezing, you're dodging icebergs, You've got this cold, You're
constantly wet because salt water doesn't dry, so the clothing
you're wearing fills damp all the time, so it's not
for the faint hearted. We didn't see the first, but
(32:12):
party not the line that is a bit. And then
coming up out of the Southern Ocean, coming up towards land,
it's an extraordinary thing because it's been wet and cold
and dark and gray, and then suddenly you see blue
sky and sun and birds and it gets warmer and
you start drying stuff, and as you get closer to
(32:35):
land you can smell land, and there's always a competition
see who can see it first. You know, everyone's sitting there,
eyes peeled a can see land. We didn't know we
were in the lead at that point until we crossed
the finishing line and people in the support boats who
come out to see us, Okay, your first, I thought,
they said your third. I'm like dead again. What turns
(32:57):
out we were first and it was amazing, absolutely fancy.
The first time in twelve years a British boat there's one,
a leg of the Whitbread Round the World Race. As
they crossed the line, the anation was obvious as the
crew celebrated the victory, many who said it was impossible,
and soon afterwards they've replaced maidens sales with the battle
(33:19):
flag that fund out the spirit of female defiance. The
girls say the victory is a victory for all women sailors.
Your woman, You're thought you have to look like this.
They like that. You have to use this, use that.
You can't just suppose the cart of this. You have
to wear the right things. The elation. He spends twenty
eight days and had to wash and add a dress cloth,
(33:40):
lead added in your hair. It's great to be loved
it the person you want to get drunk, get drunk
and eat a bacon sabage. I have to say that
coming into New Zealand, a lot more people did start
to take her seriously. Bob Fisher, who had previously called
us a tinful of tart, decided that we were not
(34:00):
just a tin full of tarts. We were a tin
full of smart fast tarts. Better. Yeah, better, much better,
much better. But you know, we had a little bit
longer to get rid of the word tarts. But anyway,
but he was one yussing journalist that really did go well.
I was so wrong. Very few did, very yusing journalists.
The guys on the race very much did a wow
(34:21):
that was pretty amazing. And ye we underestimated you, which
was good, but the questions at the press conferences still
exactly the same. So did you get on this leg?
Oh my god Almighty, never ask guys that. And we
were actually the only crew that had stayed together the
whole time. Everyone else had people coming and going the
(34:42):
whole way around. The only other boat that did that
was the boat that came first. We came second. So
that's really proof of keeping a great team together and
not having these rock stars come on and off the boat,
which is what some of the other boats did after
the race is over. You didn't die two legs and amazing.
What were the attitudes like then? What Doris did that
open for the women who came after you. So at
(35:06):
the end of the days, we had this extraordinary welcome
coming into Southampton. Hundreds of boats came out to see us,
fifty people on the dock. I mean, we were instant celebrities.
It was quite extraordinary and a little daunting. But we've
done what we set out to do. Maybe we hadn't won,
but no one really seemed to care about that. We've
done so much better than anyone thought we would, so
(35:26):
that was great. The legacy from Maiden is that we
inspiled a lot of women to get out there on
the water, and there was amazing women sailors out there
at the moment. I mean, they are legendary, They're so
good at what they do. So I'm very proud of
that you had said something and Maiden about being on
the sea and doing this race. It gave you the
sense of freedom. And we saw that a lot in
(35:50):
cheny sound story. That she earned her freedom, her actual
literal freedom by working on this belt and by leading
this belt. What was freeing about it for you? I
love her story so much. I mean, I just love
what she did. She was so smart, you know, and
I've just fascinated by it. And of course I'm going
(36:11):
why I happened? I heard about it, and why don't
I know it? As so much a female history I'm
finding out now. But I did not know about Maiden.
So many people say to me, I didn't know about it.
I had no idea. So really not much has changed. No,
women are still being written nows of history, you know,
un as we scream and shout about and then we
get called hysterical Harrodins, you know, always absolutely, And if
(36:35):
I can link back to this amazing lady. I always
feel when I'm out on the ocean that I'm seeing
what every historical sailor before me saw as long as
we can't see land, you know, Columbus, everyone who sailed
before me, so exactly what I'm seeing. That blows my mind.
(37:01):
And I've never forgotten. We've never forgotten sailing in through
the harbor. I did that. Excuse me, I did that.
Thanks so much to Laura sup Duncom and Tracy Edwards
for joining us on this odyssey. Don't forget to watch
the documentary Maiden about Tracy Edwards Landmark sail around the World,
(37:23):
and order Laura Suck Duncan's latest book, A Pirate's Life
for she Swashbuckling Women through the Ages. Fierce is hosted
and written by Joe Piazza, produced and directed by me
Anna Stump. Our executive producers are Joe Piazza, Nikki Etre,
Anna Stump, and from Tribeca Studios LEAs RB. This episode
(37:45):
was edited and soundscaped by Julian Weller, with additional editing
support from Aaron Kaufman. Our associate producer is Emily Marinoff.
Fact checking by Austin Thompson Research by Lizzie Jacobs. The
Fierce theme is by Hamilton Lighthouser and Anna Stump. Additional
music for this episode by Blue Dots. Sessions are very
sincere thanks to Mangesha ticket Or for making this series
(38:05):
possible and to Nikki etre Are, co executive producer who
literally moved mountains on a daily basis to make this
all happen. We are very very grateful to you. Sources
for this episode Pirate Women, The Princess's Prostitutes and Privateers
who ruled the Seven Seas by Laura Suke Duncan and
the article One Woman's Rise to Power, Chang's Wife and
the Pirates by Dion Murray, published by Bergen Books in
(38:27):
the academic journal Historical Reflections. For more podcasts for my
Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Popular Podcasts
1. Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
2. Stuff You Missed in History Class
Join Holly and Tracy as they bring you the greatest and strangest Stuff You Missed In History Class in this podcast by iHeartRadio.
3. Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.