The most successful pirate of all time - Dian Murray

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At the height of their power, infamous Caribbean pirates like Blackbeard and Henry Morgan commanded as many as 10 ships and several hundred men. But their stories pale next to the most successful pirate of all time, who commanded 1,800 vessels, made enemies of several empires, and still lived to old age. Dian Murray details the life of the fearsome Madame Zheng.

Lesson by Dian Murray, animation by Steff Lee.

At the height of their power,

infamous Caribbean pirates like Blackbeard
and Henry Morgan

commanded as many as ten ships
and several hundred men.

But their stories pale next to the most
successful pirate of all time.

Madame Zheng commanded 1800 vessels,

made enemies of several empires,

and still lived to old age.

Madame Zheng began her life as a commoner

working on one of the many
floating brothels, or flower boats,

in the port city of Guangzhou.

By 1801, she had attracted
the attention

of a local pirate captain named Zheng Yi,
and the two soon married.

Guangzhou’s fishermen had long engaged
in small-scale piracy

to supplement their meager incomes
in the offseason.

But a successful peasant uprising in
neighboring Vietnam

at the end of the 18th century
had raised the stakes.

The victorious Tây Sơn rebels
had unified their country

only to face a Chinese invasion

and ongoing maritime battles with the
Vietnamese rulers they had overthrown.

So they commissioned Guangzhou’s pirates
to raid the coast

and join the fight against their enemies.

Serving their Vietnamese patrons
turned the Zhengs and other pirates

from ragtag gangs aboard single vessels

into professional privateer fleets

with dozens of ships
able to hold their own at sea.

In 1802, the Tây Sơn were overthrown

and the pirates lost
their safe harbor in Vietnam.

But instead of scattering,

the Zhengs met the crisis by uniting
the rival Cantonese pirate groups

into a formidable alliance.

At its height, the confederation
included 70,000 sailors

with 800 large junks

and nearly 1,000 smaller vessels.

Those were organized into six fleets
marked by different colored flags.

The Zhengs were unlike many other
historically-known privateers,

such as Henry Morgan or Barbarossa,

who acted on behalf
of various naval powers.

Instead, the Zhengs were now true outlaws,

operating without support or approval
from any government.

Zheng Yi met an untimely end in 1807,

but his widow didn’t hesitate
to secure their gains.

Through skillful diplomacy,

Madame Zheng took
charge of the confederation,

convincing the captains that their best
interests lay in continued collaboration.

Meanwhile, she appointed Zhang Bao,
the young protege of her late husband,

as the commander of her most
powerful squadron, the Red Flag Fleet.

Zhang became not only her right-hand man,
but her lover and, soon, her new husband.

Madame Zheng consolidated her
power through strict military discipline

combined with a surprisingly
progressive code of laws.

Female captives were theoretically
protected from sexual assault,

and while pirates could
take them as wives,

mistreatment or infidelity towards
them was punishable by death.

Under Madame Zheng’s leadership,

the pirates greatly
increased their power,

with 200 cannons
and 1300 guns in the Red Flag Fleet alone.

Within a few years, they destroyed 63 of
Guangdong Province’s 135 military vessels,

forcing their commanders
to hire more than 30 private junks.

Madame Zheng was so feared that Chinese
commanders charged with apprehending her

spent most of their time ashore,

sometimes sabotaging their own
vessels to avoid battle at sea.

With little to stop them,

the pirates were able to mount successful
—and often brutal—

raids on garrisons, villages,
and markets throughout the coast.

Using her administrative talents,

Madame Zheng established financial offices
in cities and villages,

allowing her pirates to extract regular
protection payments on land and sea alike.

This effectively created
a state within a state

whose influence reached
far beyond the South China Sea.

At the peak of her power,

Madame Zheng’s confederation drove
five American schooners

to safe harbor near Macao,

captured a Portuguese brig,

and blockaded a tribute
mission from Thailand

—all in a single day.

But perhaps Madame Zheng’s greatest
success lay in knowing when to quit.

By 1810, increasing tension
between the Red and Black Flag Fleets

weakened the confederation from within

and rendered it more vulnerable
to attack from without.

So, when the Chinese government,
desperate to stop the raids,

offered amnesty in exchange
for the pirates’ surrender,

Madame Zheng and Zhang Bao agreed,
but only on their own terms.

Their confederation was successfully
and peacefully dismantled in April 1810,

while Zhang Bao was allowed to retain
120 junks for personal use

and became an officer in the Chinese navy.

Now fighting pirates himself,

Zhang Bao quickly rose through
the ranks of military command,

and Madame Zheng enjoyed all
the privileges of her husband’s status.

After Zhang Bao died in 1822,

Madame Zheng returned with their
eleven-year-old son to Guangzhou,

where she opened a gambling house
and quietly lived off the proceeds.

She died at the age of 69—an uncommonly
peaceful end to a pirate’s life.