OFH Throwback- Episode #47- Who Was the Queen of the Pirates?

Hello, and welcome to this throwback episode of Our Fake History.

This week, we are throwing you back to episode number 47,

Who Was the Queen of the Pirates?

This is a fun one.

Listening back to this one, I realized that I don't really really make anthology episodes like this much anymore.

This used to be a really big part of the show.

I would look at a bunch of different historical myths and then quickly weigh in on whether or not we should believe them.

As the show has evolved and I've had more time to do research into these topics, I've found myself diving deeper into each of the topics that I explore.

So rarely will I just skim past a few kind of interesting tales and put them together in an episode like this.

For instance, in this episode, I get into the lore surrounding the Irish woman, Grace O'Malley.

Now, she is a fascinating figure, the kind of person I could easily make a series of episodes on now.

And there's a part of me that's a little sad I didn't save Grace O'Malley for a more in-depth series.

But there's another part of me that likes how brisk and light this episode feels.

So you folks tell me, what do you like?

A kind of breezy anthology series or something a little bit more deep?

Or maybe a little of both.

We can have it all.

We can have it all on our fake history.

I should also mention that the final figure I look at in this episode, the Chinese pirate queen Mrs.

Cheng, was looked at in great detail by our friend Danielli Bolelli on his beloved podcast, History on Fire.

So if you want to learn more about China's most notorious female pirate, then please check out the great work done by our friend Daniele Bolelli.

Finally, before we jump into this throwback episode, I should mention that the episode art for this show has become some of the most iconic art that has ever been done for the podcast.

As many of you know, our artist in residence here is the great Frank Fiorantino.

Frank has been creating art for this podcast since the first season.

He was one of the early believers in this show.

That art is also on all of our merch, which can be found at the TeePublic store.

Now, the piece of art that he made for this episode is one of our best sellers at the merch store.

It's a badass image of three female pirates that I've seen emblazoned on t-shirts, hoodies, tote bags, and mugs.

There's nothing that makes me happier than when someone sends me a picture of one of the young women in their life proudly sporting a t-shirt with that image on it.

So, shout out to Frank.

Shout out to everyone that likes that image.

And shout out to everyone who supports this show by buying the merch.

It's pretty awesome.

So, without any further ado, please enjoy episode number 47,

Who Was Queen of the Pirates?

There's a story that in the 5th century there lived a great Scandinavian king who had a fierce and fearless daughter named Elvilda.

Believing that no suitor was good enough for his remarkable daughter, he had her chambers guarded by a fearsome lizard and a terrible snake.

The two creatures warded off cowards who were unworthy of Avilda's hand in marriage.

But one day, a visitor came to their court.

It was the crown prince Alf, son of the great King Sigoris of Denmark.

To win Alvilda's hand in marriage, the prince donned his armor and killed the lizard and the snake guarding the princess's chambers.

Avilda's father father was so impressed that he agreed to allow Prince Alf to marry his daughter.

Princess Elvilda, on the other hand, was still not convinced.

She wasn't impressed by Prince Alf and was downright offended that her father would push her into this marriage.

So, with the help of some of her ladies-in-waiting, she ran away from her ancestral home.

Elvilda and her crew of women eventually made it to the coast.

They stole a boat and they put to sea.

Elvilda had been sailing for a few days when eventually another ship hove into sight.

There was no mistaking it.

This was a ship crewed by pirates.

The pirates eventually caught up to Elvilda's vessel and managed to wrestle their way aboard.

They were poised to start looting the ship when Elvilda stood up and stopped them all in their tracks.

We're told that her regal bearing and the fierceness in her eyes immediately overawed the pirates.

You see, they had recently lost their captain in a sea battle, and they needed a new leader.

So they hastily took a vote, and Elvilda was unanimously elected the new pirate captain.

Elvilda's ladies joined the pirate crew and they quickly set about looting and plundering the coasts of the Baltic Sea.

As her fleet grew in size, tales of the exploits of the pirates started to spread across Scandinavia.

The pirates had managed to seriously disrupt the trade in the region, and Sigoris, the king of Denmark, had had just about enough of them.

So he commanded his son, Prince Alf, to raise a fleet and rid the seas of these terrible pirates.

Alf wasted no time in his mission, and soon he had tracked down the entire pirate fleet.

He launched a devastating attack, which took the pirates entirely by surprise.

Alf himself led the charge, and was soon going from ship to ship, fighting all the way, trying to track down and kill the leader of this vicious band.

He eventually made it all the way to the pirates' flagship, where he saw the captain fighting in a full suit of armor.

He was about to go in for the kill when the captain's helmet was suddenly knocked from her head.

He instantly recognized the incredible woman that was standing in front of him.

It was none other than Alvilda, the woman he once fought an angry lizard for, and she was now queen of the pirates.

Elvilda stared back at Alf, and for the first time she felt truly impressed by him.

He had, after all, fought through an entire fleet of angry mercenaries.

The two leaders immediately ordered their followers to stop fighting.

The war was over.

Elvilda decided right then and there that Prince Alf was in fact worthy of her hand in marriage.

And so she declared that she would give up piracy forever and become his bride.

The pirate fleet was disbanded, and the former queen of the pirates would now become the queen of Denmark.

Now, that's a great story, but is any of it true?

Well, there probably was a real Princess Elvilda and a real Prince Alf.

But did any of those incredible events actually take place?

Well, probably not.

This story, which first pops up in the important medieval history, The Deeds of the Danes, is thought by most historians to be a legend.

Some have pointed out that the story bears a striking similarity to a number of traditional Nordic folktales and songs.

You might have recognized more than one traditional fairy tale trope going on in that story.

I mean, honestly, we're like one Andre the Giant away from this being a film directed by Rob Reiner.

But with that said, even if this story is based on just a kernel of truth, it might be one of the first instances in history we have of a female pirate.

Piracy on the high seas has existed basically as long as human beings have had boats.

And for most of that history, the people manning those ships were, well,

men.

However, there have been a few notable exceptions to that rule.

There certainly were female pirates.

And as you might imagine, there is a ton of myth wrapped up in their stories.

Was it true that an Irish pirate queen once had an audience with Queen Elizabeth?

Did cross-dressing female pirates really terrorize the Caribbean?

Is it true that the largest pirate fleet in the history of the world was actually commanded by a woman?

All that and more on today's Our Fake History.

Episode number 47, Who Was the Queen of the Pirates?

Hello and welcome to Our Fake History.

My name is Sebastian Major, and this is the podcast where we look at historical myths and try and figure out what's fact, what's fiction, and what is such a good story that it simply must be told.

This week we are looking at a topic that I've been toying around with for quite a while now, and that is the myths and legends associated with female pirates.

Now, as I mentioned in the introduction, piracy has long been considered a man's game.

In fact, seafaring in general has historically been a bit of a boys' club.

Now, there are certainly cultures out there that defy this convention, particularly in Polynesia and East Asia.

But in the West there have long been superstitions, taboos, and all-out laws that have prevented women from even going aboard boats.

These taboos against women at sea were perhaps at their strongest during the so-called golden age of piracy, which generally gets placed in the 17th and 18th centuries.

The stereotypical Halloween costume, pirates of the Caribbean-style pirate that we think of, comes from that era.

Now, to say that women were a rarity at sea in this period would be a bit of an understatement.

At that time, it was a very common superstition among sailors that having a woman on board your ship was terribly bad luck.

It was thought that the mere presence of a woman would be an invitation for trouble.

It was believed that the men aboard would start fighting over this woman and chaos would reign.

As such, women were only really allowed on ships that were specifically tasked for transport.

Every other boat on the water, from lowly fishing skiffs to merchant vessels to massive warships, were almost solely the domain of men.

Like so many other things in Western society at the time, the general rule was no girls allowed.

That rule was doubly true in the violent world of high seas piracy.

Except for the notable exceptions that we're going to be exploring today, pirate ships were almost exclusively crewed by men.

In fact, in the world of pirates, even being married was considered a liability.

In one famous study on Anglo-American pirates active in the early 18th century, only 23 pirates out of a sample size of 521 were found to be married.

That's only 4%.

We know that the pirate Sam Bellamy wouldn't allow married men to serve on his ship.

Historian David Cordingley also tells us that, according to people who were captured by pirates, married men were often allowed to go free, while single men were forcibly made to join the crew.

In the world of pirates, even being associated with a woman was considered a liability.

But despite the overwhelming prejudices against women on ships, there were still a surprising number of women who managed to get themselves to sea.

The history of the British Royal Navy and the merchant service is peppered with examples of women who successfully passed themselves off as men in order to serve aboard these ships.

We know that women like Hannah Snell, Mary Ann Rebecca Johnson, and Mary Ann Talbot all served for years in the Royal Navy before having their biological sex discovered.

Apparently, in Hannah Snell's case, anytime anyone would question her masculinity, she would shame them by challenging them to complete a shipboard task faster and better than she could.

The fact that she went a solid three years without ever being discovered as a woman, I think is a testament to her sailing skills.

These women occupy a really interesting place, not only in in maritime history, but also in the history of gender.

They were cross-dressers who lived as both men and women.

In a time when gender roles could not have been more rigid, they managed to defy them in spectacular ways.

Going to sea and serving on a boat disguised as a man was pretty much the most dangerous way for a person to rebel against their prescribed gender norms.

These women not only only went for it, they proved remarkably successful as sailors.

But if being a female sailor was a risky endeavor, then you can only imagine how crazy it would have been to be a female pirate.

This is what makes female pirates so damn fascinating.

The amount of grit and courage that it would have taken to survive in this most violent of male environments is amazing.

It's no wonder that the few female pirates that we know about in history have become such a topic of curiosity.

But where there is novelty, there is almost always myth.

In the sources, female pirates are usually presented in one of two ways.

They're either beloved folk heroes like Princess Elvilda, or they're freakish villains.

Their exploits are either heralded as a beaming example of the national spirit, or they're derided as the most debauched and disgusting things possible.

In both cases, the real human beings behind these stories can often get lost.

So let's dive into the lives of a few of these swashbuckling women and see if we can separate the fact from the fiction.

There's an old Irish poem that reads, quote, she had strongholds on her headlands and brave galleys on the sea, and no warlike chief or Viking e'er had bolder heart than she, end quote.

Those lines were inspired by the incredible life of Grace O'Malley, the so-called Irish pirate queen.

Grace O'Malley is one of those figures that we love so much here on Our Fake History because she straddles the line between being a real historical person and a folk myth.

Like William Wallace or Billy the Kid, she totally existed, but much of what we know about her life and times comes to us from romantic poems and songs.

The stories about Grace O'Malley are pretty awesome, but we need to be careful that they don't obscure what we know about her from the stronger documentary evidence.

We know for sure that she was born around 1530 in Connaught on the west coast of Ireland and was the daughter of a powerful Irish lord who controlled castles along that coast.

The O'Malleys also controlled a large fleet that sometimes traded and sometimes straight up robbed from its neighbors.

From a young age, Grace was schooled in the arts of seafaring and quickly made a name for herself as a bold captain.

She apparently earned the nickname Granai, and I know that I'm probably pronouncing that wrong, so Irish listeners, please set me straight.

How do you pronounce a word that is spelt G-R-A-N-U-A-I-L-L-E?

Granai, I'm guessing.

Anyway, Granai loosely translates to mean bald.

This referred to the short boyish haircut that Grace wore as a young woman.

She was eventually married to a neighboring Irish lord and bore him three sons, but her husband was eventually killed in what may have been a revenge attack.

After his death, she got married to a man named Richard Burke of County Mayo.

It was from his castle, known as Rockfleet Castle, overlooking Clue Bay, that Grace really started to make her name as a pirate.

She commanded a fleet that basically ran a protection racket out of the bay.

Any ship that came through had to pay her if they wanted safe passage.

If they didn't pay up, they could be expected to be attacked, robbed, and possibly killed.

It was very, uh, hey, that's a real nice ship you got there.

It would be a real shame if something was to say, happened to it as you sailed through Clue Bay.

I hear there's pirates around.

Anyway, it's in this period that we get many of the less historically verifiable legends about Grace O'Malley.

They all basically follow the same theme, that she was way braver than any man at sea, and that she could not stomach being disrespected.

One story goes that she actually gave birth to her son, Theobald, while she was out on a boat.

The ship was on a trading mission to the Mediterranean, and only a few hours after she'd given birth, her ship was surrounded by Turkish pirates.

The crew was all ready to surrender when Grace O'Malley sprang up out of bed where she had just had that baby.

She grabbed a blunderbuss, fired it at the Turkish ships, and screamed at her crew to, quote, take this load from unconsecrated hands, end quote.

The crew was amazed by this courageous act and fought back against the pirates, ultimately forcing the Turkish assailants to retreat.

Now, perhaps the most widespread legend about Grace O'Malley has to do with Ireland's Houth Castle.

Houth Castle was controlled by a neighboring lord, who was sometimes a rival and sometimes an ally of O'Malley and her husband Richard Burke.

The story goes that one day Grace O'Malley showed up at the doors of the castle in order to pay a courtesy visit to the local lord.

The guards at the door told her that she can't come in because the family was currently having dinner.

Disgusted by this lack of respect, she then tracks down the lord's grandson and kidnaps him.

She then keeps this kid hostage until the lord of houth finally gives in to her demands, which were, one, from now on, you always keep your gate open for unexpected visitors, and two,

every night at dinner, set an extra place at your table just in case I show up, which is obviously both hilarious and badass.

Now, both of these stories are generally considered to be myths by historians, as they're not supported by any documentary evidence, and they first seem to show up in the songs and poems from centuries after the events were supposed to have taken place.

Nevertheless, the descendants of the O'Malleys apparently still have a ring from the Houths, and to to this day, the keepers of Houth Castle still set a place at the table every night for Grace O'Malley.

So, who knows?

Maybe there is a little something to that one.

What we do know for sure is that Grace O'Malley spent her life fighting against those trying to make incursions in her land, be they local rivals or representatives of the English crown.

She specifically fought against the English lord Sir Richard Bingham, the Queen's representative in Connaught.

Now, it's pretty clear from the sources that O'Malley hated Bingham, and for his part, Bingham was no fan of Grace O'Malley.

He basically saw her as the root of all trouble in that part of Ireland.

He once wrote to Queen Elizabeth, quote, Grace O'Malley is nurse to all rebellions in the province for this 40 years, end quote.

But despite her tenacious resistance, the English were closing in on the O'Malley lands, and she basically saw the writing on the wall.

Still, she apparently couldn't stomach the idea of surrendering to Sir Richard Bingham, so she instead decided to take her case directly to Queen Elizabeth I

herself.

She wrote the queen a number of letters, and eventually Grace O'Malley would even sail to England to meet Queen Elizabeth face to face.

Now, this sounds like it should be a legend, but there is a ton of documentary evidence that tells us that this meeting really did take place.

We have no idea what was said in their meeting, but we do know that O'Malley pledged her fleet to Queen Elizabeth and swore to serve the crown as long as she didn't have to submit to Bingham.

Elizabeth seems to have been quite impressed by Grace O'Malley and agreed to the terms.

Now, despite this amazing bit of diplomacy, O'Malley's deal with the Queen was never properly recognized by Richard Bingham.

He was briefly removed from service, but would eventually return to Ireland and would continue to suppress any type of Irish independence.

Bingham's return to Ireland had seemed like a huge betrayal, but amazingly, the deal that had been bartered between Gracie O'Malley and the Queen proved surprisingly sturdy.

In fact, the O'Malleys would hold to their word for generations and would continue to serve the Crown of England.

Eventually, this loyalty was rewarded when the Crown made Grace O'Malley's son Tibbett the Viscount of Mayo.

The O'Malleys were now the most powerful local lords in the region.

So, in the end, the Irish Queen of the Pirates had the last laugh.

Figures like Princess Elvilda and Grace O'Malley are fascinating, especially when you consider how much they deviated from the prescribed gender norms of their time.

You have to admit, both of those characters acted pretty unladylike.

I think this is notable considering the fact that both of these women have been celebrated as national heroes.

Amazingly, the fact that these women defied their prescribed gender roles is presented as an affirmation of the national spirit of their countries.

If you're Danish or Irish, these stories seem to communicate that it's okay that these women broke from convention because they embodied a certain type of national toughness.

Now, that's interesting considering that most women, historically, who have boldly stepped outside of their prescribed gender role were not really applauded for it.

Quite to the contrary, they were often punished and usually quite harshly.

Let's take, for example, two of the most famous female pirates in history, Mary Reed and Anne Bonney.

These women have not been traditionally held up as trailblazers and role models.

On the contrary, they have been presented as particularly vile criminals.

Their rough and quote-unquote unwomanly behavior is not seen as a virtue.

Instead, it gets reported as evidence of their debased character.

But how much of this should we actually believe?

Well, most of what we know about Mary Reed and Anne Bonney comes to us from one of the most famous books ever written about piracy.

This was Captain Charles Johnson's A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pirates.

Originally published in 1724, this book basically did more for our modern conception of pirates than any other ever published.

In it, Captain Johnson romantically depicts the exploits of all the big-name pirates.

We're talking your blackbeards, your black barts, your steed bonnets.

You get the idea.

Robert Louis Stevenson would eventually use Captain Johnson's book as the template for his pirate blockbuster, Treasure Island.

Basically, without Captain Johnson, the romantic pirates of fiction wouldn't exist.

But how much should we trust Captain Johnson's accounts?

Well, I think it's important to note that there never really was a Captain Charles Johnson.

He doesn't exist anywhere in the records of the Royal Navy.

Most experts now believe that it was just a clever pseudonym used by a London publisher.

Basically, they figured no one would trust a book about pirates unless it was written by a real sea captain.

And so the pseudonym Captain Johnson was created.

But the question still stands, is the information in this book true?

Well, on this matter, I defer to one of the best modern pirate historians, David Cordingley.

When it comes to the life stories of Anne Bonney and Mary Reed, he tells us that Captain Johnson is, quote, usually accurate, but rarely indicates the source of his information.

And the story he tells about Reed and Bonney is almost too amazing to be true, end quote.

So basically, everything we know about the early lives of Anne Bonney and Mary Reed needs to be handled with care.

Nevertheless, here's what we're told.

Mary Reed's mother had been a widow and already had a son from her first marriage at the time that Mary was born.

Now, Mary had been the product of an affair which was a huge embarrassment to her mother, who then fled to the countryside to have her love child.

In that time, Mary's older brother died of an illness.

So her mom got the idea to dress Mary up as a boy and pretend that she was her legitimate son all along.

No illegitimate child here, just my one totally legitimate kid who is also totally a boy.

Right.

So Mary went through most of her life presenting as a male.

She eventually even enlisted in the Flemish army and fought in a conflict in what is today Belgium.

While she was fighting, she ended up falling in love with the Flemish soldier she was tenting with.

He was delighted to discover that his tentmate was actually a woman, and when the war was over, the two married.

But sadly for Mary Reed, the marriage didn't last long, and within a year of their nuptials, her husband was dead.

And so Mary once again disguised herself as a man and boarded a ship set for the West Indies.

As the ship neared its final port of call, it was attacked by pirates, pirates, led by the infamous Calico Jack.

Now, just a word here on Calico Jack.

This guy is totally the real-life Captain Jack Sparrow.

In the grand scheme of things, he's kind of like a third-rate pirate, but he was famous for being this suave ladies' man and having a really cool sense of personal style.

His nickname apparently came from the super colorful clothes he was fond of wearing.

Anyway, after being captured, Mary managed to convince Calico Jack to let her join his crew.

Jack obliged because, as it turned out, Mary would not be the only female crew member on his ship.

With him was a woman named Anne Bonney, whose life story oddly mirrored that of Mary Reed's.

Now, to avoid a scandal in her home of Cork, Ireland, Anne Bonney had also been disguised as a boy at a young age.

However, the ruse had been dropped as soon as she immigrated to the Carolinas with her father.

Anne had disappointed her somewhat well-to-do family by marrying a penniless sailor named Bonney and running off with him.

Then we're told that one night Anne and her husband were in a tavern in Providence when in swaggers Calico Jack.

Anne Bonney was apparently so charmed by the roguish outlaw that she decided to ditch her husband right there in Providence and head to sea with old Calico Jack.

With his ragtag crew that now featured two cross-dressing women, Calico Jack began to earn a reputation for being one of the more annoying pirates on the high seas.

They mostly hung around the Bahamas, knocking over small trading vessels and fishing boats.

These were not super well-armed pirates going after big treasure ships.

Calico Jack was interested in easy scores that didn't draw a lot of heat, and for a few years, they had some success at it.

In August of 1720, Calico Jack, Anne Bonney, Mary Reed, and about a dozen other pirates rode into Nassau Harbor and stole a 12-ton sloop known as the William.

This little act of boat theft really managed to upset the governor of the Bahamas, a man by the name of Captain Woods Rogers.

You see, in an attempt to deal with the piracy problem, Rogers had issued a general amnesty to the pirates in the region.

Basically, the deal was that we will stop chasing you so long as you cut it out with the piracy.

Your old crimes will be forgotten, but please, no new crimes.

Well, when Woods Rogers realized that Calico Jack, one of the pirates who had taken advantage of the amnesty, was back up to his old tricks, he was furious.

Jack wasted no time with his new boat and set about robbing every little fishing vessel he came across from the Bahamas to Jamaica in the following weeks.

However, it was off the coast of Jamaica when his luck would finally run out.

A privateer with a commission from the governor eventually overtook and attacked the William.

They had them easily outgunned, but interestingly enough, the toughest resistance they faced during the capture was from Mary Reed and Anne Bonney.

Apparently, they screamed abuse at their crew to rally and kept firing their pistols at the attacking privateers until they were physically overpowered.

The ladies aboard proved to be way more tenacious than old Calico Jack.

The crew was taken back to Nassau where they were tried.

Calico Jack was quickly found guilty.

He was hung, and then his body was placed in a cage and hung over the harbor as a warning to any other pirates who thought it might be a good idea to break the rules of the amnesty.

Now, interestingly enough, Anne Bonney and Mary Reed were given a separate trial from the rest of the crew.

This had everything to do with stereotypes about their gender.

The question in the trial was: were Mary and Anne forced into this by the nefarious Calico Jack, or had they been in fact willing participants?

The stereotype being that, of course, no woman would ever purposely commit piracy.

Well, the witnesses that were called during the trial made it pretty clear that Anne Bonney and Mary Reed not only consented to all of this, they were actually two of the most enthusiastic members of the crew.

The best description came from the witness Dorothy Thomas, who was attacked by the pirate sloop off the coast of Jamaica in a canoe.

At trial, she had this to say.

Now, I should note that in this quote, she calls herself the deponent and speaks about herself in the third person.

But here we go.

Quote,

The two women were on board said sloop and wore men's jackets long trousers and handkerchiefs tied around their heads.

Each of them had a machete and a pistol in their hands and cursed and swore at the men to murder the deponent that they should kill her to prevent her coming against them end quote.

So according to Dorothy Thomas, it was Reed and Bonnie who were two of the most violent members of the crew and most wanted to see her murdered.

That's some pretty pretty damning testimony.

The judge seemed to agree.

He found both women guilty of all charges and sentenced them to hang by the neck until they were dead.

But just then, in an incredible twist, the two women played their trump card.

They stood up and informed the court that they could not be executed because they were both pregnant.

Yes, both of these women were pregnant, and in both cases, the father was thought to be Calico Jack.

The women were inspected, and sure enough, they were telling the truth.

So imagine that.

The people who most violently and fiercely defended their ship from capture were not only women, they were pregnant women.

Now, I should point out here that in its day, this wasn't really presented as an empowering story.

The details details about cross-dressing and promiscuity were used by Captain Johnson to underscore how evil these women were.

Being a cross-dressing pregnant lady pirate kind of sounds pretty cool these days, but in the 1700s, it pretty much made you a monster.

And unfortunately for these two women, that is largely how they were remembered.

Now, sadly for us, the story of Anne Bonney and Mary Mary Reed ends abruptly after their trial.

We know that Mary Reed would die from an infection only a few weeks later, and Ann Bonney would completely disappear from the historical record.

However, there is a legend that Ann Bonney eventually did have her baby.

That baby would grow up and immigrate to America, where he would set down roots.

The Bonnies would thrive in the United States for the next 100 years until one of them would go on to make his own name as an outlaw.

The story goes that Ann Bonney's great-great-great-grandson was none other than William H.

Bonney, aka

Billy the Kid.

Now,

I really wish that was true, but it's not.

As you might remember from our series on the kid, Bonney wasn't even his real last name.

It was just one of the many aliases he used over the years.

Nevertheless, the existence of that legend shows just how notorious Ann Bonnie actually was.

The outlaw gene from the female pirate had been passed down for generations, only to manifest in yet another famous criminal.

It's a great story, but it's some very fake history.

The last female pirate we're going to look at today is a bit different than the others.

Her unique place in history has meant that she hasn't really been the subject of myth in the same way that our other female pirates have.

Now, this might have to do with the fact that she wasn't from Europe or North America.

She was Chinese.

So, who knows?

There might be a rich oral tradition being bandied about in Mandarin or Cantonese, but sadly, it hasn't really made it to the English sources.

Nevertheless, it would be completely wrong to do a show about female pirates and not mention Cheng-e-Sao.

Mrs.

Cheng, as she's often called in Western sources, is not only the most successful female pirate in history, she may be the most successful pirate in history, period.

At the height of her power, she controlled a massive fleet of junks who basically ruled the South China Sea.

Now, the sheer number of people that she commanded is truly staggering.

People have guessed that she may have commanded between 50,000 and 80,000 pirates at one time.

Those numbers are just insane.

To give you some perspective, in 2017, the Royal Navy in Britain has 35,000 regular service people.

So, Mrs.

Cheng had more manpower than the current British Navy.

But despite this amazing achievement, not much is known about this woman.

What we do know is that Mrs.

Cheng was working as a prostitute in Canton when she met the pirate Cheng-ee.

The two fell in love and married in the year 1801.

The name that we know her by, Cheng Yi Sao, literally translates to the wife of Cheng Yi.

So, Mrs.

Cheng it shall be.

Now, while her husband was alive, she worked with him to help build his pirate armada, which became known as the Red Flag Fleet.

And when he died in 1807, Mrs.

Cheng then slid into his role as commander of the fleet.

Now, interestingly enough, this does have some precedent in Chinese history.

There are many examples of women, specifically widows, using their position as the former wives of powerful men to become extremely powerful in their own right.

Chinese imperial history is filled with powerful women who often wielded de facto control over the country.

When Mrs.

Cheng's husband died, she solidified her power by quickly starting a relationship with one one of the fleet's most powerful captains, a man named Chang Pao.

She seduced Chang Pao and elevated him to the role of her number two in the pirate organization.

Chang Pao would be in charge of the day-to-day command of the fleet, and Mrs.

Cheng would concentrate on devising the wider strategy of this burgeoning criminal organization.

Mrs.

Cheng broadened the scope of their empire by expanding out from just robbing merchant vessels at sea.

Much like Grace O'Malley, she set up her own version of a protection racket, getting her pirates to hustle coastal villages for protection money, and if they didn't pay up, they could expect a violent pirate raid.

Mrs.

Cheng also set up a strict code of conduct for her pirates.

Anyone who disobeyed an order or tried to steal from the treasure that was to be split evenly among the crew, they were immediately beheaded.

If you deserted your boat or went ashore without leave, you got one of your ears chopped off.

If you tried to hide some plunder without sharing it with the crew, you were whipped.

If you tried to do it again, you were beheaded.

Most interestingly, any crew member who tried anything inappropriate with a female captive was immediately put to death.

In many ways, Mrs.

Cheng's pirate law was way more harsh than the laws operating back on the mainland.

The Red Flag Fleet would become the terror of southern China.

The imperial authorities were basically powerless against it, and Mrs.

Cheng's pirates could raid the coasts with impunity.

Local villagers actually started building their own barricades and defenses against the pirates, but they were rarely effective against the much better equipped Red Flag fleet.

The situation got so bad that in 1808, the provincial commander-in-chief, backed by the Imperial Navy, led an attack on Mrs.

Cheng's pirates.

We're told that a massive and bloody naval battle took place.

But the pirates won.

The provincial commander's fleet was almost completely destroyed.

Chang Pao then took the rest of the Red Flag Fleet up the river to the city of Canton and basically put the city under siege.

They then took a terrible revenge on the countryside, burning villages and killing thousands.

At this point, the Red Flag Fleet had just proved that it was way more powerful than the Imperial Navy of China.

They continued to operate with impunity for the next two years until the Chinese officials took it upon themselves to enlist both the British and the Portuguese to help them rid the waters of the pirates.

Before they unleashed their new allied armada on the pirates, the Chinese offered an amnesty to Mrs.

Cheng.

Mrs.

Cheng knew that she might not get a better deal than the one she was being offered, so we're told that she went to visit the governor general with 17 women and children as part of her retinue.

It was an interesting move.

Instead of showing up with a bunch of fierce pirates as her entourage, she decides to play the part of the soft-hearted mother who wouldn't hurt a fly.

It was very clever and seems to have worked out in her favor.

In the course of her discussion with the governor general, she agreed that she would disband the red flag fleet and would turn her junks and weapons over to the imperial authorities, but only if the following conditions were met.

All of her sailors were to be free from prosecution, except for about 200 of them who were particularly bad.

Everyone else got to keep their treasure, and if they wanted to, they would be allowed to join the Imperial Navy.

Her lover, Chang Pao, would be given the rank of lieutenant and would be able to keep a personal fleet of 20 junks.

And of course, she would be able to walk away with everything she had plundered over the past 10 years.

The Governor General agreed, and the reign of the red flag fleet came to a rather peaceful end.

Mrs.

Chang retired from the life of piracy, had a child, and then set up a gambling house in Canton that she ran until she died at the age of 69.

Like any good gangster, she spent her retirement running a shady casino.

You gotta love it.

Historian Linda Grant DePow once wrote that Mrs.

Chang was, quote, the greatest pirate, male or female, in all of history, end quote.

And it's a claim that's hard to argue with.

The sheer scale of her criminal operation meant that she could rival the power of governments.

There aren't too many underworld figures who can claim that.

She was basically the Pablo Escobar of her day.

Now, what's interesting to me about all of these female pirates is is that they're always presented as being tougher and generally more piratey than any of their male counterparts.

Alvilda is unanimously elected pirate captain just for looking tough.

Grace O'Malley is shooting pistols minutes after giving birth.

Mary Reed and Anne Bonney are defending their ship and screaming for murder when everyone else had already surrendered.

And Mrs.

Chang is ruthlessly and competently managing the biggest pirate fleet in history.

They out-pirated the pirates.

So even though piracy may have been a man's game, these female pirates may have just done it a bit better.

Okay,

that's all for me this week.

Thanks again for joining me.

Before we go, I just wanted to make a bit of a programming note.

We are approaching the end of season two of Our Fake History.

Can you believe it?

We've just finished the second season.

So there's going to be one more episode this season.

It's going to come out two weeks from now.

That's July 25th, 2017.

And then I'm going to take a little break.

So the show will go on a a brief seven-week hiatus and then we'll be back on September 12th of 2017.

So please do not unsubscribe in that time.

I need that time just to refuel, do some more research, get some more ideas going for the podcast, and so I can come back strong and keep hitting that every two-week mark for season three of Our Fake History.

But if you find that you're missing me over that seven-week break, then you may want to check out the new extra episode that I'm going to be releasing on July 25th.

So July 25th is a big day.

I'm going to be putting out the last free episode of season two of Our Fake History.

And everyone on Patreon is going to be getting the brand new extra episode on Vlad the Impaler.

I'm also going to be selling that extra episode at the website at ourfakehistory.com.

But honestly, the best deal on that extra episode is through the Patreon.

Not only do you get that extra episode, but if you support at $3 a month, you get all the other extra episodes that I've created, including those that are exclusive to Patreon.

And if you support at the $5 a month level, you get all of that.

You get the dirty church EP, and you get a shout out on the podcast.

Speaking of shout-outs on the podcast, this week, I'd like to give a shout-out to Stephen Jones, Chris Kemmerer, Andrea Henderson, Sweetgrass, and Torsten Nosenberg.

All of you have decided to support the show at the $5 or more level, which makes you pretty much the coolest people I can imagine.

You are very cool.

But I need to thank every single one of you that has been supporting the show with donations through Patreon, has been supporting the show with one-off donations, has been writing nice reviews for the show on iTunes and on Stitcher.

And just everyone out there that sends me nice messages, talks to me on Facebook, on Twitter.

I know what, I don't know if I say this enough, but this show would not exist if it wasn't for the support of this amazing, amazing audience.

So

once again, I just have to give you guys a lot of love.

Thanks for listening.

I'm glad you're here with me.

And

don't go away while I take this quick break over the summer.

I promise I will return.

Our fake history will be back for season three.

Here's a little teaser.

For season three, here are some topics I'm thinking of getting into.

I'm looking at Robin Hood.

I'm looking at the fake history associated with the Da Vinci Code.

I'm looking at the Titanic.

I'm looking at

the Book of Five Rings, going back to Japanese history.

I'm looking at the pyramids.

There's so much more fake history that needs to be explored, guys, and I want to do it with you.

So, two weeks from now, tune in, check out the last episode of the season, and

then a few weeks after that, tune back in for the start of season three.

Also, before we go this week, I want to give a big shout-out to Craig Buddy and his great podcast, The History of Pirates.

So, if you liked this week's episode and were like, Sebastian, this was great, but I felt like you just kind of dipped your toe into the pirate topic.

Well, don't you worry.

There is an entire podcast dedicated to the history of pirates.

It's a lot of fun.

If you want to sample it, you can go to darkmyths.org.

I haven't given a shout out to my people over at Dark Myths in the last bit.

You can try it there, or you can subscribe to the history of pirates.

every place you get podcasts.

If you want to get in touch with me in the meantime, you can always send me an email at ourfakehistory at gmail.com.

Or you can hit me up on Twitter at Ourfake History.

Or you can go to the Facebook page at Facebook slash Our Fake History.

And you can communicate with me there.

I do my best to get right back to you guys.

I love talking to you.

I really do.

So reach out.

The music for the show comes to us from Dirty Church.

You can check out dirtychurch at dirtychurch.bandcamp.com.

And all the other music that you heard on the show today was written and recorded by me.

My name is Sebastian Major, and remember, just because it didn't happen doesn't mean it isn't real.

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You're juggling a lot.

Full-time job, side hustle, maybe a family.

And now you're thinking about grad school?

That's not crazy.

that's ambitious.

At American Public University, we respect the hustle and we're built for it.

Our flexible online master's programs are made for real life because big dreams deserve a real path.

Learn more about APU's 40-plus career-relevant master's degrees and certificates at apu.apus.edu.

APU built for the hustle.