12. History’s Most Successful Pirate
Ching Shih, also known as Madame Ching (1775 – 1844), was a Chinese pirate who terrorized the South China in the early nineteenth century. She was arguably history’s most successful pirate, commanding tens of thousands of outlaws. Despite challenging the British Empire, the Portuguese Empire, as well as the Chinese Qing Dynasty, she survived to retire from piracy and into a peaceful life.
She was a former prostitute who married a powerful pirate named Cheng, and participated fully in his piratical activities. Upon his death, she inherited his outlaw realm, and became known as Ching Shih, Chinese for “Cheng’s Widow”. However, she was not just a widow who lucked into a huge inheritance: her own legacy as a pirate far exceeded that of her deceased husband.