March is National Women's History Month! To celebrate, I thought I would share the story of an amazing woman that isn't typically talked about in history lessons. Ching Shih was strong, smart, and broke so many glass ceilings that it's almost hard to keep up! Here is her story.

Ching Shih: Pirate Lord and "The Terror of South China"

Yeah, that's right. There were female pirates. The most notable among them was Ching Shih. Living in China in the late 1700s, she was working as a prostitute when a pirate fleet called the Red Flag Fleet came and raided her village. The commander of this fleet, Zhèng Yi, fell in love with Ching Shih during this raid and asked her to marry him. She agreed, but only under the condition that she would rule his fleet alongside him and share half of all the wealth that they plundered. Zhèng Yi agreed, and they set sail together to rule the Red Flag Fleet.

With her help, the fleet grew to have around 1,800 ships and 70,000 pirates! If you want a comparison, Blackbeard, possibly the most famous pirate to ever exist, had only four ships and 300 pirates. Ching Shih and her husband also somehow managed to unite a number of rivalry pirate fleets and create the Cantonese Pirate Coalition.

When Zhèng Yi died, their adopted son, Chang Pao, took control of the fleet. This is where things get weird. Ching Shih still wanted control of the fleet, so she married Chang Pao and convinced him to let her rule the fleet. This woman wanted power so badly that she married her adopted son! And that's not the craziest thing that she did.

Being a female pirate ruler was not something that commonly happened. In fact, there were hardly ever women on pirate ships unless they were prisoners kept there to pleasure the male pirates. Ching Shih decided that she had to set a lot of rules and regulations into place in order for her fleet to take her seriously.

She set many of their female prisoners free, and the ones that stayed had to be treated well. If a man wanted to lay with one of the prisoners, she had to become his wife. If he was unfaithful to her or sexually assaulted her, he was beheaded. If a man and a female captive slept together consensually but did not marry, both the man and woman were beheaded. If a pirate was caught giving out their own orders or defying the orders given to him by a superior, he was beheaded. If someone tried to leave the fleet, they were hunted down, their ears were cut off, and they were held captive. If a pirate resisted her orders, she would nail them by their feet to the ship's deck and beat them until they gave in. Long story short, Ching Shih didn't take any "shih".

She also set in place laws regulating their looting policy. Any and all plunder gathered by their fleet was to be registered and taxed before it was distributed among the pirates. Each ship got to keep 20% of all that they plundered, while the other 80% was placed in the collective fleet fund. This, as you can imagine, made Ching Shih a very wealthy woman.

The Chinese, Portuguese, and British navies all tried to take down her fleet multiple times. Each time, the Red Flag Fleet captured their men and gave them two options. They would be beheaded (yes, she LOVED beheading people), or they would join the fleet. Of course, the choice was simple for most of the prisoners. So basically, the more that people tried to stop her, the larger her fleet grew and the more impossible she became to over-throw.

Eventually, everyone gave up on trying to defeat her. The Qing dynasty decided to grant a percentage of her pirates amnesty if they returned as free citizens. Ching Shih didn't think that was good enough, so she initially refused. I mean, why would she accept if she was doing so well and making so much money? So China negotiated with her and offered her and the majority of her fleet amnesty and even allowed her to keep all of her wealth! She also asked to be given the title "Lady by Imperial Decree" which granted her protection by law. That was the cherry on top that she needed to convince her.

Ching Shih accepted this offer and retired peacefully from her reign. She spent the rest of her life running an underground brothel and gambling house while enjoying her wealth in peace. She had a family and died at the age of 69, which was a very long life in the early 1800s! If that's not a happy ending, then I don't know what is.

So the next time that you're watching Pirates of the Caribbean and you're thinking about how cool Captain Jack Sparrow was, just remember this: Ching Shih would have definitely beheaded him and taken the Black Pearl along with all of its crew.