Ching Shih c. 1775–1844

Also known as Shi Yang, Zheng Yi Sao, Shi Xianggu

Ching Shih, also recorded as Shi Yang, Zheng Yi Sao, and Shi Xianggu, was a pirate leader in the South China Sea. The English Wikipedia article dates her from about 1775 to 1844. She married the pirate Zheng Yi in 1801, when she was about twenty-six, and among Cantonese speakers she was Zheng Yi Sao, wife of Zheng Yi. After Zheng Yi died in 1807 she took command of his confederation together with Zhang Bao, his adopted son, whom she later married. The same article says that in 1805, while the fleet was still under Zheng Yi, it numbered about 400 junks and somewhere from 40,000 to 70,000 pirates. Those figures are the article's account, not a separate count. The ships mainly attacked Chinese warships and merchant vessels, and sometimes European ships. In 1810, after defeats by the Portuguese Navy, she negotiated a surrender to the Qing authorities that let her and Zhang Bao keep 24 ships and more than 1,400 people and avoid prosecution. She died in 1844, at about sixty-eight. No photograph with a clean public-domain record was found, so this sheet has none.

Existence span c. 1775–1844