- Why are we so much more familiar
with Blackbeard than Zheng Yi Sao?
At the height of his power
he commanded four or five ships depending on your source,
whereas at the height of her power, Zheng Yi Sao had 1,200.
That's a difference of about 1,200.
Well, that raises a bigger topic
of how our society has focused on men pirates
allowing them to have complexity
while women have been reduced to footnotes, anecdotes
and generic archetypes.
But today we're gonna right the ship
and explore the incredible
and unsung stories of women pirates.
I'm Joel Cook, and this is "Rogue History."
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Society across time and space has always largely expected
the same thing from women,
stay at home and perform domestic labor,
which needless to say is the exact opposite
of what pirates do.
- Women pirates were not at home [laughs].
And usually they left their children behind.
Some of them took them with them.
They were also behaving in very unfeminine ways.
They were wearing pants and they were taking part in looting
and pillaging and making money.
- There was also an old sailor superstition
that women were bad luck.
It could spell disaster at sea.
- It's frightful bad luck to bring a woman aboard sir.
- When it comes to the maritime world,
women were depicted in a sexual way as sirens
and mermaids who are said to lure or seduce men
in order to drown them.
And so this all kind of plays into the maritime narrative.
- Are you a mermaid?
- [laughs] I told you.
- I'm not a mermaid.
- And also what this is going to do
is gonna signify that women who are going to sea
aren't going to hold the same morals
as women who stay on land
and subscribe to their traditional gender roles.
- This attitude towards women led to them
disguising themselves and sneaking onto ships.
Two of the most famous women pirates
Anne Bonny and Mary Read, both escaped from those structures
of 18th century European femininity
by dressing like men and joining up with pirate crews.
They ended up becoming two of the most famous
and feared pirates during the Golden Age of Piracy.
- Whereas Anne was only dressed as a man to hide her gender
and her illegitimacy in the very beginning of her life,
Mary spent a lot of her life dressed as a man.
- But while their womanhood was a source of vulnerability
it was actually what temporarily saved their lives.
Anne Bonny and Mary Read both revealed they were pregnant
during their trial,
which resulted in their executions being delayed.
Mary Read ended up dying in prison
and Anne Bonny disappeared from the records.
But not every female pirate escaped execution
at least not Rachel Wall
known as the first recorded American pirate.
She was hanged in Boston Common in 1789,
after a successful career in piracy.
- [Presenter] She had an interesting scheme
where she and her husband would tie their ship up
and make it look like it had been wrecked.
And then when some ship would pull over to save her
the rest of the crew would come out
from the hold and take them over.
And then ironically lost her husband
and the rest of her crew in a storm
and was eventually marooned for real.
- But as exciting as some of these stories
about women pirate anti-heroes are,
they don't capture the complex experience
of the most vulnerable women on board these vessels.
Black and indigenous women were often taken captive
for their labor or to be sexually preyed upon.
So let's go back to the aforementioned Zheng Yi Sao.
Born in 1775 to humble origins in China,
she worked as a sex worker until she married a pirate
and she only accepted his marriage proposal on the condition
that he give her half his fleet.
After he died, she took over the rest of his fleet
becoming an incredibly powerful pirate
in the South China Sea
and commending an estimated 80,000 men.
- By every conceivable metric you can imagine,
she was the most successful pirate who ever lived.
She had a bigger fleet,
she had more people under her command,
she had more money.
She was active for longer.
She managed to retire instead of
on the short end of a noose.
One of the saddest things I think
about the Zheng Yi Sao story
is that we don't even know her real name.
Zheng Yi Sao is a translation of a wife of Zheng Yi.
So basically we know her as Mrs. Zheng.
- Some crimes are forgiven
but vengeance is an exciting element of any tale
especially a pirate one
and a common thread of the motivating factor
that drove women into piracy, like Sayyida al Hurra.
She and her family were expelled to Morocco from Spain
during The Inquisition for being Muslim.
She got a very good education, married a governor
and after he died, wait....
Am I the only one noticing a pattern of dead husbands?
- After her husband died
she ended up commanding many fleets of ships.
And what she would do is she would order them
to specifically attack Spanish ships.
And this was in retaliation for the way
that she was kicked out because of The Inquisition.
So her goal was to go and destroy
the Spanish fleet as much as possible.
Now, here's what's interesting.
The only sources we have that really detail Sayyida al Hurra
in general are Spanish and Portuguese sources.
All the history we're getting about her
is coming from these sources
that of course are going to be depicting her
in the most negative fashion possible.
- With piracy, the line often gets blurry
between hero and criminal.
It always depends on the perspective.
Like in the 16th century
there was Grace O'Malley called the Pirate Queen of Ireland.
To the Irish,
she was a hero defending their territorial independence,
to the English, she was a terror.
- And she was very successful
at attacking loads of English merchant ships.
This is the time where England is practicing
some of its first real examples of colonization.
And so many sailors, there were many pirates,
who were happy to attack English ships.
Then her sons were all kidnapped and made hostages,
and she had no choice but to go to England,
and appeal to the Queen of England, Elizabeth.
- O'Malley's sons were released
and in return she had to work
as a pirate for Queen Elizabeth.
So her punishment for being a successful pirate
was to become a privateer for her oppressor.
Another great pirate queen was Queen Teuta of Illyria.
She was married to King Agron,
and watched him build up his fleet
and then celebrate building up his fleet by drinking so much
that he, you guessed it, died.
She then took over to rule Eastern European Illyrian tribes
and often attacked the Roman Empire.
- The Romans had to send 200 ships
and 20,000 infantry to actually finally defeat Queen Teuta.
And she did not die.
She then made a deal with the Romans to let her live
and she promised that she would no longer go into piracy.
- But for every Renegade woman pirate we know about
there's so many we don't.
There's no way to know about the thousands of pirates
who were never caught
or the women disguised as men without record..
We couldn't fit all of the impressive women pirates
from history we came across into this episode,
which makes it funny
that many people might have trouble naming a single one.
So the question remains
why do we focus on telling stories of men pirates?
When we do tell stories of women pirates
why do we limit them to such a generic stereotype?
So the next time someone mentions Blackbeard
bring up Zheng Yi Sao.
If they say Calico Jack Rackham,
tell them about Sayyida al Hurra.
And if they [indistinct] Captain Morgan
make them wave the white flag
when you tell 'em about Rachel Wall.
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