The Nemesis was a steam-driven paddleship owned by the East India Company and took part in the Royal Navy's antipiracy operations. The superior firepower of the steamships and their ability to outmaneuver the sailing junks enabled the British commanders to wreak havoc when they cornered the pirate fleets along the South China Sea coast.

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Background

One of the master pirates of all time, Cheng I created a powerful confederation controlling the sea lanes from Hong Kong to the Vietnamese border. Born into a family practicing piracy for many generations, Cheng fought with rebel forces in Vietnam. When he returned to China in 1801, he made himself leader of the pirates in the Kwang-tung Province.

Cheng's confederation set up permanent bases at coastal villages and on uninhabited islands. The pirates' organized squadrons devastated trading boats and fishing craft and easily captured large ocean-going junks. They plundered villages, markets, and government forts, seizing cannon and gunpowder. By 1806, virtually every Chinese vessel passing the coast paid protection money. Although Cheng's corsairs avoided large European vessels, they captured foreign sailors and held them for ransom.

Cheng died at the height of his success in 1807. One story relates that he was blown overboard and drowned in a gale. In another version, he was killed while fighting to recapture Vietnam for his former allies. His wife, Cheng I Sao, succeeded him as commander of the Red Flag Fleet and leader of the pirate confederation.

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Examples of Chinese ransom or extortion notes from the nineteenth century. The Chinese pirates were highly organized and even bureaucratic, keeping records and drawing up contracts. Once the victim paid after receiving threats, the pirates issued protection documents. Merchants were an obvious target, but so were coastal villages that were often threatened with dire retribution if they failed to pay.

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Mrs. Cheng (Cheng I Sao) in action, the famous woman pirate chief who took command of the federation on the South China Sea coast in 1807. She led a community of fifty thousand pirates. This fanciful depiction is from the History of the Pirates of all Nations published in 1836.

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Mrs. Cheng

Power passed uncontested to the hands of Cheng's wife, Cheng I Sao. She had participated fully in her husband's piracy, and she had created relationships that would legitimatize her status and allow her to exercise authority.

But what ultimately secured her position at the top of the pirate hierarchy was the need of a new leader to replace her husband as the commander of the most powerful Red Flag Fleet. For this she needed a loyal man she could trust one who would have a great deal of authority in the operation of the entire fleet, and in giving orders to the other pirate leaders.

Only one person could fill this position the young captive Chang Pao. Chang Pao was a fisherman's son who had joined the pirates at age of fifteen, after being captured by Cheng I. Ultimately, Cheng I adopted Chang Pao as a son.

In 1807, when Mrs. Cheng needed a lieutenant, the twenty-one-year-old Chang Pao was a natural choice. Since he had come into the confederation as an outsider, he had developed no prior loyalties to other leaders, but had shown qualities of leadership. Mrs. Cheng and Chang Pao furthered their alliance with a relationship of their own. Within weeks they two became lovers, and later they married. Chang Pao was a flamboyant young rogue, and often dressed in a purple silk robe and black turban.

When Mrs. Cheng became leader, she issued a code of laws that added even more power to the pirate confederation. The code was short and severe. Anyone caught giving commands on his own or disobeying those of a superior was to be decapitated. It was a capital offense to pilfer from the common treasury or steal from the villagers who regularly supplied the pirates. Desertion or absence without leave resulted in a man's ear being cut off and his being paraded through his squadron. Raping female captives was also a capital offense, and if there was fornication by mutual consent, the pirate was to be beheaded and the female captive cast overboard with a weight on her legs.

Westerners often saw pirates who had violated the code flogged, put in irons, or quartered. According to one Western captive, the pirates' code was strictly enforced and violators punished with an efficiency that seemed "almost incredible."

Mrs. Cheng created the financial and military structures that were indispensable for the pirates' survival. In contrast to the petty pirates who were entirely dependent on the chance seizure of vessels at sea, the confederation was a business with sophisticated financial operations. These professionals could overpower even large oceangoing junks by force, and operated freely in the inshore waters of South China. Mrs. Cheng also led the forces in attacks on shore, plundering villages, markets, rice fields, and small forts.

The pirate confederation was so strong that for years it held power over the Chinese military along the coast. They had so reduced the defense ships of Canton as well as the government forces that the navy had to bolster its ranks by the temporary hiring of private fishing vessels. At one point, they forced five American schooners to run for safety within gunshot range of Macao. They also captured a brig belonging to a Portuguese governor, and blockaded the mouth of the Pearl River against a tribute mission from Siam.

The pirates' actions forced the Chinese government to play their last card alliances with foreigners. Finally, the East India Company equipped a ship with twenty cannons and fifty American volunteers, and set sail. At the same time, the Portuguese agreed to lease out six men-o'war to sail with the Cantonese navy for six months.

On November 19, 1809, the pirates, harbored in a bay, awoke to find themselves surrounded. The barrage lasted several hours. Thereafter, combined government and Purtuguese forces maintained a blockade meant to spell the end of the pirates.

Westerners as well as the Chinese had been unable to destroy the confederation. For all their boasts about being able to overthrow the state, the pirates did not come close. In the end, they were unable to win over any significant number of the governing elite, whose support was necessary to establish Chinese political power.

The pirate leaders of the Six Flags had such strong leaders that for over a decade they outperformed the state's ability to control the local economy. When its leaders retired, the confederation folded. Mrs. Cheng commanded an immense fleet said to include between 1,500 and 1,800 ships and 80,000 pirates. Little is known about her retirement or demise.