The Pirate Queen Who Put Blackbeard to Shame If you think the baddest pirate in history was some rum-soaked dude with a peg leg and a parrot, you’ve been watching too many Disney movies. Enter Zheng Yi Sao . In 1801, she was a working girl on a floating brothel in Canton . By 1805, she was the undisputed CEO of the " Red Flag Fleet ," commanding over 1,800 ships and an army of 80,000 pirates. To put that in perspective: the Spanish Armada—you know, the guys who tried to invade England—only had about 130 ships. Zheng Yi Sao didn't just have an "army"; she had a floating nation that made the Chinese, British, and Portuguese navies look like a group of kids in a bathtub with rubber ducks. From the "Flower Boats" to the Flagship Before she was the terror of the South China Sea, she was known as Shi Xianggu . She worked on the "flower boats"—essentially floating brothels in Canton. But Shi Xianggu wasn't just another face i...