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In 1756, a young Englishwoman was taken hostage by Barbary pirates. This is her story
Taken hostage by a Barbary ship’s captain in the 18th century, a young Englishwoman found herself fighting for her freedom in Marrakech. Adam Nichols introduces a brave captive who later wrote a book about her dramatic experiences
The Barbary corsair ship appeared suddenly on the horizon, bristling with cannon. Its decks swarming with armed men, it sliced through the waves at a clip that its quarry – the British merchant ship Ann – could not match. At that time, in the mid-18th century, such pirate attacks were violent, bloody affairs; if the Ann’s captain tried to resist, he would be risking the lives of his crew, his passengers and himself, and would likely see his ship sunk. He surrendered. The corsair captain swaggered aboard the British vessel without firing a shot, and surveyed his captives. He was one of the infamous Sallee Rovers operating out of Salé, on the Atlantic coast of Morocco, who sold any Europeans they captured into slavery. The captain ordered the Ann’s four passengers to be taken to his ship, along with the crew, who were chained up in the hold. One of the passengers was a young Englishwoman named Elizabeth Marsh, barely 21 years old. It is because of her that we know these details. She later published an account of her experiences: The Female Captive: A Narrative of Facts Which Happened in Barbary in the Year 1756, Written by Herself. The corsair attack occurred in August 1756, a few months after the beginning of the Seven Years’ War. Marsh’s father, an administrator for the Royal Navy, had moved his family from their home in Menorca to Gibraltar, which he considered safer. To further protect his daughter, he then booked her a berth on the Ann, which set sail for England in late July. Read more | Liquor, loot and death on the high seas: 5 things you (probably) didn't know about the history of pirates Marsh’s family aspired to be “respectable people”, and she had received a genteel education. The future planned for her was typical of young women of her position and era: to marry a well-to-do man and bear his children. Now, torn from that sheltered life, she faced a very different fate. As a young, attractive European woman, Marsh would have been a highly sought-after commodity in north African slave markets – one that any Moroccan sultan would be very interested in acquiring for his harem. The corsair captain kept Marsh isolated – not for her comfort but to keep her safe and unmolested. One of the other passengers, an English merchant named James Crisp, had been tasked by Marsh’s father with looking after her; he convinced the corsairs that he was her brother, so they permitted him to stay by her side. African captivity After a week at sea, the corsairs reached Salé. There, the British party was housed in a dilapidated building for several uncomfortable and uncertain days. Their situation was complicated. In 1750, England and Morocco had concluded a treaty of mutual cooperation, and were trading partners, with Morocco supplying beef to the British garrison in Gibraltar. However, the Moroccans found the treaty unsatisfactory, and had also been incensed by what they considered to be the disrespectful actions of a British emissary who had attended an audience with the sultan while wearing muddy boots. Marsh and her companions were, technically, hostages rather than outright captives. But the British feared that Sidi Mohammed ben Abdallah, the Moroccan sultan’s son and heir, might live up to his reputation and take an amorous interest in Elizabeth Marsh. And that is what happened. Marsh and her companions were taken to Marrakech, Sidi Mohammed’s home city – a journey of some 300 miles across rough, mountainous country. On the way, Marsh and Crisp received some advice from a friendly slave: they should now claim to be husband and wife. Sidi Mohammed was in his forties. His father was aging and sick, and Sidi Mohammed would soon inherit the sultanate. For all his power, though, he could not force Marsh into his harem. The Qur’an’s Chapter 4, Verse 24 decrees: “Forbidden to you are women already married, except those whom your right hand possesses” – that last clause being a euphemism for slaves. Marsh was not a slave so, if she and Crisp successfully maintained the fiction of their marriage, Sidi Mohammed could not take her for his harem. Before the acting sultan In Marrakech, Marsh was housed with the other English captives in a house in the town, hostages in the ongoing negotiations between the Moroccans and the English. She was quickly brought before Sidi Mohammed, though, alone and still dishevelled from her long journey. He grilled her about her marriage, observing that married English women customarily wore wedding rings – which she did not. Marsh declared that she had taken off her ring for safety during her voyage. He was not convinced, but he allowed her to depart and rejoin the other captives. At their next meeting, Sidi Mohammed – dressed in a pink satin vest with diamond buttons – presented Marsh with “a great collection of rarities” and told her that, as she recounted it, “he did not doubt of my preferring, in time, his palace to the confined way of life I was then in… and that the curiosities I had seen should be my property”. Marsh declined this offer. Sidi Mohammed, used to having his own way, was not pleased. But then something unexpected occurred. A woman who was in the room started talking to Marsh, using a phrase in Arabic and making encouraging gestures for her to repeat it, which Marsh did. “Too late,” she wrote, “I discovered that I had renounced (completely innocently) the Christian religion by saying in Morisco: ‘There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is His prophet’.” Read more | Barbary pirates: the Muslim corsairs and their role in the slave trade Marsh was now in real trouble, having unintentionally recited the Shahadah – and thus converted to Islam. According to Qur’anic law, this automatically invalidated her Christian marriage to Crisp, making her fair game for Sidi Mohammed. The Prince, as Marsh refers to him, then resorted to threats. Here is her account: “Throwing off the mask he had hitherto worn, he cruelly informed me that I had renounced the Christian faith and turned Mohometan [Muslim], and that a capital punishment – namely burning at the stake – was, by their laws, inflicted upon all who recanted from... their religion. “The shock of this pronouncement was severe...I assured the Prince that, if I was an apostate, it entirely proceeded from my being tricked, and not from my own inclination, and that if my death would give him any satisfaction, I no longer desired to avoid that last and final remedy to all my misfortunes, for to go on living under the terms he proposed would only add to my misery. “The Prince seemed greatly perplexed by my resolute declaration, and, though he continued his importunities, yet it was now more with the air of a supplicant than that of a sovereign.” Marsh’s language does not really do justice to the drama of the situation. Sidi Mohammed, the second most powerful man in Morocco, threatened to have her burned at the stake if she refused to join his harem. Alone and defenceless, Marsh faced him down and dared him to do it. Baffled by such unexpected and indominable resistance, Sidi Mohammed capitulated and let her rejoin the other captives. Read more | Shipwrecked: the 18th-century looters who endured five months of hell Release and return The political tensions between Britain and Morocco were eventually resolved – in part by the arrival of a British warship – and Marsh and her companions, along with the Ann’s crew, were allowed to depart. Marsh returned to England, where she married James Crisp. However, Crisp went bankrupt and fled to India to try to revive his fortunes, leaving Marsh behind with two small children. Without any means of support, she went to live at her parents’ home in Chatham, Kent. Desperate for money, she resorted to writing a memoir of her captivity in Morocco. Marsh eventually joined her husband in India, where she travelled widely. She died there of breast cancer at the age of 50, surviving a mastectomy without anaesthetic but then succumbing to the disease. Her memoir, The Female Captive, is the first full-length Barbary corsair captivity narrative written by a woman in English. The book enjoyed some notoriety when it was first published but was never a bestseller, and only a single copy is known to survive. If that copy had disappeared, we would likely never know Elizabeth Marsh’s remarkable story. Marsh was not famous. She played no role in world events. Hers was a private life. Yet the courage she showed during her Moroccan ordeal is an example of how ordinary people can do extraordinary things. Adam Nichols is a historian and writer. His latest book is Corsairs and Captives: Narratives from the Age of the Barbary Pirates (Pen & Sword, 2024), featuring Marsh’s full account This article was first published in the Christmas 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
From krakens to serpents: 5 fearsome sea monsters from history
Sea monsters have haunted human imaginations for millennia. From the kraken to killer serpents, Prema Arasu explores what five mythical creatures reveal about our deepest fears
1. Armed and dangerous The writhing tentacles of the kraken inspired horror and disgust Sea monsters have fired our imaginations – and chilled our blood – for as long as humanity has sailed the seas. The Babylonian epic Enūma Eliš, which dates back to at least 1200 BC, describes the creation of the world from two fearsome primordial beings: Apsû, the embodiment of subterranean fresh water, and Tiamat, the sea. Like the many mythical aquatic creatures that have occupied our dreams and our nightmares, Apsû and Tiamat reveal much about how the Babylonians saw the world, acting as projections through which their anxieties about nature could be expressed, examined and, perhaps, mastered. Fast forward more than a thousand years and, in Naturalis Historia (c77 AD), the earliest extant work of natural history, the Roman author Pliny the Elder argued that the largest animals found in the sea “exceed in size any of the terrestrial animals” because of the “superabundance of moisture with which they are supplied”. One such giant creature is the kraken, its origins lying in Nordic mythology and folklore. In his 1752–53 proto-scientific work The Natural History of Norway, Danish bishop Erik Pontoppidan described the “Kraken, Kraxen, or, as some world name it, Krabben” as an island-sized creature, “round, flat, and full of arms, or branches”. Alfred, Lord Tennyson was so energised by reports of this monster of the deep that, in 1830, he wrote a poem in its honour, describing an ancient, giant-armed creature slumbering “Below the thunders of the upper deep; Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea.” British naturalist Henry Lee offered a more rational perspective. In Sea Monsters Unmasked (1883), he stated that kraken sightings by sailors were most likely exaggerated reports of giant squid (Architeuthis dux), described a quarter of a century earlier by the Danish biologist Japetus Steenstrup. Even after that, though, kraken and other squid-like monsters proliferated in literature. Herman Melville dedicated a chapter of Moby-Dick (1851) to the giant squid. Ishmael, Moby-Dick’s narrator, references The Natural History of Norway in his description of the creature, offering up the possibility that the kraken might not be a mythological beast but a taxonomically recognised species. Myth and reality continued to amalgamate in the science-fiction genre. Jules Verne’s battle with a giant squid in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1869–70) was based on reports of an encounter between a French corvette, Alecton, and a squid in 1861. As Verne puts it: “Before my eyes was a horrible monster worthy to figure in the legends of the marvellous. It was an immense cuttlefish, being eight yards long… Its eight arms… were twice as long as its body, and were twisted like the furies’ hair.” The uncanny undulations of kraken continue to fascinate. Roger Luckhurst, a scholar of the field of horror, links this to our innate “response to things that overwhelm our senses, stick too close, ooze across borders, or refuse to keep a stable shape”. Read more | Water gods and sea goddesses: 17 water deities from world history 2. A feminine fantasy Aquatic half-humans enchanted men and attracted women seeking new freedoms Sirens, tritons, nereids, merfolk, nymphs… part-fish, part-human creatures have gone by many names over the millennia. These alluring beings have glided gracefully into cultural traditions across the world for thousands of years – particularly those with strong histories of seafaring. And, unlike many of the aquatic beings on these pages, they haven’t always done so with malign intentions. In Naturalis Historia, Pliny described “tritons and nereids” as creatures in which “the portion of the body that resembles the human figure is still rough all over with scales”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/AKG342658webready-934ba2a-e1767351773509.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A stone relief showing a ship full of men sailing towards three women lined up on the left" title="A fourth-century BC urn shows Odysseus sailing towards the sirens, who, he reported, “sit and sing most beautifully in a field of flowers” (Image by AKG)" /> Sirens had appeared in Homer’s poem the Odyssey nine centuries earlier. But in the case of this ancient Greek epic, they were never physically described. Rather, we’re told that they “sit and sing most beautifully in a field of flowers”. Interestingly, they tempt sailors with knowledge, rather than – as other, later, depictions would have it – luring them to their doom. “When we had got within earshot of the land, and the ship was going at a good rate,” the fictional Odysseus recalls, “the sirens saw that we were getting in shore and began with their singing: ‘No one ever sailed past us without staying to hear the enchanting sweetness of our song – and he who listens will go on his way not only charmed, but wiser’.” In medieval art, Homer’s sirens are interpreted as both aquatic and non-aquatic creatures. In contrast, the nereids of Greek myth were explicitly spirits or embodiments of the sea, albeit often visually depicted as human women. In the Romantic and Victorian imagination, they became synonymous with mermaids, frequently depicted with tails. Gothic writer Ann Radcliffe conjured a fish-tailed ingénue in her 1794 poem The Sea-Nymph, as did Hans Christian Andersen in The Little Mermaid four decades later. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/gr0031911Hwebready-444c4de-e1767352384901.jpg" width="1500" height="1001" alt="A drawing showing a mermaid with a black, orange and yellow tail and long blonde hair, laying on her front on a rock, with a sea plant in the background" title="A 1930s depiction of Hans Christian Andersen’s Little Mermaid, which did so much to popularise the fish-tailed ingénue (Image by TopFoto)" /> Radcliffe’s poem marked a turn to the mermaid as a feminine fantasy: an aspirational symbol for young women who might otherwise feel confined by the gendered expectations of public life. This manifests today in the enduring visibility of the mermaid in popular culture and in the burgeoning pastime of mermaiding – cosplaying by swimming with a decorative monofin. 3. Terror in the deep For millennia, giant, ravenous sea serpents have played on humanity’s primal terrors It didn’t pay to get on the wrong side of the gods in ancient mythology. Just ask Laocoön, a Trojan priest who offended the deity Minerva – and didn’t live to tell the tale. As the Roman poet Virgil relates it in the Aeneid – his epic first-century BC poem telling the story of the foundation of Rome – Laocoön committed the cardinal sin of throwing a spear into the Greeks’ wooden horse to show that it was hollow. It was an act that so enraged Minerva that she unleashed two giant sea serpents to eat him. “Taking swift course; their necks were lifted high,” Virgil writes of the ravenous creatures. “Their gory dragon-crests o’ertopped the waves; all else, half seen, trailed low along the sea; while with loud cleavage of the foaming brine, their monstrous backs wound forward fold on fold.” Poor Laocoön didn’t stand a chance. As the priest’s grisly fate proves, the sea serpent had established itself as a terror of the deep by the time the Greeks and Romans dominated the Mediterranean. But they weren’t the first to live in fear of this creature. In fact, the ancient Greeks’ diverse bestiary of monsters likely derived from earlier prototypes. Sea serpents recur in the folklore traditions of a range of coastal and lake cultures, from the black, hairy Nile-dwelling monster Aman Doger of ancient Nubia to the rainbow snake of Australian Aboriginal Dreamtime myth. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/GettyImages-1288491221webready-92f8e54-e1767351878133.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="An engraving showing a naked man with curly hair and a beard, with a large snake wrapped around his body, holding him down, alongside his two sons" title="Laocoön and his two sons are attacked by serpents, as shown in a 16th‑century engraving. Could megalophobia – the fear of large objects – be a factor in humanity’s obsession with sea monsters? (Image by Getty Images)" /> For the Victorian naturalist Henry Lee, tales of colossal sea serpents were a case of mistaken identity, likely originating in sightings of other marine phenomena – perhaps large pods of porpoises or whales. “I believe that… the supposed coils or protuberances of the serpent’s body, were only so many porpoises swimming in line in accordance with their habit before mentioned,” he wrote. Read more | Liquor, loot and death on the high seas: 5 things you (probably) didn't know about the history of pirates The anthropologist David D Gilmore has offered an alternative interpretation of our sea serpent obsession. He has suggested that the recurrence of such creatures in literature down the ages points to three primal human fears: of the sea; of what might lurk in the unknown; and of large objects, otherwise known as megalophobia. 4. The theory of de-evolution Early Christians feared that the Leviathan would propel the human race back to its watery past To some, it has been a benign presence. To others, a terror-inducing harbinger of doom. Ever since the Leviathan emerged from the depths of the oceans and floated into the human consciousness, it has meant different things to different people. Jews and early Christians were certainly fearful. In the Hebrew Bible – where it appears in the Old Testament books of Psalms, Job and Isaiah – the Leviathan is a female sea serpent who will bring about the apocalypse together with her male counterpart, the desert monster Behemoth. Such ancient beasts played on the enduring fear of regression, reminding us of our uncomfortable origins in the oceans. David D Gilmore suggests that the water that so often drips from primal monsters as they emerge from the deep “symbolises not only the amniotic fluids of the womb, but also the primal element from which all life emerged”. These creatures threaten us with the possibilities of de-evolution – a stripping of what modern science has decided makes us human. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/GettyImages-534969411webready-723169d-e1767352029623.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A drawing depicting a large black whale being held under a boat, while several people and other sea creatures surround it in the water" title="An illustration from a 14th-century manuscript shows Alexander the Great being lowered into the sea to explore the ocean bed – a place populated by aquatic humans, dogs and a huge whale (Image by Getty Images)" /> For Renaissance cartographers, the Leviathan meant something different. Medieval maps of the world abound with monstrous-looking whales, depicted in ornate detail. According to historian Chet van Duzer, these illustrations served two purposes: to warn sailors of dangers that awaited them at sea, and as decorative elements designed to show off the artist’s talents. By the time the American writer Celia Thaxter penned her poem Leviathan in 1876, the creature had shape-shifted again. For Thaxter, it was a largely peaceful presence, who triumphed against the rage of nature: “For her worst fury he nor stayed nor turned. ‘Twas joy to think in such tremendous play, Through the sea’s cruelty, all unconcerned. Leviathan pursued his placid way!” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/CPA0030665webready-7c5c3eb-e1767352254831.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="An illustration showing a large grey and orange fish with a man laying next to it, covered in flowers" title="A 14th-century depiction of Jonah with the giant fish that spat him out. Huge sea creatures make numerous appearances in biblical texts (Image by TopFoto)" /> 5. Visions of Atlantis Tales of an aquatic city populated by hyper-intelligent Atlanteans enchanted authors from Plato to HG Wells “A strange vertebrated animal.” That’s how Elstead, the narrator of HG Wells’s 1897 short story In the Abyss, describes the lifeform he encounters on a journey into a deep ocean trench. “Two large and protruding eyes projected from sockets in chameleon fashion, and it had a broad reptilian mouth with horny lips beneath its little nostrils,” reported the intrepid submariner. “The vertical pitch of its face gave it a most extraordinary resemblance to a human being.” In introducing Elstead to this strange creature, HG Wells was joining a long list of writers to conjure the inhabitants of a mysterious underwater civilisation into fictional life. In fact, the possibility of an intelligent, almost godlike race of aquatic beings living on the ocean bed has captured the imagination for centuries. Mentions of the submerged island Atlantis date back to Plato’s fourth-century BC dialogues Timaeus and Critias, in which the Greek philosopher described a land sunken by a devastating earthquake. Renaissance scholars such as Francis Bacon linked Atlantis to the Americas, a notion he further explored in his utopian novel The New Atlantis (1624). In 1931, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution scientists Henry Bryant and Columbus Iselin embarked upon a research cruise in search of the lost continent around the Azores. It was unsuccessful. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/the-shape-of-water9lp0tuwebready-2ed216e-e1767352125833.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A photo of a woman with her hands pressed up against a glass tank, looking into the eyes of a large green sea creature behind the glass" title="2017 dark fantasy film The Shape of Water, which traces the relationship between a mute woman and a captured humanoid amphibian (Image by MovieStills)" /> Tales of Atlantis made a resurgence in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1929 novel The Maracot Deep features a team of scientists who descend into the ocean, become trapped in a deep-sea trench and are saved from disaster by descendants of Atlantis. Other underseas peoples in popular fiction aren’t quite so benign. American horror writer HP Lovecraft described an undersea race of creatures called Deep Ones who worship the deities Dagon and Cthulhu. In The Shadow Over Innsmouth Lovecraft projects his own prejudices about racial purity and miscegenation (sexual relationships between people of different ethnic groups) onto a fictional coastal town. Here the residents interbreed with marine beings and become corrupted in form and character. Read more | Tails from the deep: separating the real folklore of mermaids from Disney stories The denizens of cities under the sea continue to capture our imaginations today. Guillermo del Toro’s Oscar-winning 2017 film The Shape of Water tells how a mute cleaner working in a high-security government laboratory falls in a love with a green-skinned humanoid amphibian. This enduring interest in aquatic beings speaks to a wider fascination with how great civilisations might fall. This is an intriguing and alarming prospect. After all, if a creature is to knock us off our self-appointed perch at the top of the evolutionary ladder, then surely that creature could come from the same primordial soup as we once did? Prema Arasu is an adjunct research fellow at the University of Western Australia, and author of The Book of Sea Monsters: Leviathans of Literature (Adlard Coles, 2025) This article was first published in the Christmas 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Terror in the deep: how Hitler's U-boats pushed Britain to the brink
Did German U-boats conduct a ‘clean’ campaign during the Second World War? Or were they guilty of routinely murdering survivors in the water? Roger Moorhouse weighs the evidence
On the night of 13 March 1944, the Greek-registered steamship SS Peleus was en route from Freetown to Buenos Aires when she was hit amidships by two torpedoes, launched by a German U-boat, U-852. The twin-masted merchantman, of around 5,000 tons, swiftly began to sink, her internal bulkheads ruptured by the detonations. Within three minutes, the Peleus disappeared below the surface, leaving the surviving members of her 39-strong crew clinging to rafts and flotsam in the darkness. As sinkings go during the naval war, it was unremarkable, one might even say routine. But what followed would set it apart. Soon after, U-852 surfaced close to the debris field, hoping to identify her prey and glean some information. Her captain, 27-year-old Kapitänleutnant Heinz‑Wilhelm Eck, ordered one of his men – who spoke some English – to come up to the bow to question one of the survivors. After learning the identity of his target, Eck gave the order for U-852 to move away. But then he changed his mind. Eck was nervous. Prior to his departure from port, he had been given a lecture from his superiors on the perils of passing through the Atlantic Narrows, around Ascension, and was told that all four of the previous patrols undertaken by his predecessors had ended with the vessels being sunk. Due to the heightened risk of air attack he was urged to take every precaution to avoid being spotted by enemy aircraft. Even debris from a sinking, it was stressed, could give away his position. Calculating that he could be only some 200 miles away by daybreak, when the wreckage of the Peleus would doubtless be spotted, he made the decision to attempt to destroy the debris. He brought a party of his men up on deck and ordered them to open fire on the rafts and other debris with machine guns. In the moonless night, they were largely firing blind, but the operation continued for hours, with grenades being thrown and U-852’s anti-aircraft gun even being brought to bear. The number killed by these actions is unknown, but only four members of the Peleus’ crew – three Greeks and a Briton – survived among the wreckage. Three of them would endure until they were finally picked up by a Portuguese steamer, more than a month later. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/GettyImages-544740257-CMYKWeb-Ready-8cbb754.jpg" width="4950" height="3300" alt="A black and white photograph showing a row of young men sitting in a pew in court. The two men in the foreground are looking at each other, and one of them has his hands resting on top of a walking stick. Behind them, a man in full army uniform is standing, looking serious" title="Heinz‑Wilhelm Eck (left), commander of U-852, is tried for war crimes, October 1945. The following month he was executed by firing squad (Image by Getty Images)" /> A bloody exception It is often assumed that the brutal treatment of the survivors of the Peleus was somehow the norm: that U-boat crews thought little of brutalising, even of murdering, their victims. That certainly was the assumption of Doris Hawkins, a young British nurse who was torpedoed and then picked up by a U-boat in 1941. “We had heard so many atrocity stories,” she later wrote. “We feared a shower of machine gun bullets.” Bearing in mind the atrocities that were routinely committed by German forces elsewhere in the war – especially in eastern Europe – this assumption is entirely understandable. But, if the written records are to be believed, it is also entirely wrong. The example of the Peleus was very much the exception. Indeed, it was the only documented example of a U-boat action in the Second World War resulting in a war crime. Read more | The seaborne invasion: why we must remember the forgotten heroes of D-Day and the battle for Normandy Sceptical readers might question this assertion – and rightly so. For one thing, it is well known that Hitler was instinctively secretive and had a preference for issuing verbal rather than written orders when dealing with sensitive matters. Consequently, at the Nuremberg trials, the prosecution was keen to assert that the available documentary record of the U-boat war was somehow incomplete, or that mendacious amendments could have been made. More than that, given the brutality with which most branches of the German armed forces conducted their war, is it perhaps naïve to imagine that the men of the Kriegsmarine somehow managed to resist both the heat of the moment – and the bloodthirsty rhetoric of their superiors – and refrained from straying into barbarism? Licence to kill? At Nuremberg, Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, the erstwhile commander of U-boat forces, rejected robustly the claims that the Germans had somehow covered up atrocities committed during the war at sea. Yet the testimony of Korvettenkapitän Karl-Heinz Moehle, former commander of the 5th U-boat Flotilla, suggested that the culture within the U-boat arm may have been less ‘clean’ than Dönitz was willing to admit. Moehle’s testimony centred around the so-called Laconia Order, Dönitz’s instruction to his crews, issued in 1942, to refrain from assisting shipwrecked crewmen. When he asked his superiors about the implications of the order, Moehle was told that it was a coded instruction to kill survivors. And that’s how he passed it on to his officers, albeit with the caveat that each individual commander had to act according to his own conscience. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/GettyImages-466684659-CMYKWeb-Ready-2d13be1.jpg" width="4867" height="3245" alt="A black and white photograph of a marge ship sinking into the sea" title="SS F.W. Abrams lies stricken in the Atlantic following a U-boat attack, June 1942. For much of 1941 and 42, British shipping losses outpaced production (Image by Getty Images)" /> It is quite possible, then, that there were other atrocities committed by U-boat crews against stricken merchant crewmen, but that circumstances conspired to consign them to oblivion. Perhaps there were no survivors to tell the tale, or the perpetrators were themselves sunk later in their patrol. Absence of evidence, then, should not be confused with evidence of absence. Nonetheless, it is striking that so few examples of atrocities committed by U-boat crews have come to light. And this should prompt the curious to seek to understand why. The reasons why commanders might have resisted the urge to kill survivors – assuming they felt it at all – would have been multi-layered and would doubtless have evolved with time. But a few explanatory factors are worth bearing in mind. Read more | In October 1939, two coffins were wheeled through Edinburgh draped in Nazi flags. But why? For one thing, the typical U‑boat – such as the Type VII – was small and cramped. With its crew of around 50, it had no space to accommodate survivors and only limited capacity to offer material assistance. Bearing that in mind, it is remarkable how often, in the opening phase of the war, U-boat crews assisted the surviving crewmen from the ships that they had sunk, offering food, cigarettes, blankets and a compass bearing. In the most astonishing example, the commander of U-35 opted to take the 28 surviving crewmen of the Greek-registered Diamantis aboard his submarine and sailed more than 30 hours to the beach at Ventry, in western Ireland, where they were then ferried ashore in a dinghy. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/GettyImages-537152831-CMYKWeb-Ready-023b7fd.jpg" width="3708" height="2472" alt="Three men in dark coats and military uniform walk in a triangular formation. The man at the front is looking towards the right of the image" title="Admiral Karl Dönitz (left) claimed that the U-boats waged a ‘clean’ war. But was he being economical with the truth? (Image by Getty Images)" /> Such chivalrous actions could scarcely survive in the age of total war, of course, and after the Laconia Order, all such humanitarian impulses were formally banned by the German naval command. As a result, after the initial phase of the war, contact with survivors was effectively forbidden. By mid‑1942, then – aside from a brief interrogation to confirm the identity of the sunk vessel – U‑boats tended to avoid survivors altogether. The culture within the U‑boat arm is also worth consideration. One should be wary of underestimating the influence of ideology in any arm of the Nazi state, but it is notable that even contemporaries considered that the Kriegsmarine was less ideologically aligned with Nazism than other branches of the armed forces. Hitler himself is said to have complained that he had “a Nazi air force, a Prussian army and a Christian navy”. That quotation, though apocryphal, may nonetheless have had the ring of truth. Crewman Hans Goebeler, aboard U-505, recalled that – on his boat at least – ideology simply didn’t seem to matter: “Who were the Nazis aboard our submarine?” he asked: “I never met one. We were identical to the sailors from every nation who faced the hazards of war and the sea during those years. Party members or not, we performed our duties with professionalism and honour.” Every boat would have had a cross-section of German society aboard, from fervent Nazis to the apolitical and even those who opposed the regime. Yet the question of how far the U-boat arm was indoctrinated is an interesting and complex one. Dönitz himself was a convinced Nazi, who was fiercely loyal to Hitler, and a few of his commanders shared that enthusiasm. But active indoctrination of the U-boat arm appears to have been limited. While other branches of the German armed forces were increasingly subjected to ideological control as the war progressed, this was simply not the case for the navy. Despite his own enthusiasm for Nazism, Dönitz appears to have stopped short of establishing genuine ideological oversight over his men. The office responsible for indoctrination within the navy, for instance, was staffed largely by men without Nazi backgrounds and – given that they were also not permitted to ‘ride along’ on patrol – they were in any case prevented from exerting any real influence over operational units. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/B4832C-CMYKWeb-Ready-bd6dc39.jpg" width="3557" height="2371" alt="A boat is moored at a harbour. On the boat there is a group of men with their hands behind their backs and heads bowed. A young boy sits on the harbourside looking at them. In the background there is a large bridge and a building with a tall column chimney" title="U-boat crews enter Wilhelmshaven to surrender to Allied forces, May 1945. These men had, for the most part, not used the murderous methods employed by their compatriots on the eastern front, writes Roger Moorhouse (Image by Alamy)" /> This doesn’t mean that the U-boat arm was some sort of haven for anti-Nazi thinking or oppositional attitudes. It was not. The Kriegsmarine was far from apolitical, but its leaders held the view that its coordination to Nazi goals was self-evident, a natural corollary to the patriotism and sense of duty that were essential components of their collective identity. Dönitz held the attempts to enforce ideological conformity at arm’s length, not because he disagreed or was minded to resist, but because he considered such measures to be an unnecessary imposition. The Kriegsmarine, he believed, was already wholly on side. We should also keep in mind that there was no single ‘way of war’ practised by the forces of the Third Reich in the Second World War. The murderous methods deployed on the eastern front, for instance, were only rarely in evidence in the west, while the war in the desert, lacking an ideological dimension, tended to be similarly unsullied by atrocities. These differences in behaviour by German forces were not the result of whim or happenstance. Rather, they were contingent on the nature of the enemy and whether Nazi ideology deemed them to be civilised and worthy of respect – as in the west – or to be subhumans slated for extermination, as in the east. The available evidence shows that the naval war, and the submarine war in particular, cleaved more to that western model than to anything else. It is hard to escape the conclusion that the U-boat war does indeed appear to have been the ‘cleanest’ of the theatres of the European conflict, with many more instances of the old fashioned ‘solidarity of the sea’ in evidence than there were examples of atrocities. Moral outrage Such logic cut little ice with the judges at Nuremberg, of course, as Dönitz was found guilty on two of the three charges against him and was sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment. As the former commander of the Kriegsmarine, and Hitler’s successor as Reich President, he deserved neither leniency nor sympathy. And, in the first flush of moral outrage over the crimes of Nazism, the Nuremberg judges were inclined towards the view that all Germans were Nazis and that everything that German forces had done was evidence of Nazi barbarism. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/BAL2449488-CMYKWeb-Ready-379e129.jpg" width="4400" height="2933" alt="Captain Daniel V Gallery –pictured on the captured U-505 off the west African coast in June 1944 – condemned the Allies’ postwar prosecution of Karl Dönitz as “barefaced hypocrisy” (Image by Bridgeman Images)" title="Captain Daniel V Gallery –pictured on the captured U-505 off the west African coast in June 1944 – condemned the Allies’ postwar prosecution of Karl Dönitz as “barefaced hypocrisy” (Image by Bridgeman Images)" /> Nonetheless, it was a verdict that provoked no little controversy, even from some senior Allied naval officers. US Admiral Daniel V Gallery – who had spent most of the war hunting U-boats – was especially vociferous in his condemnation. Dönitz’s trial, he said, was an “outstanding example of barefaced hypocrisy”, and his conviction was “an insult to our own submariners”. “If the old gentleman ever gets out of jail,” he wrote, “I hope I never meet him. I would have trouble looking him in the eye. The only crime he committed was the crime of almost beating us in a bloody but ‘legal’ fight.” He had a point. Dönitz’s defence at Nuremberg – brilliantly conducted by his lawyer, Otto Kranzbühler – had turned largely on the apparent hypocrisies of the Allies’ accusations, given that they, too, had effectively been carrying out unrestricted submarine warfare for most of the war. To hammer home the point, Kranzbühler had produced an affidavit from Admiral Chester Nimitz, wartime commander-in-chief of the US Pacific Fleet, which asserted that it had been customary for US submarines to attack Japanese merchant ships without warning, and that ‘general principles’ did not permit US submarines to rescue enemy survivors. In short, Nimitz’s testimony implied that the US Navy had conducted its submarine war precisely as Dönitz claimed to have conducted his. The truth on this point was more damning than Kranzbühler could have known. Naval records released in the 1960s would reveal that the crew of the American submarine USS Wahoo had themselves participated in an action not unlike that involving the Peleus. In January 1943, the Wahoo sank the 5,000-ton Japanese troopship Buyo Maru, north of Papua New Guinea, which had been carrying Japanese soldiers and nearly 500 PoWs from the British Indian army. In the aftermath, as Japanese and Indian survivors bobbed around some 20 lifeboats, the crew of the Wahoo opened fire with machine guns. “We proceeded to have a field day,” said the captain, Lt Commander Dudley Morton. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/GettyImages-181456547-CMYKWeb-Ready-ff88d67.jpg" width="4591" height="3061" alt="A Japanese ship sinks in 1942 after being attacked by USS Wahoo. The American sub would later be involved in one of the most controversial incidents of the war at sea (Image by Getty Images)" title="A Japanese ship sinks in 1942 after being attacked by USS Wahoo. The American sub would later be involved in one of the most controversial incidents of the war at sea (Image by Getty Images)" /> Biological hatred In his defence, Morton claimed that he was returning fire, but this is disputed. Some of his crew were even shocked by his evident “biological hatred” of the enemy. Whatever justification he felt he had, Morton’s attack on the Buyo Maru cost the lives of some 87 Japanese soldiers and more than 195 Indians. His after‑action report included the shooting, but he faced no punishment, and the incident was suppressed by his navy superiors. In postwar narratives, the example of the Buyo Maru was quietly forgotten, while that of the Peleus would be held up as symbolic of Nazi brutality. Read more | Before the atomic bombs, the USA hit Japan with one of the most overlooked (but deadly) campaigns in WW2 This is not a game of moral equivalence. It would be wrong to draw from a few isolated cases the false conclusion that the Allies and Axis were morally indistinguishable. The broader war aims mattered. However ‘clean’ the U-boat campaign may have been, it was serving a regime synonymous with evil. Conversely, even when the Allies faltered morally, their cause – resisting tyranny – remained just. The point, rather, is to challenge the lazy assumption that German U-boat crews were sadistic murderers. The Peleus atrocity was very real, but it was an outlier. U-boats dealt devastating blows to Allied shipping and caused enormous loss of life, but there was only one confirmed instance of the deliberate killing of survivors. The murder of the Peleus survivors was not a feature of the U-boat war. It was a chilling, singular exception. Britain's near-death experience How U-boats drove a nation to the brink of economic strangulation During the early years of the Second World War, Britain came perilously close to defeat in the Battle of the Atlantic – a prolonged struggle against German U-boats aiming to sever the maritime lifelines sustaining Britain. As an island nation dependent on imports for food, fuel and war materiel, Britain faced an existential threat from the Kriegsmarine’s submarine campaign. Between 1939 and 1945, German U-boats sank more than 2,700 Allied merchant ships, totalling approximately 14.5 million gross tons. The most dangerous period came in 1942, when 1,160 ships were lost to U-boats– more than 6.2 million tons – much of it along the poorly defended US coast during Operation Drumbeat. Britain’s shipping losses outpaced production for much of 1941–42, and food rationing became more severe. At one point, Britain had only six weeks’ worth of grain reserves. Winston Churchill later wrote that the U-boat threat was the only thing that truly frightened him during the war. The crisis peaked in early 1943, when monthly merchant shipping losses reached around 700,000 tons. German Admiral Karl Dönitz believed victory was within reach, committing more than 100 U-boats to mid-Atlantic ‘wolfpack’ operations.However, from May 1943 – dubbed ‘Black May’ by the Germans – the tide turned. Allied advances in radar, sonar, Ultra intelligence, long-range patrol aircraft and escort carriers decimated U-boat fleets. That month alone, the Germans lost 41 U-boats, forcing a temporary withdrawal from the Atlantic. Though never completely severed, Britain’s shipping routes were strained to their limits. Without technological breakthroughs, convoy reforms and American shipbuilding – producing Liberty ships faster than U-boats could sink them – Britain might have been economically strangled into submission. In the end, the U-boat campaign claimed the lives of more than 30,000 Allied seamen. But it failed to deliver a knockout blow. How the Allies turned the tide A timeline of the war against the U-boats 3 September 1939: The British liner SS Athenia is sunk by U-30 just hours after Britain had declared war on Germany, marking the start of the Battle of the Atlantic 14 October 1939: U-47 penetrates Scapa Flow and sinks the battleship Royal Oak, killing 833, shocking the Royal Navy and boosting German morale June 1940: Following France’s fall, Germany gains Atlantic U-boat bases at Lorient, Brest and elsewhere. This dramatically extends U-boat reach into the Atlantic and intensifies Allied shipping losses March–June 1941: U-boats enjoy high success against British shipping, aided by poor Allied convoy tactics and limited air cover, marking their most effective early-war period 12 September 1941: U-156 sinks RMS Laconia carrying civilians and PoWs. After surfacing to help survivors, the U-boat is attacked by US aircraft. This prompts the Germans to introduce the Laconia Order, forbidding the rescue of survivors October 1941: German U-boats operate in coordinated ‘wolfpacks’ to attack convoys, reaching peak effectiveness in the mid-Atlantic and causing severe shipping losses, despite increased Allied defences December 1941: Following Pearl Harbor, U-boats begin Operation Drumbeat, targeting unprepared US coastal shipping. This results in catastrophic losses early in 1942 May 1943: In what the Germans will dub ‘Black May’, the Allies turn the tide with improved radar, codebreaking and air cover. U-boat losses spike dramatically, forcing Germany to temporarily withdraw many boats from the Atlantic June 1944: U-boats fail to disrupt Allied landings in Normandy. With air superiority, improved technology and better escorts, the Allies dominate the Atlantic, further reducing U-boat effectiveness 5 May 1945: Admiral Dönitz orders all remaining U-boats to surrender. More than 150 comply, marking the official end of the U-boat war and the wider naval conflict in Europe This article was first published in the November 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
The place where TIME began | A history of GMT
On location at Royal Observatory, Greenwich in southeast London, HistoryExtra's Elinor Evans unpacks how astronomers, mathematicians, and global powers collaborated to create Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).
Long before smartphones and digital clocks, time was a local affair, creating chaos, confusion and even danger. On location at Royal Observatory, Greenwich in southeast London, HistoryExtra's Elinor Evans unpacks how astronomers, mathematicians, and global powers collaborated to create Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). Joined by Louise Devoy, Senior Curator of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, we investigate the milestone innovations in this story, including the story of the Observatory Time Ball, the Shepherd Motor Clock, and George Biddell Airy's meridian Prime Meridian. From solving longitude at sea to defining timezones for the entire planet, this is the story of how we learned to master time. View Green Video on the source website Find out more about the history of time, space and navigation and plan a visit to the Royal Observatory
Tudor explorers: everything you wanted to know
Everything you wanted to know about history (podcast series)
Jerry Brotton guides us through the turbulent waters of Tudor exploration
By the time the Tudors took to the waves, much of the world had already been mapped by Europeans. So what was left for Tudor explorers to uncover – and should we call them 'explorers' at all? Historian Jerry Brotton doesn't think so. In this episode, he tells Kev Lochun how the Reformation drove the Tudors to sea, how Ireland became their Vietnam, and why some of the era's most famous names were little more than pirates. Jerry Brotton takes listeners on a whistle-stop tour around the world in AD 1500
Seven of history's most disturbing ghost ship stories that will haunt your dreams
Discover the truth behind the mysteries and histories of ghost ships, from the most famous examples in nautical legend to forgotten vessels adrift on the oceans…
You're a sailor (or, maybe even a famous pirate). Several weeks out to sea, you come across another ship that seems to be acting strangely. Getting a closer look, you realise it is floating adrift, with no sign whatsoever of its crew. It’s a ghost ship. What is a ghost ship? Ghost ships, also known as phantom ships, are vessels that are found derelict at sea with no crew aboard and nothing to explain what happened to them. While it sounds like the stuff of legend – and fuel for seafarers’ nightmares – ghost ships are real nautical phenomena. They have inspired horror-infused stories and wild theories alike, and their names can send shivers down the spine. Here, from the golden age of piracy to 20th century tales, explore some of the most famous and mysterious ghost ships throughout history, each with its own chilling tale. What are most famous ghost ships in history? ● Mary Celeste ● SS Baychimo ● Flying Dutchman ● MV Joyita ● Carroll A. Deering ● Ourang Medan ● Jian Seng Mary Celeste The most famous ghost ship of them all has to be the Mary Celeste. Having left New York in early November 1872, bound for Italy, the merchant brigantine was spotted drifting alone in the Atlantic Ocean on 5 December. The abandoned ship was found by the Dei Gratia off the Azores, but there was no trace of Captain Benjamin Briggs, his wife, their two-year-old daughter, or his small crew of seven. While the cargo and crew’s personal belongings were undisturbed, the sails had been only partially set, a log entry had not been made in the last 10 days, and a lifeboat was missing. Read more | John Ward: the real Jack Sparrow? What’s more, although there was water in the hold, the Mary Celeste was at no risk of sinking. So, what caused Briggs and the crew to desert a seaworthy ship? And what were their fates? There have been many theories. Despite a lack of evidence, some were suspicious of mutiny, piracy or an elaborate fraud. In the years since, natural phenomena like waterspouts (essentially, a tornado at sea) or fears that the gases leaking from the alcohol in the hold could explode have also been mooted. While no conclusive explanation has ever been uncovered, the leading hypothesis suggests that Briggs believed the ship to be sinking, incorrectly. It was taking on water and one of the pumps seemed to be broken, which may have led the crew to carry out a hasty and premature evacuation. Ultimately, the reason for Mary Celeste’s abandonment remains one of maritime history’s greatest mysteries, as is the fate of its crew. SS Baychimo For ten years from 1921, when it came under the ownership of the Hudson's Bay Company, the cargo ship SS Baychimo traversed the fraught northern waters of the Arctic Circle, carrying furs and other goods to and from trading posts on Canada’s north coast. In October 1931, it became trapped in pack ice off the coast of Alaska. Completely stuck and with no prospect of breaking free before the ice crushed the ship, the all but skeleton crew of 15 were evacuated by plane. The men who stayed hoped to wait out the winter by living in a wooden shelter near the stricken Baychimo. But after bunkering down for several days during a blizzard, they emerged to find the ship had disappeared. They assumed it had sunk; in fact, the Baychimo remained afloat and had broken free of the ice after all. After being corrected by seal hunters who had spotted it floating free, the sailors tracked it down, retrieved some of its cargo and then abandoned it once more. Over the next few decades, the Baychimo was spotted numerous times in Arctic waters. Attempts were made to board or salvage the vessel, but the ice and weather conditions meant it always eluded capture. The last confirmed sighting of the crewless ghost ship was in 1969. That said, there have been sporadic reported sightings since. Is it possible that its voyage continues? Flying Dutchman A name that can strike fear in a sailor’s heart, the Flying Dutchman puts the ‘ghost’ in ‘ghost ship’. Unlike the real vessels on this list, this ship is based on myth and legend: a ghoulish warship unable to make port, so doomed to sail the oceans for eternity. And to see it is a portent of disaster. Read more | Did pirates really walk the plank? First mentioned in literature in the late-1700s, supposed sightings of the Flying Dutchman, often through thick veils of mist and fog, have been reported for centuries. The future George V and his brother Prince Albert Victor apparently spotted the ship off the coast of Australia in 1881. Yet no evidence exists that the Flying Dutchman was ever real. Instead, it occupies a more archetypal place in the lore of naval history. The Flying Dutchman has inspired poems and stories, an opera by Richard Wagner, and, most recently, the terrifying ship captained by Davy Jones in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. MV Joyita Few maritime mysteries are as perplexing as that of the MV Joyita, a luxury yacht-turned-commercial vessel that disappeared in the South Pacific in 1955. It had set sail from Samoa on 3 October with 25 passengers and crew aboard bound for the Tokelau Islands just over 300 miles away. It never reached its destination. But five and a half weeks later, the Joyita was discovered more than 600 miles off course, still afloat yet partially submerged. All 25 people were missing, along with four tons of cargo, the ship's logbook and navigational equipment. Adding to the confusion, the radio had been tuned to the international distress signal but no SOS call had ever been received. The ensuing investigation brought no clear answers to what befell the ship. Since then, theories have ranged from piracy and botched abandonment after a mechanical failure, to kidnapping by a Soviet submarine and murder by a Japanese fishing fleet. Carroll A. Deering In late January 1921, the Carroll A Deering – a five-masted schooner built for speed and capacity in the post-First World War shipping boom – was spotted off the coast of North Carolina. It was heading right for Diamond Shoals: the so-called ‘Graveyard of the Atlantic’. It would take several days before anyone was able to board the ship, which had indeed run aground on the notorious shoals, but the 12-strong crew and lifeboats were missing. No sign of them has ever been found since. There was damage to the steering equipment, and an earlier communication with the ship revealed that the anchors had been lost, but the cause for the desertion has never been ascertained. Could it have collided with another vessel or had there been a misjudged mutiny? The captain had complained of the crew being difficult. Read more | Anna Bonny and Mary Read: a deadly duo Other theories have suggested the Deering was hijacked by Prohibition-era rum runners or Russian saboteurs. And, of course, with a mystery like this it wouldn’t be long before the Bermuda Triangle was mentioned. An intriguing clue to the ship’s fate emerged in April 1921, when a message in a bottle washed up claiming it had been captured by an “oil-burning boat”. The note, however, was found to be a hoax by a local fisherman. But further investigation of the Deering was impossible – in March, the wreck had been destroyed as part of efforts to remove hazards from the shoals. SS Ourang Medan The tale of the SS Ourang Medan is shrouded in mystery, marked by a significant lack of evidence and conflicting reports. In fact, that’s all it might be: a tale, an urban legend. After all, no ship of that name ever appeared on official records and shipping registers. According to the story, the Dutch ship was passing through the Strait of Malacca, off Indonesia, in the 1940s when its radio operator sent out a frantic SOS claiming the officers were dead, and that remainder of the crew probably were too, before transmitting one final, chilling message: “I die”. Read more | Pirate vs Buccaneer vs Privateer: what's the difference? A rescue ship rushed to the scene, but all that was found was the Ourang Medan adrift with no sign of life. The bodies of the crew were strewn everywhere, fixed with expressions of terror despite no visible injuries or clear cause of death. Before the ship could be investigated further, a fire reportedly broke out and the rescuers had to get clear of the ship before it exploded, sending the wreck into the depths. Theories have swirled around the fate of the Ourang Medan – as has the question of whether it truly existed. Regardless, it remains one of the most haunting ghost ship legends out there. Jian Seng Not only is the fate of Jian Seng’s crew unknown, but the ship’s very origins are too. In 2006, the 80-metre tanker was spotted from the air drifting off the coast of Queensland, Australia. It was both abandoned and damaged beyond use. Where the ship came from, who its crew was, and what it was doing in that part of the ocean has never been determined. The tanker bore no identifying marks. As the Jian Seng was not reported missing, and authorities could not track its ownership, it was suspected that the ship had been used for illegal activity, such as drug smuggling or forbidden fishing operations. The Jian Seng was eventually towed out to sea and scuttled. Still, its sudden appearance and the complete mystery about its past have made it a modern symbol of the chilling allure of ghost ships.
North, south, east and west: how ancient civilisations found their bearings before the compass
Why did the ancient Chinese associate north with power? What led early Muslims to pray to the south? And what role did winds have to play in our understanding of directions? Jerry Brotton takes us on a journey through the history of the four points of the compass
Writing in his philosophical work the New Organon in 1620, the English scientist and philosopher Sir Francis Bacon famously identified China’s three great inventions, “which were unknown to the ancients, and of which the origin, though recent, is obscure and inglorious; namely printing, gunpowder and the magnet. For these three have changed the whole face and state of things throughout the world.” Much has been written about the historical impact of printing and gunpowder. But there’s been far less emphasis on the magnet, and how (using lodestones to magnetise iron needles) it enabled the ‘obscure’ invention of the magnetic compass during the Han dynasty in the third century BC. This technology enabled China and, subsequently, other societies to navigate and orientate themselves according to the four points of the compass: north, east, south and west. We tend to think about these directions and the art of navigation as a consequence of the invention of the compass, but this is not in fact the case. The ancient history of direction and its relationship to the magnetic compass is altogether more surprising. How ancient civilisations understood east and west Thousands of years before the discovery of the compass, early human societies observed the sun rising in the direction we now call ‘east’ and watched it setting in the direction now known as ‘west’. East to west was probably the earliest prime axis that people understood by simply watching the sun’s path across the sky. The worship of the sun, or heliolatry, characterised ancient Egyptian worship of solar gods: Horus (the rising sun), Ra (the noon sun) and Osiris (the dying or setting sun). Read more | Sun gods and goddesses: 16 solar deities from world history This initial east-west solar axis was gradually followed by the understanding of another axis. This one ran vertically from north to south, and could be identified by observing the sun and stars. At noon the sun is always due south in the northern hemisphere and due north in the southern hemisphere. Living in the northern hemisphere, you can also look up at the stars and find north according to Polaris, the North or Pole Star. If you live in the southern hemisphere, that direction is identified by Polaris Australis, the South Star. The four cardinal directions By combining the two axes – east-west horizontally and north-south vertically – ancient societies created the basic framework for what we now call the four cardinal directions. The word ‘cardinal’ comes from the Latin cardinalis, which can mean something (or someone) of fundamental importance. That’s why, in the Roman Catholic church, it refers to a priest ranking beneath only the pope. The names for these four directions were inspired by the human body: our front and back, left and right, even top and bottom. In many ancient languages, ‘front’ and ‘back’ are synonymous with east and west. In Hebrew, east – qedem or mizrach – also means ‘forward’ or ‘front’, while ‘west’ – achor – is a synonym for ‘behind’. In ancient Chinese, the pictograph for north, bĕi, represents two people back to back. The dark and cold north is synonymous with the ‘back’ of the body, while the ‘front’ looks southwards (nán), in the direction of light and warmth. The earliest surviving record that we know of that names the four cardinal directions was inscribed on a clay tablet during the first great Mesopotamian empire, the Akkadian dynasty (c2350–2150 BC). It is a rudimentary topographical map known as the ‘Gasur map’, showing an agricultural estate. At the top left is IM-kur, ‘east’; at the bottom left is IM-mar-tu, ‘west’; and to the centre left IM-mir, ‘north’. The prefix ‘IM’ refers to winds, not astronomical observations. Other Mesopotamian texts describe four principal winds forming a diagonal cross, equivalent to the modern directions of north-west, north-east, south-east and south-west. When the cuneiform text on the map is read from top to bottom, IM-mir, the direction from which the regular north-western winds blow, is the prime orientation. What this shows is that the farmers cultivating the land more than 4,000 years ago understood the four cardinal directions in terms of wind direction and changeable climatic conditions. Why? Because they were crucial for the cultivation of crops and could mean the difference between feast and famine. The importance of the winds Ancient Greek philosophy and science inherited the Mesopotamian preoccupation with winds. Mythical personifications of the four directions as gods first appear in the ancient works of Homer (c800 BC). His celebrated epic poems, the Iliad and Odyssey, both mention four deities representing cardinal winds. Boreas, the north wind, is possibly an archaic variant of ‘mountains’ or ‘roaring’. Notos, the south wind, derives from ‘moist’. Eurus, the east wind, comes from the ‘brightness’ of sunrise. The western wind of Zephyrus stems from the ‘gloom’ of sunset. Later Greek philosophers offered a more naturalistic account of direction. Aristotle’s Meteorology (c350 BC) includes the earliest known geometrical diagram of cardinal directions according to wind systems, depicting eight principal winds in his conception of the Earth. Listen | Roderick Beaton picks out the key moments in 4,000 years to explore how the Greeks changed the world The Romans adopted many of the Greek terms for directions based on winds, and introduced some new Latin words. North came first, named borealis or septentriones, a reference to the ‘seven stars’ of Ursa Major (which appears to rotate around the northern star, Polaris). South was given several new terms, including australis (‘harsh’ or ‘sharp’ – thanks to the harsh heat and hot, sharp winds) or meridionalis (from ‘midday’). West was occidentalis (‘falling’ or ‘passing away’) and east was orientalis (‘rising’ or ‘originating’, as in the sun). So, when we speak of being ‘disoriented’, we are literally saying we are unable to find the east. The role of Judaism and Christianity These ideas and terms were accepted until the ninth century, when a radical change took place that changed the names of the cardinal directions. This happened under Charlemagne (748–814), emperor of much of the northern part of Europe. In attempting to unify the continent, Charlemagne initiated many political, economic and educational reforms. This included abandoning winds as a means of classifying directions and renaming the four directions using proto-Germanic words, derived from Indo-European roots. Nord (north) came from the proto-Indo-European term, nórto-s – ‘lower’, or to the ‘left’ (of the rising sun looking east). Est (east) drew on the Indo-European austo-s – ‘light’ or ‘shine’ (as in the morning). Sund (south) derived from an archaic term for the sun, sú-n-to-s, referring to the south as the direction of the midday sun. Oëst (west) took its name from the proto-Indo-European uestos with its many meanings of the evening, including red (as in the setting sun). Versions of these words are now recognisable in most modern European vernacular languages. The impact of these evolving ideas of the cardinal directions underpinned early theological belief across various cultures. Jewish and Christian theology revered the east as the prime cardinal direction of worship and celebration. The story begins in Genesis: God “planted a garden eastward in Eden” (Genesis 2:8). The messiah’s second coming is predicted as arriving from the east, “For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be” (Matthew 24:27). Mizrach, or east, thus became the Jewish direction of prayer. Early Christianity expanded the Jewish mizrach by developing the Latin term Ad orientem – ‘to the east’ – to understand east as its sacred direction. The idea can be seen on medieval Christian maps, such as the mappa mundi housed in Hereford Cathedral. Here the cardinal directions are represented on its outer ring from the top, moving clockwise, from oriens (east), meridiens (south), occidens (west) to septentrio (north). The Garden of Eden is shown at the top, then time flows downwards through images of Old Testament empires, the birth of Christ and the rise of Rome, with Jerusalem at the centre. It ends at the westernmost point of Gibraltar at the bottom of the map. The differences of early Islamic maps Where east sat at the top of early Christian maps for theological reasons, on many early Islamic maps south was the prime direction. This was because most of the societies that first converted to Islam lived directly north of Mecca. As a result, believers prayed due south, a practice that oriented their world maps accordingly. On a map dated 1297 (copied from the 10th-century geographer Muhammad al-Istakhri), the world is oriented with south at the top. Africa is a claw extending deep into the Indian Ocean, and the vertical bar running from top right downwards is the Nile, flowing into the Mediterranean with three islands: Cyprus, Crete and Sicily. Europe is shown below, including Muslim Spain (al-Andalus). The map’s finest detail lies at the heart of the Muslim empire, whose various administrative districts are demarcated in red. Arabia sits in the centre of the map with the holy sites of Mecca and Medina. Why China put north at the top While east and south defined the theological directions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, in China north sat at the top of their world maps, hundreds of years before Europe adopted such a convention. In Chinese belief, the emperor was the ‘Son of Heaven’, the earthly manifestation of the supreme deity inhabiting the Pole Star. The emperor looked ‘down’ south on his subjects from an elevated position on high in the north, while they looked ‘up’ northwards to him. ‘South’ (nan) was expressed in its pictograph as a liana plant, evoking the luxuriant vegetation of the south as viewed from the drier, colder northern latitudes. But north remained the direction from which imperial power and authority emanated. Read more | Has China always been the world’s greatest superpower? For centuries, China was a global leader in the technology of navigation – and it was only in the 12th century that the magnetic compass started to appear in the Mediterranean for use in navigation. How these compasses moved west is still unclear. But they were decisive in enabling Christian navigators to develop sailing charts known as ‘portolans’ to navigate across, first, the Mediterranean, and then the Atlantic and Indian oceans. Maps of European exploration Yet though their explorations were facilitated by a Chinese technology, Europe an explorers didn’t initially follow the Chinese convention of placing north at the top of their maps. Eight years after Christopher Columbus’s momentous voyage to the Americas in 1492–93, Juan de la Cosa, owner of Columbus’s flagship, La Santa María, drew a map showing the new ‘discoveries’ in the west. The writing on the map suggests that it should be oriented with west at the top – one of the few world maps to ever privilege ‘west’ as its cardinal direction. The west briefly became the cardinal direction – until European scholars, who tended to revere the classics, chose to mimic the ancient Greek practice of placing north at the top. Juan de la Cosa’s map also features a ‘compass rose’ in the middle of the Atlantic, a symbol of the key role that the instrument was to play in the coming centuries. Soon, with the European age of discovery gathering momentum, the magnetic compass would well and truly triumph. Many of us may have naturally assumed that the compass gave us the words we use for the cardinal directions – north and south, east and west. Yet, as the long and colourful history of our relationship with orientation and navigation proves, it was the other way round. This article was first published in the October 2024 issue of BBC History Magazine
Why and when was such a confederation formed, and are there really five of them? Jonny Wilkes explains the history behind the coastal alliance…
Long before the British Isles had a professional navy – let alone laid claim to rule the waves – lessons had been learned on the need to protect the lands from seaborne threats. The Romans had found the tribal peoples of Britain divided and ripe for invasion; Vikings crossed the North Sea unimpeded to maraud the coast; and as the French increasingly entered the picture, the narrowness of the stretch of water today known as the English Channel posed an obvious danger. It was to combat this danger that a federation was formed of coastal towns, predominantly in Kent and Sussex, to ensure there were always ships, and men to crew them, for the crown. In return for their ‘ship service’, these so-called ‘Cinque Ports’ received privileges, freedoms and honours, enough to see them survive in a ceremonial capacity to this day. What are the Cinque Ports? There were five original ports, although more towns would be added over the years. They were: Sandwich Dover Hythe New Romney Hastings While the idea of the Cinque Ports developed gradually, the first formal acknowledgement of the confederation came in the reign of Edward the Confessor (r1042–66). It turned out the Anglo-Saxon king had good reason to fear boats crossing the channel, with the Normans on the way. The role and stature of the Cinque Ports truly bloomed after the Norman Conquest of 1066, and they remained a powerful entity throughout the Plantagenet dynasty, complete with their own coat of arms, and judicial and political influence. Why are they called Cinque Ports? Since the Cinque Ports were properly established under the Normans – earning a mention in William the Conqueror’s Domesday Book – the name that caught on was, unsurprisingly, the Old French version of ‘five harbours’. It didn’t stay at ‘cinque’ for long, however. The Ports turned to their neighbours to help build the ships, so more than 30 towns ended up in the confederation. These included the two so-called ‘ancient towns’ of Rye and Winchelsea and ‘limbs’ across Kent and Sussex, such as Faversham, Margate, Ramsgate, Deal, Folkestone, Lydd and Tenterden. What were the Cinque Ports’ responsibilities, and what rights did they receive? Ship service in the original five ports meant building and crewing a regular supply for the royal fleet. The commitment was for 57 ships – Dover and Hastings providing 21 each, and the other towns giving five each – for 15 days of service every year. Before the Royal Navy, this could prove critical in a naval conflict. On dry land, the Cinque Ports had responsibilities in the lucrative industry of herring fishing, each appointing a bailiff to keep order at the days-long, often-rowdy annual herring fair at Yarmouth. For assisting the crown, the portsmen (as residents of the Cinque Ports were known) enjoyed a degree of self-government. Their rights and privileges were entrenched in a series of royal charters over the centuries, including Magna Carta. Among them were exemptions from several taxes, rights to claim ownership of property (especially cargo from wrecked ships), and honours at court – notably carrying the canopy over the king and queen during coronation ceremonies. The ports even established their own courts of law and had political representation. From the 13th century, each Cinque Port, as well as Rye and Winchelsea, had two MPs. What was the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports? The highest office within the confederation was the Lord Warden who, beginning with Stephen de Pencester in 1268, simultaneously held the title of Constable of Dover Castle. The Lord Warden, who was also the Admiral of the Cinque Ports, became one of the most powerful officials in the kingdom, and it was a highly sought-after title. In the list of previous wardens are names such as the future Henry V and Henry VIII, the Duke of Wellington, and Winston Churchill. To date, the only woman to hold the role is Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, from 1978 to 2002. What happened to the Cinque Ports? A variety of causes contributed to the decline of the Cinque Ports: ships got bigger so needed larger ports; changing geography meant the original ports lost their strategic value (Sandwich, for example, is now around two miles inland); then, under the Tudors, the navy was established. Still, the Cinque Ports survives to this day as a ceremonial organisation.
Clotilda: the last slave ship to America
Hannah Durkin tells the story of the survivors of Clotilda, the last ship to transport enslaved people from Africa to America
The transatlantic slave trade was formally abolished in both Britain and the US in 1807 and 1808 – yet slave ships were still forcibly bringing enslaved African people to the Americas right up to the 1860s. David Musgrove speaks to historian Hannah Durkin about the long history of this horrific trade, through the eyes of the survivors of Clotilda, the last ship to transport slaves to America. Hannah Durkin is the author of Survivors: The Lost Stories of the Last Captives of the Atlantic Slave Trade (HarperCollins, 2024). Buy now on Amazon Buy now on Bookshop.org Buy now on Waterstones
Pirates didn’t only spread chaos in Caribbean and Atlantic waters. Adam Clulow reveals how east Asian raiders, including a female commander ignored by historians, terrorised China’s shores from the 16th century
Spring 1553 brought terror to large swathes of the coast. Settlements along the shore were hit with successive assaults from the sea as, in “the third month... [pirates launched] a large campaign to attack [the coast]. The combined fleet consisted of several hundred warships that covered the sea.” This account, which goes on to list the towns and cities that fell to the marauders’ depredations, gives a sense of the scale of these raids, describing a vast armada of pirate vessels carrying thousands of men. These large-scale series of raids weren’t launched on the Spanish Main by Caribbean buccaneers or by Barbary corsairs in the Mediterranean. In fact, the description comes from the Mingshi, a history of the Ming dynasty in China. It recounts an attack by so-called wakō, or Japanese pirates, under the command of their leader Wang Zhi, who assembled huge fleets for raids on the coast. Read more | Ghost ships through history Piracy has always been a global phenomenon. For millennia, pirates have preyed on rich shipping lanes and vulnerable coastal settlements. Although European pirates dominate the popular imagination, east Asia – particularly China and Japan – was one of the great centres of historical piracy. East Asian piracy was vast in scale and reach. It was also stunningly persistent with successive waves of large-scale piracy. And it was strikingly cosmopolitan, with multi-ethnic crews straddling national boundaries. In the 16th century, huge pirate fleets consisting of hundreds of vessels ransacked the Chinese coast. Although dressed as ferocious Japanese warriors, most of these pirates were in fact Chinese, and they were led by Chinese entrepreneurs based in Japan. Then, in the 17th century, a new pirate king created a maritime organisation that would come to challenge the Dutch East India Company, eventually invading Taiwan and ejecting the Dutch from their prized east Asian colony. And in the 19th century, a Chinese female leader emerged from the Cantonese sex trade to command tens of thousands of pirates. Cycle of crime For most people today, the default image of a historical pirate is based on notorious European outlaws such as Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard. Such figures, who were active primarily in the Caribbean and the Atlantic, became so well-known because writers like Captain Charles Johnson, author of the bestselling 1724 book A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates, created a larger-than-life image that penetrated deep into the popular imagination. But these mariners who operated during what’s now called the Golden Age of Piracy – spanning the later 17th and early 18th centuries – were generally not very successful. Their careers were short and violent, marked by the occasional seizure of rich vessels but usually ending in capture or execution. By contrast, east Asian pirates developed organisations that, at their zenith, looked a lot like actual states with huge resources and reach. Historians who work on pirates talk about a piracy cycle – applicable globally, but key to understanding east Asian pirates. According to this model, pirates transitioned through four stages as they became more successful. In the first stage, small, fragmented groups emerged, usually drawing support from impoverished coastal populations. They engaged in low-level piracy using one or two vessels, attacking vulnerable ships or settlements but with little organisation or staying power. In this phase, pirates were little more than small-scale parasites, preying on commerce but with limited capacity to inflict serious damage. Read more | How a mid-life crisis created the 'worst pirate of all time' Although most east Asian pirates never escaped this phase, the more successful ones transitioned to stage two of the cycle, which saw significant organisation and growth. Fuelled by plunder, pirate leaders amassed small fleets, allowing them to target richer targets. This in turn gave them access to more resources, enabling further growth. Once they reached stage three, pirate fleets could consist of hundreds of vessels and tens of thousands of pirates. Such groups required clear rules, structures and even fully formed bureaucracies to manage income and resources. Contrary to popular ideas, most pirates were not political revolutionaries seeking to create alternative orders or maritime utopias. Rather, they developed strict hierarchies that funnelled plunder upwards to key leaders, while ensuring their crews remained well fed and armed. At this stage, pirates faced a crucial test. Established states recognised that such groups, with their powerful fleets and tens of thousands of fighters, posed a dangerous threat that must be co-opted or defeated. In stage four of the piracy cycle, then, pirates could form their own de facto states – and indeed some successful east Asian pirates did precisely this. Or they could seek recognition by, or integration into, powerful Asian states. If they could successfully navigate this difficult transition, pirate leaders could morph from outlaws into admirals, and their fleets into state navies. But making this final leap proved perilous, even for the most successful. Dawn of the ‘dwarf raiders’ <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/10/GettyImages-1485439170-9edbea5-e1696254326595.jpg" width="620" height="401" alt="An 18th-century Chinese painting depicting a naval battle between wokou pirates and the Chinese. (Photo by: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)" title="An 18th-century Chinese painting depicting a naval battle between wokou pirates and the Chinese." /> East Asian pirates have a long history; scattered references stretch back thousands of years. But something changed in the 14th century, when huge fleets of pirates attacked Korea, ranging far inland and challenging the state. These pirates were known by two Chinese characters, 倭 寇, which can be pronounced as wokou in Chinese, waegu in Korean or wakō in Japanese. It’s a derogatory term for Japanese people that is sometimes translated as ‘dwarf raiders’. These wakō raids, to use the Japanese pronunciation, started small and were easily resisted. But they swiftly grew as pirate leaders transitioned to stages two and three of the piracy cycle. In c1370, wakō pirates attacked a Korean province, destroying 30 warships and taking the tax grain accumulated by the state. And in 1374, a massive fleet of 350 wakō ships struck the Korean coast, burning down an army barracks and killing thousands of soldiers. Who were these so-called ‘dwarf raiders’? Their bases were in western Japan, which was convulsed by successive natural disasters including famines and pandemics. But Murai Shōsuke, a leading historian of medieval Japan, suggests that we should rethink what he calls a “nationality-oriented approach” to the wakō. Read more | Anne Bonny and Mary Read: the deadly female pirate duo Instead, Murai argues that we should think of these pirates as members of marginal maritime communities that straddled different national boundaries and cannot be easily fitted into modern categories. By the 16th century, Japan was famous as a global centre for piracy. Indeed, Japan and Korea appear on some European maps of this period as Ilhas dos Ladrones – in Portuguese, the ‘Isles of Pirates’. From the 1520s, pirate chiefs based in Japan assembled large fleets with the aim of launching attacks against targets located primarily in China. Raids peaked between 1550 and 1560, when 467 were recorded – including the massive coastal assault under Wang Zhi described at the start of this article – before gradually declining over the following three decades. Despite the size of their fleets, the wakō were essentially bandits operating on shore, using their ships primarily for transportation. Having landed, fighters fanned out to attack vulnerable settlements before return- ing to their vessels with plunder. The Ming dynasty Wakō zukan – the most famous pictorial representation of such pirates – provides a compelling illustration of the progress of one raid. This long hand scroll depicts a small pirate fleet arriving in ships equipped with bamboo sails. Landing, the pirates fold their sails and spring ashore, carrying lances. Two pirates climb a rocky outcrop where one, perched precariously on the shoulders of the other, scans the horizon for potential targets. Having sighted a distant settlement, they signal their confederates and prepare for the attack. Burning and looting, the wakō carry away a rich haul from a defenceless village before they are interrupted by Chinese forces that arrive to confront them in a pitched battle at the centre of the scroll. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/09/GettyImages-1371475595web-ea56b70.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="Detail from the Wakō zukan showing Ming dynasty troops advancing on pirate forces in Taiwan." title="China/Taiwan: Detail of a battle between wokou pirates and Ming Dynasty forces from the scroll painting 'Ming Qiu Shizhou Taiwan zoukai tu' (Victory in Taiwan by Qiu Shizhou of the Ming), Qiu Ying (1494-c.1559)" /> This depiction suggests a relatively equal fight, but the highly motivated wakō often fought with such ferocity that they were able to overcome even well-entrenched garrisons. Although described collectively as Japanese pirates, the wakō were essentially multi-ethnic, though their leaders were generally Chinese. The Mingshi explains that, “because famous traitors such as Wang Zhi, Xu Hai, Chen Dong and Ma Ye... were not able to succeed in the mainland, they escaped to the islands [of Japan] to become ringleaders. The Japanese listened to their commands, and they enticed them into attacking. The great pirates of the seas used Japanese dress and insignia, and attacked the mainland in separate expeditions. There was no one who did not gain huge riches, and for this reason the troubles from Japan increased.” Powerful pirate lords Wang Zhi, frequently identified as a key ringleader, was born in Anhui province in China, around the early 16th century. For a time he was a smuggler tapping into the rich Japanese market. According to the Chouhai tubian, a detailed account of wakō piracy, Wang Zhi began to organise voyages to Japan in 1540, and quickly established a presence in the port of Hirado, where “the barbarians trusted and followed him, calling him Captain Wu Feng”. By the 1550s, piracy clearly presented greater opportunities than smuggling, and Wang Zhi recruited fighters for large-scale raids on Chinese targets. He proved remarkably successful in his new role, swiftly moving through the stages of the piracy cycle, amassing large fleets and forging powerful connections with local lords. He was also instrumental in the introduction of European firearms into Japan. When Portuguese traders arrived there in the 1540s carrying matchlock firearms, they were accompanied by a “Confucian scholar from the Great Ming called Gohō [Wu Feng]”. This was in fact Wang Zhi, in one of his many guises. Over the following decades, firearms revolutionised Japanese warfare, heralding a new era in which long rows of foot soldiers fired devastating musket volleys. For all his riches and power, Wang Zhi stumbled in the final stage of the piracy cycle as he attempted to secure recognition from the Chinese state. After organising a series of devastating attacks, he was eventually lured back to China in 1557 with promises of amnesty. Once there, though, he was arrested and subsequently executed. In the early 17th century, Zheng Zhilong – another remarkably cosmopolitan figure – picked up where Wang Zhi had left off. Born in Fujian, he worked in the Portuguese trading post of Macao before moving to Hirado, the same port in western Japan where Wang Zhi had been based. There he befriended Dutch East India Company merchants and married a local Japanese woman. By the 1620s, Zheng Zhilong had moved his operations to the seas around Fujian, where he emerged as one of many pirate captains who prospered in the busy shipping lanes off China’s traditional maritime hub. He became so powerful that the Ming government decided to co-opt him, offering a position as admiral – and giving Zheng Zhilong, once the most formidable pirate in the region, the task of suppressing piracy. Armed with this official endorsement, he soon dispensed with his rivals and emerged as the head of the powerful Zheng maritime network, which successfully fused maritime violence with long-distance trade. Read more | Pirate John Ward: the real Captain Jack Sparrow It was later taken over by his famous son Koxinga, who used it to challenge the Dutch East India Company. The contest between these two formidable maritime organisations reached a climax in 1662 when Koxinga successfully invaded Taiwan, ejecting the Dutch from their profitable colony. Wang Zhi and Zheng Zhilong had remarkable careers, building maritime empires from scratch. They are also relatively well known, the subjects of many books and articles. But their careers are arguably eclipsed by a female pirate who has, until recently, been largely ignored by historians. This was Zheng Yi Sao, who rose from the humblest of origins to command a vast pirate fleet. Pirate queen Successive wakō pirates were helped immeasurably by the fact that they could retreat to a sheltered base in Japan. In the 19th century, Chinese pirates found a safe haven in the rebel Tây Sơn state in Vietnam. When Tây Sơn power started to fade, Chinese pirates forged a new confederation, drawing together thousands of maritime marauders. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/09/LieutTurnerandBoatsCrewoftheShipTeamadePrisonersbytheLadronePiratesRMGPU6380web-cd0d4f7.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="Hand-coloured fine art print showing British sailor John Turner being captured by pirate lord Zheng Yi near Macao in 1806." title="British sailor John Turner is captured by pirate lord Zheng Yi near Macao in 1806. Over time, the most powerful east Asian pirates came to threaten trade routes. (Illustration from the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London)" /> A key leader in this process was one Zheng Yi, who controlled a formidable force of some 70,000 fighters and 400 vessels. When he died in 1807, his wife – known to us simply as ‘the wife of Zheng Yi’, or Zheng Yi Sao – took over. Zheng Yi Sao was born around 1774 and, like many other young girls in China in that period, was probably sold into prostitution by her family; certainly, she worked in the sex trade in Guangzhou (Canton). In 1801, she married pirate leader Zheng Yi. After he died, she took their adopted son, Zhang Bao, as first her lover and later her husband, and assumed full control of the family business. Like other successful pirate leaders, Zheng Yi Sao developed robust internal structures to bring order to a sprawling coalition of maritime marauders. Under the command of Zheng Yi Sao and Zhang Bao, an expansive code of laws was issued, with transgressors subject to harsh penalties. Anyone not obeying orders or attempting to seize command were put to death. Sexual assault of female prisoners was punished, though pirates could take individual women as wives or concubines. The code also strictly regulated the sharing of plunder. At the height of her power, Zheng Yi Sao controlled a pirate operation that extended influence over both land and sea. Like many successful pirates, she made money less from the violent capture of rich vessels than from selling protection, ensuring safe passage for merchants – if they paid up. Her fleets not only challenged the Chinese state but also became a significant threat to international traders. In a short space of time, pirates attached to Zheng Yi Sao forced five American schooners to retreat to a nearby port, seized a vessel belonging to a Portuguese colonial governor, and prevented a Siamese (Thai) tribute mission from reaching its destination. Faced with a mounting crisis, Qing officials recognised that they could not defeat Zheng Yi Sao’s pirate organisation by force; instead, they had to negotiate. On the podcast | The golden age of piracy: everything you wanted to know Zheng Yi Sao travelled to Guangzhou to meet the governor-general there. When she surrendered alongside Zhang Bao in April 1810, her fleet boasted 226 ships, 1,315 cannon and 17,318 pirates. Zhang Bao would go on to lead Qing navy ships into action against other pirates. Remember Blackbeard? That scourge of the Caribbean coast was killed in action while probably still in his thirties. Other pirates were hanged for their crimes. Yet, rather than being hunted to her death, Zheng Yi Sao was able to negotiate her own surrender, and died a wealthy woman at the age of 69 – a true measure of pirate success. This article was first published in the October 2023 issue of BBC History Magazine