Piracy has been big on Lantau since the Ming Dynasty and the swashbuckling only really wound down in the early 1900’s.
Ray Au reports / Illustration by Sarin Ale
Looking back at the history of piracy in Lantau, it’s clear that the industry – the island’s biggest to date – was driven both by location and economic necessity. The early Chinese pirates were fishermen, who started preying on the ships and seaside settlements of southern China as a sideline to help makes ends meet. They soon discovered that Lantau, with its hidden coves and well protected harbours, was the perfect pirates’ hideout.
As early as the 12th century, imperial troops were stationed on Lantau with the mission to stamp out piracy. But this story really begins in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), when a series of ‘sea bans’ were introduced forbidding Chinese fishermen and merchants from trading with foreigners. This left coastal communities, like those in Lantau, with very little to live on. Islanders had two choices – to move with their families inland or take to the high seas to pillage, plunder and loot.
KOXINGA AND THE GREAT CLEARANCE
The sea ban resulted in a huge surge in piracy all along the southern Chinese coast. By the early 1600s, Fujian pirate Zheng Zhilong had amassed the most powerful fleet in the area, and he made Lantau one of his hideaways. In the last days of the Ming dynasty, Zheng Zhilong saw an opportunity (for wealth and power) and offered his services to the troubled emperor. With the coming of the Qing dynasty (1644-1912), however, he attempted to change sides and was unceremoniously executed.
Zheng Zhilong’s son Zheng Chen Ggong (better known as Koxinga) grew up a Ming loyalist, and continued in the family business. He gave the Qing Navy hell for some 16 years, and by 1659 he had built up sufficient power to sail over 100,000 troops up the Yangtze River to attack Nanjing. There, however, he suffered a disastrous defeat.
Forced back to home base, Koxinga found himself in dangerous waters. In 1661, when the emperor ordered a Great Clearance, which again forced coastal populations inland, his response was to retreat to Taiwan, taking it from the Dutch after a nine-month siege.
Koxinga died of malaria in 1662, and the sea ban was finally lifted in 1684. But local fishermen were back where they started in 1757, when the Qing introduced the Canton System, restricting all foreign trade to Guangzhou.
THE PIRATE CONFEDERATION
Piracy continued in a small way in subsequent years, only to come back with a bang in 1778 with the Tay Son Rebellion. Seeing the opportunity to strike back at the Qing rulers, the southern Chinese pirates joined forces with Vietnam’s ascendant Tay Son dynasty, fighting alongside them, as their privateers in what came to be known as the Great Pirate Upheaval. In exchange for their support, the pirates were given better-armed junks and legitimate military titles. Based in the then-Vietnamese port of Jiangping, they began to expand under new and ambitious leaders.
When the Tay Son dynasty fell in 1801, the southern Chinese pirates returned to their home ports determined to build on their success. In 1805, they formed a confederation headquartered at Tung Chung comprising the Red, Black, White, Green, Blue and Yellow Flag fleets.
The unspoken leader of the confederation was Cheng I, ruler of the mighty Red Flag Fleet, whose great-great-grandfather, Cheng Chien, had served under Koxinga.
CHEUNG PO TSAI AND CHENG I SAO
Just two years later, when Cheng I died, his wife, Cheng I Sao, quickly took charge and almost as quickly married her stepson Cheung Po Tsai. While Cheng I Sao used her powers of negotiation to keep the confederation together, Cheung Po Tsai became captain of the Red Flag Fleet.
Like Koxinga, Cheung Po Tsai was a Ming loyalist, who dreamt of overthrowing the Qing rulers. He was also hugely charismatic – the model for the Chinese pirate Sao Feng played by Chow Yun-fat in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End.
Led by Cheung Po Tsai and Cheng I Sao, the confederation grew from 800 junks in 1805 to nearly 2,000 by 1809. As the pirates grew more powerful, they began to prey not just on coastal vessels but on ocean-going Malaysian junks and Portuguese merchant ships. At this time, they also found a new way of making money, setting up a protection racket over the salt trade. When the authorities responded with a coastal embargo that meant salt had to be transported by land, Cheung Po Tsai hit back hard, fighting the local militia not only at sea but also on land.
By early 1809, Cheung Po Tsai had become so powerful he decided to attack Whampoa, and demand a ransom from the Governor General. Unfortunately for him, however, the Governor General begged help from the West, and the pirates were pushed back to Lantau by a Portuguese armed cruiser.
With the pirates besieged at Tung Chung, a joint Portuguese and Qing navy closed in. Cheng I Sao and Cheung Po Tsai, with the support of the confederacy, were able to lead a fleet of 17,318 pirates and 226 junks in the resulting nine-day Battle of Lantau. But the confederates were no match for the Portuguese. By late 1810 after a squall of such defeats, Cheung Po Tsai, alongside many others in the confederacy, decided to bite the bullet and surrender.
As luck would have it, things turned out well for Cheung Po Tsai, who was allowed to keep his ships on condition that he join the anti-piracy campaign. He and Cheng I Sao lived happily in Canton under the Governor General’s protection before moving to Fujian. On becoming a colonel, Cheung Po Tsai took charge of the Penghu Regiment and became responsible for defending the coastline he had once terrorised.
THE BATTLE OF TY-HO BAY
Piracy didn’t die with Cheung Po Tsai’s betrayal, however. Hong Kong’s colonial history is full of pirate attacks right up to the early 1900s. The big-name buccaneers of the period, headquartered to the west and east of Hong Kong, were Shap Ng Tsai and Chui A-poo, and again, much of the action centred on Lantau.
The Battle of Ty-ho Bay in 1855 saw a 36-strong pirate fleet come up against warships from the combined British and US navy, intent on retrieving captured merchant vessels. The action off Tai O resulted in a resounding defeat: some 500 southern Chinese pirates were killed in action with 1,000 more taken prisoner. Fourteen pirate ships sank in the battle.
By this time, the British were free to hunt pirates anywhere in Chinese waters, with Tung Chung Fort serving as home base. Numerous police depots were set up on the outlying islands, including Tai O Police Station, with officers garrisoned to track and combat pirates prevalent in the neighbouring waters.
Ultimately, however, it was technological advancement rather than dedicated colonial troops that put an end to piracy on the southern Chinese coast. Chinese lorchas were outclassed by the newly emerging, ironclad Western steamships, and our storybook anti-heroes, the dashing descendants of Cheung Po Tsai and Cheng I Sao, found they could no longer rule the waves.