Queen of the pirates

QUESTION Were there female pirates?

PerhaPs the most powerful pirate of all time was a woman. Known as Ching shih, which means Cheng’s widow, her legacy far exceeded that of her husband.

Born shih Yang in 1775 in the Guangdong province of China, she was a Cantonese prostitute or madam working in a floating brothel in Guangzhou.

her business acumen attracted the attention of Cheng I, commander of the red Flag Fleet of pirate ships, and in 1801 they married.

after Cheng I died in 1807, his adoptive son and heir, Cheung Po Tsai, became Ching shih’s lover. she soon took over leadership of the red Flag Fleet and vastly increased its size.

richard Glasspoole, an east India Company official captured by the pirates in september 1809, estimated Ching shih commanded 1,000 large junks and 800 smaller junks crewed by 80,000 men. With these she ‘robbed towns, markets and villages from Macau to Canton’, according to historian robert antony.

Ching shih’s rule ended in 1810 when she accepted an offer of amnesty from the Chinese government.

she is a popular character in Chinese fiction and films and, as Mistress Ching, is one of the nine Pirate Lords in the Pirates Of The Caribbean films.

Terri McGowan, Cardiff. FeMaLe pirates anne Bonny and Mary read both began their careers having been disguised as men.

Bonny was born in Co. Cork in 1697, the illegitimate daughter of William Cormac, a wealthy Irish lawyer, and a servant girl. In an effort to hide her parentage, her father had her dress as a boy and pose as his law clerk.

she emigrated to the U.s., where she married a sailor in 1718. The pair travelled to the Bahamas, but she abandoned her husband after falling for Caribbean pirate Calico Jack rackham.

Bonny later forged a friendship with the english pirate Mary read, who was born in 1685 and was disguised as a boy by her mother so she could receive a family inheritance. she earned a living as a servant boy and soldier, before marrying

Legacy: Takayo Fischer as Mistress Ching in Pirates Of The Caribbean a Flemish soldier. The pair ran a tavern called De drie hoefijzers (The Three horseshoes). after her husband died, read emigrated to the West Indies, where she fell in with Calico Jack.

Bonny and read took part in a spree of raids until their pirate ship was captured in 1720. several men, including Calico Jack, were executed, but Bonny and read dodged the noose because they were pregnant, known as ‘pleading the belly’.

read died of a fever in prison in 1721, but Bonny’s fate is unknown.

Brian Lennon, Stratford-upon-Avon, Warks.

QUESTION Was Pontius Pilate born in Scotland?

MarCUs Pontius Pilatus, roman prefect of Judea, was the judge at Jesus Christ’s trial in aD33. There is an oral tradition that says he was born in scotland.

a short time before the birth of Christ, Caesar augustus sent an embassy to Britain. The roman ambassadors are said to have met Metellanus, the scottish king who lived at Fortingall in Perthshire.

It’s claimed that a member of the roman delegation fathered a son, Pontius Pilate, with a Caledonian woman and took the youngster back to rome.

The story is almost certainly untrue, as it only dates back to the late 19th century.

Neil hooper, historian and tree warden for Fortingall, believes the story was invented by its owner, the shipping magnate sir Donald Currie, former MP for Perthshire and patron to rudyard Kipling and alfred, Lord Tennyson.

One of the earliest references to Pilate’s scottish roots was in an article in the Pall Mall Gazette in 1899. The story then made it into The New York Times.

as further ‘evidence’ of a connection, a few years later sir Donald said that a stone on his estate inscribed with the initials ‘PP’ had been unearthed.

The Pilate legend isn’t Fortingall’s only claim to fame. Its prehistoric archaeological sites include standing stone circles and a Bronze age tumulus. a 5,000-yearold yew tree in the churchyard is claimed to be the oldest living thing in europe.

Arthur Black, Stirling.

QUESTION Would a Lancaster bomber have been capable of carrying either of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan to end World War II?

The bombs, Little Boy, which was dropped on hiroshima, and Fat Man, which targeted Nagasaki, weren’t that big. Little Boy was only 28in wide and 120in long. It weighed 9,700lb and had a nuclear yield of 15kt (kilotons).

Fat Man was 60in wide, 128in long, weighed 10,800lb and had a yield of 21kt.

each would have been within the capacity of a Lancaster bomber, which had a maximum bomb load of 14,000lb.

Modifications may have been needed to mount the bombs, as was necessary for the 60in-wide bouncing bomb used in the Dambusters raid.

The distance from Tinian Island, where the mission started, to hiroshima is 1,500 miles, which was well within a Lancaster’s range.

however, the enola Gay, the B29 super Fortress aircraft that dropped both nuclear bombs, had to fly at a height of 31,000ft to prevent it being damaged by the blast.

The Lancaster’s ceiling was 21,400ft with a full load of 63,000lb. With a smaller bomb load and less fuel than usual, this could have been increased, but not by enough to reach the safety height.

Bob Dillon, Edinburgh.

IS THERE a question to which you have always wanted to know the answer? Or do you know the answer to a question raised here? Send your questions and answers to: Charles Legge, Answers To Correspondents, Daily Mail, 2 Derry Street, London, W8 5TT. You can also email them to charles.legge@dailymail.co.uk. A selection will be published, but we are not able to enter into individual correspondence.