PIRATE QUEEN

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22262, 9 November 1935, Page 2 (Supplement)

PIRATE QUEEN

BEAUTIFUL GIRL IN CHINA I - OFTFN POSED AS A MAN SHIPS RAIDED FOR YEARS I A beautiful twenty-seven-year-old girl, known throughout China as "Golden Gracious," queen of the ruthless Bias Bay pirates for seven years, has been sentenced to life imprisonino?it. Crowds flocked to Canton to sco her face a score of indictments. Many : showed ruthlessness, others queer streaks of kindness. " Golden Gracious " was captured through the combined operations of the Kuang Tung provincial forces and the | British Navy. British warships have ■ j wiped out many of the pirates' lairs, ' which have been a scourge to coastal ! trade. " Gracious " fled to Bias Bay ; seven years ago when her husband had j to leave Canton t<s escape tho law. 1 i At first she took no part in the raids, 1 but her beauty soon attracted the | pirate chiefs. She left her husband. I " Gracious " then planned several darj ing coups, two of which affected British i ships, which were seized by passengers " between Shanghai and Hong- , 1<on "- . 11 This exhibition of brains as well as ' beauty made "Gracious" popular among the pirates and she gradually assumed the leadership. She frequently changed her " husbands." _ The woman generally stopped in the Bias Bay district while directing acts of piracy, but several times she led her gangs aboard ships, sometimes disguised as a man. She is reputed to have been

responsible for the Tung Chow piracy this year, when seventy British children, destined for school at Chefoo, were carried off. Finding crates of oranges among the cargo " Gracious " is said to have distributed them among the children amid great delight. The Canton authorities, trying to stamp out piracy, suspected her, and a discarded lover who was captured indicted her. But "Gracious" was warned and fled along the const, finding refuge in poor fisher-folks' huts. Her monov was exhausted and when she was finally captured she was poorly dressed, weary and ill-fed.