13

Evil Incarnate and the Dragon Lady

THE WOMEN PIRATES OF twentieth-century China are extremely different from each other depending on what part of the century they came from. As life in China changed, the pirate’s life changed as well. However, too much emphasis cannot be placed on the revolutions taking place in China and their role in the pirates’ lives, because the pirate women were, like Cheng I Sao before them, from the rural coastal areas, where reforms did not have a chance to permeate as much. China’s massive size prevented the government from having equal effect in all regions of the country; the farther away from the seat of government one went, the less the head governing body held sway. So despite the revolutions going on in Beijing and other cities during the twentieth century, the countryside and coasts were less affected by change.

A caveat before entering into these pirates’ lives and the context in Chinese history of those lives: much of what the Western world knows about Asia, and China in particular, has been filtered through many layers of translation and bias, not to mention governmental interference from both East and West. Propaganda flows heavily to and from China, and it can be hard to know exactly what daily life was and is like for the average citizen there. The reader must take all Western accounts of non-Western countries with a healthy dose of skepticism, knowing that the “real China” is just as nebulous a concept as the “real America.”

Around the turn of the twentieth century, the first of the women pirates from this era was born, as the bloody Boxer Rebellion was beginning. China was suffering from a terrible drought, starving citizens, and an adult population riddled with opium addiction, as a result of the British opium trade. The people believed that the foreign interference in their affairs was the culprit for their suffering, and they wanted foreign influence out. When Empress Dowager Cixi purged China of European influence, Europe and other interested nations struck back, sending a force of twenty thousand troops to defeat the Chinese. In the face of the Chinese defeat, the empress dowager realized that she must either modernize China—breaking with a millennium of dynastic tradition—or watch the Qing dynasty perish. Although she had opposed an ambitious reform plan previously—the Hundred Days of Reform decreed by the Guangxu emperor, her adopted son, in 1898—she realized that China must change or perish. Her reform campaign was ultimately too little too late to save the dynasty and her reputation as a leader. Although the reforms were strong and they did help China become a world power, they were not initially successful.

Cixi is often portrayed negatively as a usurper of power and the instrument of the Qing dynasty’s downfall. In the respect that she is maligned in history, she is similar to many of the pirate women. Only recently, as the result of author Jung Chang’s work, has another side of Cixi’s story been told. Chang’s research and book portray Cixi’s rise from concubine to de facto emperor of China. She demonstrates that Cixi brought China up-to-date with the modern industries it had been lacking, such as railways and electricity. She did this while ruling the massive country in the face of extraordinary challenges, such as nearly perpetual war with foreign powers, internal rebellions, drought, and famine. Although the Qing dynasty, and indeed the dynastic system, ended soon after she died, Chang argues that Cixi left China in a much better state than she found it.

When Cixi died in 1908, she left behind a discontented China and a three-year-old emperor, Pu Yi. China’s government was viewed as corrupt and unable to provide. Warlords built armies in the countryside while the cities languished without strong leadership. The women pirates grew up amid this political unrest and upheaval, which likely contributed to their disregard for authority. China could not protect its people from foreign powers, so why should the people respect their country? By 1912 the new government of the Republic of China would force six-year-old Pu Yi to abdicate, making him China’s last emperor. The dynastic system, which had served China well for over a thousand years, came to an unceremonious end.

While the Qing dynasty was officially ending, a pirate woman’s story was just getting started. In the 1920s, Lai Choi San took advantage of the uncertain government situation to slip under the radar as a government official—who moonlighted as a pirate. Lai Choi San’s story comes from just two sources, primarily from one account: Aleko E. Lilius’s book I Sailed with Chinese Pirates, published in 1931. The journalist of dubious repute (he was alternately self-described as being Finnish, Russian, American, and English and was brought up on fraud charges in Singapore and the Philippines) gained the trust of female pirate Lai Choi San—some sources say through a go-between at a brothel he frequented—and sailed with her on an expedition in the late 1920s off the coast of Macao.

Lai Choi San, as Lilius writes, was the only girl born to a family of four sons. Her father, a sailor, took her on expeditions as his servant-girl, and she grew to love the sea. Her father befriended a pirate captain and moved up the ranks to his second in command. When the captain died, Lai Choi San’s father became the captain of the pirate fleet, numbering seven junks at that time. After her father’s death, Lai Choi San took over the fleet and added five more junks. She is portrayed by Lilius as ruthless, cruel, attractive, and intelligent.

Lilius recounts several stories about Lai Choi San that give the reader a glimpse into her working life. Onshore in Macao, she dressed gorgeously, adorned with jade, a white satin robe, and gold rings. He writes that she was “rather slender and short . . . not too Chinese [looking],” which one supposes was meant to be a compliment. Her physical attributes are emphasized to make her an interesting subject for a story—nobody was going to buy a book about an ugly lady pirate. Once she was on a boat, however, she took off her shoes and dressed in pants, no longer an elegant lady but all business. She was always in the company of her amahs (serving women) and never addressed her crews directly, giving orders to them through the captains. She did not often venture out to sea with her crews either, preferring to run her business from the shore, but when she did sail, she remained in her private quarters, where no crew member was allowed to enter.

Lai Choi San was living this glamorous double life in the wake of World War I. The war was a mixed blessing for China, because it gave China a temporary respite from Western interest while the West had their hands full with fighting. However, rural Chinese warlords battled each other for dominance, attempting to take over larger areas of land. Japan continued to eye China with an eye toward occupation. People were becoming angry that Japan was not being repelled with greater force by rulers Yuan and Sun.

On May 4, 1919, three thousand students gathered in Tiananmen Square to protest the secret treaties signed during World War I between Europe and Japan, as well as the Treaty of Versailles, which gave formerly German-occupied Shandong Province to Japan, instead of back to China as promised. These students claimed that the corrupt Chinese government was incapable of protecting China. After the protesters turned violent, authorities intervened and many of the protesters were jailed. News of the protests spread, and people all over China sympathized with the protesters, continuing to protest and strike until the students were released and the three corrupt cabinet officials were fired. This May Fourth movement, as it came to be called, coalesced into a group that would become the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which was officially formed in 1921. Throughout the war and the protests that followed, Lai Choi San was able to conduct her business unnoticed by a government that was busy elsewhere.

And what exactly was Lai Choi San’s business? Technically she was an “inspector”—fishermen and other boat owners paid her to guard their ships from other pirates. When a pirate ship attacked one of the ships under her protection, she had to sink it or chase it away. Lilius tells of a man who compared Lai Choi San to Robin Hood, but the comparison doesn’t seem to hold much water, given that she was paid handsomely for her services, with fees bordering on extortion. When a captain did not pay up, or attempted to organize with other captains to protect themselves, Lai Choi San kidnapped and tortured them until their relatives paid up. One wonders who offered the bigger threat—the pirates or the protectors from pirates.

Lilius spins an entertaining yarn about the woman he calls the “Queen of the Pirates,” portraying her as a beautiful, shrewd businesswoman, a mother, and a commander. But is any of it true? He does include photographs in his book, which prove that there were some women on a ship, but not that they were commanders or pirates. Lilius’s account of his time with Lai Choi San seems possible enough, but the rest of the book gets much stranger and less credible. Other than Lilius’s account, there is only one other source that documents her story, and it’s a report of her death by a war journalist. He reports that during the Sino-Japanese War, a pirate fleet was sunk, and the captain (Lai Choi San) went down with her ship. This story is not without controversy. Klausmann reports in Women Pirates and the Politics of the Jolly Roger that other sources claim she was captured in 1939 by the international coast guard and sentenced to life in prison. Nobody can say for sure where she was born, where she died, or if she ever lived at all.

If her story is fiction, what possessed Lilius to write it? Obviously he (and his publishers) thought the tale would make money. In the late 1920s, American sentiment toward the Chinese was less than charitable. The Exclusion Act of 1882, not repealed until after World War II, prohibited Chinese from immigrating to the country, and the Chinese already in America, even people born there, were subject to prejudice and violence. Lilius’s story took advantage of the existing xenophobia displayed toward the Chinese by portraying a cruel and heartless woman readers could feel good about hating. Lilius makes clear in his account that Lai Choi San is an exotic Other—a curiosity to be gaped at and perhaps secretly fantasized about. It was escapism and guilty pleasure all rolled into one. While contemporary readers enjoyed the entertaining story, no doubt the real Lai Choi San would have not been amused by his depiction of her.

Real or not, Lai Choi San has a lasting legacy—she is said to be the inspiration for “The Dragon Lady” in the American comic, radio, and television series Terry and the Pirates, which ran in some form from 1934 to 1953. She is also said to have influenced the stock character of the coldhearted beauty, a twist on the femme fatale. Whether or not this is a fair characterization—as well as whether or not the trope is even appropriate in today’s society—is up for debate.

Lo Hon-cho (sometimes referred to as Honcho Lo) is another early twentieth-century Chinese pirate about whom there is a dearth of sources. Her story comes to us from a press report from Hong Kong in 1922 that details her capture. According to this report, her husband was a pirate and she inherited his fleet upon his death. She and Lai Choi San both inherited their fleets from male relatives—this was apparently common in twentieth-century Chinese pirate stories. She is described as “pretty” and “the most murderous and ruthless of all” China’s pirates. She was a colonel in the Chinese Revolution and was said to have sixty junks. She pirated on land and sea, sometimes attacking villages and taking young girls captive, later selling them into slavery. She is one of the only female pirates who was reported to kidnap and sell women. She was betrayed by one of her colleagues and captured in 1922. This brief report is the only evidence currently available about her life. How did she feel about pirating? What was her preferred pirating style? What was day-to-day life on her ship like? Unless other sources come to light, the reader must imagine these answers for herself.

After World War I, China fell further into turmoil. The country had endured the war, but Republic of China leader Sun Yat-sen’s death had left it once again without a strong leader. Enter Chiang Kai-shek, whose mission was to unify China. He felt that nationalism was the only way to go and sought to eliminate the Communists inside his government, even if it plunged the country into civil war. In 1927 he launched an attack against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), forcing them to flee on foot from Jiangxi to Yan’an, a trek of about six thousand miles. A young librarian from Hunan Province led what would become known as the Long March, where nearly seventy thousand people died during the yearlong journey. His name was Mao Zedong, and he would become the most influential leader in twentieth-century China’s history.

In 1945 China was poor, tired, and devastated by the series of wars that had plagued the country. The Chinese people blamed Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalist Party for their state. Inflation had gotten out of control, forcing people to use wheelbarrows full of money just to buy rice. In 1946 China once again fell into a civil war: Communists against the Nationalist Party. The people saw Mao and his new ideas as a chance for liberation from the corrupt Nationalist regime. By December of that year, mainland China had fallen to the CCP, and by 1949 China was a fully Communist country.

In between China’s civil wars, a fierce woman pirate rose to prominence. Huang P’ei Mei is listed in the Klausmann book as a woman pirate who commanded fifty thousand pirates. She was active from 1937 to the 1950s, with a varied career that included fighting for China against the Japanese, fighting against the Communists, and working with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II. With such an impressive track record, it doesn’t make sense that there aren’t more references to her or available documents chronicling her exploits. She may be a composite of several different women, a wildly exaggerated account of one woman, or a whole-cloth fabrication. Or she may have been and done all the things that are credited to her and somehow flown under the radar. Perhaps the truth about her is written out in glorious detail but tucked away somewhere in a basement, in a folder marked CLASSIFIED.

There are several other female pirates from this same period who are known in name only. Ki Ming, P’en Ch’ih Ch’iko, and “Golden Grace” come up over and over in lists of pirates from twentieth-century China, but no English-language stories are told about them, nor are there sources that document their lives. It is possible that there are Chinese-language sources for these pirates that have not been translated into English, but so far, this list of women pirates tells the reader only that pirate women were very popular in China in the early twentieth century, and at some point someone was invested in getting their names out there into the world. More research is needed into the lives and even the existence of these women.

How would these women have pirated? The style in the early 1900s had changed due to the advent of steam-powered ships. Sail-borne pirates could not compete with steamers and so were restricted to capturing smaller ships, such as fishing boats. These did not produce the huge hauls of Cheng I Sao’s day, and so the pirates were forced to adapt their tactics. Several sources tell of bands of pirates (including female bands) gaining employment on some of these large steamers, as waitresses or porters. Other pirates would pay for passage on these ships as well. The band would bide their time until they sailed near the waiting pirate ship. When the clueless passenger ship approached the predetermined point, the pirates would announce their true purpose, strip everyone of their valuables, and load the people onto the waiting pirate boats and take them ashore to be held for ransom. These carefully planned heist-style operations happened at least twenty-nine times during the period between 1921 and 1929. Perhaps Ki Ming, P’en Ch’ih Ch’iko, or Golden Grace were responsible for some of these attacks.

Huang P’ei Mei disappears from the stories just as Communist China began to ascend. In 1954 the CCP drafted a new Chinese constitution in which Mao Zedong was basically the head of everything. Though China maintained the illusion of a multiparty system, in reality the CCP ran all aspects of Chinese life. Mao’s ambitious plans for China were utopian and made people hopeful. His revolution had been bloodless compared to other revolutions. Foreign powers looked to China with interest to see how Communism would play out.

Mao’s rule was in its infancy the same time that a woman pirate was in her infancy. This pirate, who was born in Fujian Province of China, would redefine piracy for the new millennium. Her name was Cheng Chui Ping, although she was known mostly as Sister, and she did not command a ship, nor hunt for riches. She made her money offering the chance for riches to others; she facilitated the passage of illegal immigrants from China into the United States as a “snakehead,” or human smuggler.

Cheng Chui Ping grew up in the early days of Mao’s Communist China. So much has been written on this period that it is difficult to come up with any sort of coherent summary, let alone an unbiased one. Mao was focused on land reform and eliminating the warlords, a threat to his power. He established his goals by implementing several ambitious plans and executing or “reeducating” people who stood in his way. The most conservative estimates claim that at least three million people were murdered by the CCP for opposing the party. Control was Mao’s mantra, and he put the issue of solving class problems over everything else.

But despite his auspicious beginnings, Mao eventually made missteps that would lead to his fall from grace. His One Hundred Flowers Campaign, in which he urged intellectuals to come forward with their ideas, backfired spectacularly as the academics did come forward but with criticisms of Mao’s regime. His moneymaking program, the Great Leap Forward, was a disaster. People were too busy attending mandatory party meetings and study sessions to harvest grain, so they lied about production rather than risk Mao’s wrath. As a result, China suffered a famine in which twenty million people starved to death, a disproportionally large number of them children.

Mao’s absolute control was badly shaken due to the famine. He needed to do something drastic to assert his dominance. He launched the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in 1966. The orders of the Cultural Revolution were carried out by Mao’s Red Guards—schoolchildren and teenagers who were indoctrinated to be devoted to Mao and Communism. They traveled in packs and wreaked havoc on anyone and anything that appeared to oppose Mao. They became so powerful and ungovernable that Mao was forced to officially disband them in 1968, only two years after their inception.

Cheng Chui Ping came of age during Mao’s Great Leap Forward and was a leader for the Red Guard in her village as a teenager. She told Patrick Radden Keefe, author of a biography of her entitled The Snakehead, that her childhood was brutally hard, but it taught her that only hard work helps you get ahead in life. Her father became a snakehead in the 1960s, and she would follow in his footsteps decades later, turning her back on China to live in the United States.

It is possible that Cheng Chui Ping chose to leave China due to its restrictive policies toward women. During her lifetime, massive changes were made to cultural norms involving women, but even the more progressive ideas of the latter half of the twentieth century could have left this independent woman searching for other options. The Republican government banned foot binding as a symbol of China’s backwardness—Dowager Empress Cixi had also banned it years earlier. How could a country grow to its full greatness if half of its people could hardly walk? Female infanticide, which was widespread at the time, was also banned. The Nationalists, and in a much larger way the Communists, sought to eliminate everything that was old and traditional and forge a new path, which included awarding women status more equal with their male peers. The 1950 Marriage Law abolished the practice of purchased and arranged marriages and made divorces at-will. Before this, arranged marriages had been virtually universal. The 1950 law also granted women some property rights, but in practice, these did not take effect immediately, particularly in rural areas. The goal of these laws was to empower the younger generation so that they could work for a new China. Women were liberated not due to their inherent equal nature or any other altruistic reason but because equality was not a Confucian value, and the CCP wanted to establish itself as a new, non-Confucian regime. Communist women could be workers, just like Communist men.

This deconstruction of gender seems that it would have been a welcome change for the average Chinese woman, particularly due to the common perception that women were not valued in society. The cultural values from the Qing dynasty discussed in chapter 11 were still held strongly in early twentieth-century China. As Chang Yu-I puts it in her memoir Bound Feet & Western Dress (as dictated to her granddaughter, Pang-Mei Natasha Chang), “In China, a woman is nothing. When she is born, she must obey her father. When she is married, she must obey her husband. And when she is widowed, she must obey her son. A woman is nothing, you see.” Traditionally, women did not bring income into their own family as a worker. They had few rights of inheritance or property. Consequentially, there was little motivation to treat a daughter well. Education, preference, and even food were given to sons before daughters.

The CCP offered women a place in the workforce and in society. Women were expected to work just as hard as men—in offices and on farms. Clothing was gender neutral, and every effort was made to eliminate the differences between women and men. However, this did not work as well in practice as it did in theory. Although women were given more liberty to leave the domestic sphere, many young girls were married off to CCP officials essentially as gifts to the men. Women were still expected to raise children and maintain the home, but now they were expected to put in a full day of work, too. As Mao exhorted women to “hold up half the sky,” their identity as women was being erased.

When Sister Ping chose to emigrate to the States, she picked a good time. In the 1980s it was easier than ever for a Chinese person to enter the United States legally. The one-child policy, introduced in 1979, was disliked by the antiabortion administration, and the United States offered asylum to couples of childbearing age for this reason. The one-child policy is perhaps what China is most known for in the West, although misconceptions about it abound. China, always a huge nation struggling to feed its people, became extremely concerned about its population explosion and wanted to slow its growth. Over the last half of the twentieth century, population laws changed often, according to what the government thought would control the population as opposed to what women wanted, which was access to birth control. Families had a difficult time knowing what was legal and not legal. In the 1990s, the proliferation of ultrasound machines brought a new phenomenon to China—sex-selected abortions. The result of years of the one-child policy is striking: an estimated forty million girls are “missing”—women who should be in the population, if sex-selective abortions and infanticide had not taken place. This phenomenon has led to trafficking of women to replace the missing women so that Chinese bachelors have access to brides.

Besides asylum offers for couples, federal policies were relaxing for the first time in decades. Yet legal immigration to the United States was still difficult, and the process could take years. Many perceived that the chance for a better life in America now rather than later was worth breaking the law for, and Sister Ping offered them an opportunity to take that chance.

Sister Ping entered the United States legally in 1981, claiming she planned to get work as a domestic servant. Eventually she obtained naturalization papers and set up a convenience store in New York City’s Chinatown. Her store became a gathering place for the Fujianese community, many of whom sent money back home through Sister Ping. It could be done through the Bank of China, but that carried a large fee and took weeks. Sister Ping was cheaper and more efficient.

This cheaper and more efficient way of doing things also extended to her people-smuggling business, which came about in the mid-1980s. There were many people offering to smuggle people into America at that time, for a variety of prices and by a variety of methods. Sister Ping had a reputation for being safer than most as well as fair. If a family member died during the journey, she was rumored to pay funeral expenses. She also allegedly forgave the debts of some people who couldn’t pay their fees once they arrived in the States. The journey was always perilous. The risks were always high. But Sister Ping inspired confidence that she would do her best to make sure people got to the United States safely. Whether she really was this benevolent woman or a greedy and cruel human trafficker depends on, as always, who is telling the story.

As Sister Ping’s smuggling operation was expanding, the harsh Communist regime in China that people wanted to escape was waning. Toward the end of his time in power, Mao’s control of his party was slipping. The more people he exiled from the party, the more the people protested the loss of those officials. When Mao died in 1976 at the age of eighty-two, it wasn’t too hard for Deng Xiaoping to slide into the spotlight and take control of the Communist Party.

Deng was a committed Communist, but he did not share all of Mao’s beliefs. With Mao dead, he was free to enact reforms to rescue China from economic and political circumstances. Deng quickly reinstated many of the old party leaders who had been purged under Mao, and together they set about modernizing China. Deng felt that the answers lay in looking abroad rather than continuing in isolation—a huge departure from Mao’s philosophy. He rolled out his reforms slowly in order to give each program a chance to work.

A new Chinese constitution was ratified in 1978. This document emphasized decentralization, depoliticization, and democratization. These new goals would help undo some of the damage Mao’s regime had done and would improve the lives of Chinese citizens. Despite the changes on paper, however, freedoms in China were still scarce. It was difficult to legally obtain a passport, the media was still tightly controlled, and foreign art and literature were heavily censored. Corruption still existed in the government, and inflation made it almost impossible for the rising economy to raise standards of living. People still yearned to break free of the oppressive government and start a new life in America, which, coupled with the infamous Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, is why Cheng Chui Ping’s business continued to boom.

Besides all the political changes that benefited the average Chinese citizen that occurred from the 1980s to the turn of the century, many changes during that same period specifically benefited women’s lives. In 1980 a new marriage law passed that raised the minimum marriage age to twenty-two for men and twenty for women. In 1988 China enacted labor regulations that protected women on the job during pregnancy and lactation. In 1995 China hosted the Fourth Annual World Conference on Women. Legislation protecting women from marital violence was enacted in 2001. But no matter how wonderful life becomes in any given country, the grass is always greener somewhere else, and China is no exception to that rule. Though many aspects of life in China were improving, people still wanted to immigrate to the United States. Sister Ping’s business remained in demand throughout the 1990s.

When she was eventually caught by the FBI in 2000—due to her involvement in the disastrous Golden Venture shipwreck in which ten passengers lost their lives and the deplorable conditions of the smuggling ships were exposed—the American press had a field day vilifying her. She was portrayed as an unfeeling dragon lady, the press likely trading off the stock character popularized by Lai Choi San. One headline read EVIL INCARNATE. Even after her trial, she was still called inhumane and brutal by the FBI, who claimed in a 2006 press release on their website that with her sentence, “justice [had] finally been served for the many victims of Sister Ping.” It cannot be denied that she made money smuggling people and that some of those people died. It cannot be denied that the journey to the United States was dangerous and the conditions were inhumane. Even without the rumors of her gang of men beating up people who couldn’t pay their fees, there is much for which to convict Sister Ping.

Yet in China, she is considered a hero. There is a statue erected of her in her hometown of Shengmei. She was compared to Robin Hood, and her generosity was praised by the people whom she helped to enter America. The New York Times interviewed many people who traveled to the United States under her care, and did not quote a single disparaging remark about her in the piece. No one expressed regret over coming to America. They claimed they knew the risks and dangers and they chose to come anyway. Many expressed admiration for Sister Ping, and one wished to be more like her.

Cheng Chui Ping was eventually sentenced to thirty-five years in prison for smuggling. She died of cancer in federal prison in April 2014. When news of her death reached Chinatown in New York, the temples were packed with mourners. A multitude of grieving supporters called her restaurant in Chinatown, Yung Sun, to offer their condolences to her family.

Cheng Chui Ping’s piracy bears almost no relation to Lai Choi San’s or Lo Hon-cho’s, but then again, the China of the 1920s bears almost no relation to the China of the 1980s and 1990s. This dynamic century saw China move from ancient dynasties to modern governments, and the evolution of piracy in the area reflects that.

Sister Ping’s story is unusual among all the pirates in this book for several reasons: she did not actually sail on ships, she did not seek treasure, and she did not steal from other parties. Unique among the pirate women, however, is the fact that she actually told her own story. While some women, such as Margaret Jordan, spoke at sentencing, Sister Ping’s account through Keefe is the closest thing to a female pirate biography that currently exists. Writer Patrick Radden Keefe sent written questions to her in prison, which she answered through a translator. At her trial, she spoke in her own defense at sentencing. Her version of her life, along with the version of those who loved her, is remarkably different from the account told by government officials and documents. She is a fitting pirate to close out this chapter because she shows how a set of events can be portrayed in shockingly different light due to the biases of the storyteller. How many of the pirates in this book would have benefited from the chance to tell their own stories? Unlike Margaret Jordan, Ping’s summation of her deeds was not enough to convince a court of her innocence, but at least her story was told in her own words and added to the record. People can examine both versions and draw their own conclusions, rather than be forced to accept a secondhand account because no other version exists. This underscores the crucial need for historians of all races, creeds, orientations, and genders, so that as many versions of events are recorded as possible.

As the world moves into the twenty-first century, what will piracy look like? Will the trade evolve past Somali hijackers and turn into something else entirely? And who will be the next great female pirate? For now, the world can only watch and wait—until someone decides to take to the seas themselves.