The Pirate Queen Read online

  O’Malley coat of arms

  When Grace was born, the O’Malleys, whose motto was terra marique potens, “powerful by land and sea,” were still wealthy and strong, a law unto themselves. They controlled Clew Bay and the region around it, and had for centuries. Unlike many of the other Gaelic clans, the O’Malleys made a living from the ocean; they fished, traded, and licensed fishing rights in their waters. They hired their crew out as sailors and ferried Scottish mercenaries, the fabled gallowglass, to fight in clan battles. They also raided the coastlines of Western Ireland, including the international port of Galway Town, and robbed merchant ships of their cargoes of silks and spices, damask and wine.

  They are the lions of the green sea

  men acquainted with the land of Spain

  when seizing cattle from Cantyre

  a mile by sea is a short distance to the O’Malleys.

  GRACE’S FATHER, Dubhdara, or “Black Oak,” was chieftain of the O’Malleys, and by all accounts he raised Grace, if not to carry on the family line—for she would have to marry—then to be an experienced seafarer with an eye for the main chance when it came to trading and raiding. Her mother, Margaret, had lands of her own, which Grace eventually inherited. Once there had been warrior queens in Ireland, like Queen Maeve of Connaught, and descent was through the female line, but with Ireland’s conversion to Christianity in the fifth century, Roman law had gradually influenced traditional Gaelic, or Brehon, law, and that had meant a downgrading of women’s status. Still, even in the sixteenth century, women in Ireland had more rights than women in England. They could keep their family name and hold and administer property, for instance. Even though we know little of Grace’s mother, we know that Margaret had the right to pass on land and property to her daughter.

  Grace wasn’t an only child, but her biographer Anne Chambers has suggested that her brother, Dónal, may have been illegitimate, or at least not the son of Margaret. Importantly for Grace, he seems not to have been inclined to the seafaring life. If he had been, it’s more likely he would have carried on the family’s tradition of trade and piracy, and no one would have thought anything of it. But just as Grace’s birth in the sixteenth century made an opening for her in Ireland’s shifting power structure, so did being her parents’ sole offspring. The girl with a weather eye and an aptitude for life at sea was early given the chance to show what she was made of.

  The Granuaile Heritage Centre cheerfully mingled fact and legend in its telling of Grace’s story, and indeed, it couldn’t be any other way. The English had been most assiduous about recording Grace’s pirating and raiding; letters and documents attest to their interest in her, a mixture of respect and frustration. On the contrary, in the comprehensive Irish history, the Annals of the Four Masters, Grace’s two husbands are mentioned, as are her sons, while her name is not recorded. Until Anne Chambers began looking through English state papers and other old manuscripts and forgotten records, stories about Grace had mainly survived in ballads and local folklore—and a few enjoyable, but not necessarily accurate, historical novels.

  I circled around the exhibit hall to the entrance again, where Grace, in her long wig and doublet and hose, stood watch. I took out my almost blank journal, the notebook I hoped to fill with stories of northern maritime women by the end of a few months, and wrote some notes and made some sketches. Dissatisfied with her drooping posture, I took Grace’s left arm in mine and joggled it back up above her shoulders, so that her hand was firmly above her eyes. Now she looked a proper sea captain again, bold and farseeing. In this pose she was a good subject for a picture. Grace O’Malley Looking Out to Sea, I scribbled in my journal underneath the sketch.

  ON THE Very Likely, Paddy and I found ourselves awash in spray as we approached Clare Island. Paddy was utterly miserable, bent over the railing, while I was, in spite of my jet lag, terribly exuberant. I made out a stone tower in the mist. “Look, there’s the castle!” I said to Paddy, to distract him. “Grace O’Malley’s castle! Still standing after all these centuries.”

  “D’you still have your teeth, Paddy?” his wife shouted, hearing my excitement and seeing me point.

  “Grace O’Malley’s castle!” I shouted back.

  The castle on Clare Island now hove firmly in sight, a smallish, squared stone fortress on a slight hill overlooking the bay. The Very Likely entered the harbor and tied up at the dock. Paddy’s wife and I each took hold of an arm and helped him up the ladder. He had a decidedly pale and dejected expression and his bandy legs shook. I knew that they were only on Clare Island for the day. They planned to take the six o’clock launch back to the mainland. Paddy confided that he was dreading the return.

  “What about you, dear?” asked his wife, as I shouldered my pack and began walking away in the direction of land. “Just a short trip? Or a long one?”

  “A few months,” I said, suddenly overwhelmed to find myself in Ireland, actually on Clare Island, instead of in Seattle, paddling past houseboats on Lake Union and simply reading books about women and the sea. The moment that stuns us in life is the moment when dreams become reality.

  But as I stood looking down the tar- and seaweed-scented wharf, and felt the unaccustomed weight of my possessions on my shoulders, my courage returned. These were the times, these days of new beginnings in foreign places, when I’d always felt most awake and alive. I took a deep breath and started down the dock.

  Grace O’Malley’s Connaught

  CHAPTER I

  GRACE O’MALLEY’S CASTLE

  Clare Island, Ireland

  MY HOME on Clare for two nights was a converted lighthouse at the western edge of the island. One of the Belgian owners, Monica Timmerman, her shrewd face topped by an angelic frizz of blond curls, was waiting at the curve of the harbor with a large and muddy dog in tow, to drive me in her Land Rover three miles across the island up to the lighthouse. The afternoon sun blazed as Monica walked me across a neatly pebbled courtyard to my room. I was the only guest, though two others would turn up later, in time for dinner. Even Monica’s husband wasn’t around. He was in Brussels being interviewed for a television program called “Far-Flung Belgians.” The lighthouse and its outbuildings reminded me of a convent—in the Caribbean. The thick curved walls dazzled with whitewash, the doors were bright reds and blues, and inside my room aqua, orange, and crimson made a tropical splash. When I walked a few steps outside my door to the wall at the edge of the cliff, I looked out into the fierce immensity of the Atlantic.

  Grace was born on the mainland, probably at Belclare Castle, the seat of the O’Malley clan, but she would have spent many summers out here on the island. The fishing was good, and the moorage closer to the sea lanes; it was the custom to graze animals on Clare and the other islands of the bay in warmer months. Some of the legends that relate to Grace’s youth take place on Clare, including one where a determined young girl climbed up these cliffs to kill the eagles that had been carrying off O’Malley lambs from the valleys. She was small, the eagles were large and angry; their talons gashed her forehead, leaving scars. There are no pictures of Grace, so novelists have felt free to describe her as a fiery redhead, or “tiny and dark.” With a father called Black Oak, I imagine her as raven-haired and firmly planted on her feet.

  In the Granuaile Heritage Centre yesterday I’d seen a painting of a young girl hacking at her long hair. One story has it that when Grace’s father told her she could no longer sail with him because she was a girl, she immediately chopped off her hair. Some say that her Irish name, Granuaile, came from the nickname Gráinne Ui Mhaol, or “Bald Gráinne,” the word maol meaning bald and the reference being to her shorn locks as a child. More likely is it that Granuaile was related to the Gaelic Gráinne Umhall (the Umhalls were the territory over which her father ruled). Over the years the English used many variant spellings of her name in their letters and papers: Grany Imallye, Grany Ne Maly, Grainy O’Maly, and, finally, Grace O’Malley.1

  I stood looking out into the Atla
ntic, and the wind blew my own hair back in a banner. Seagulls and terns shot up and down the cliffs like tiny living elevators. It’s said the O’Malleys had the gift of weather prophecy, and that it was Grace, not her brother, who inherited the ability to recognize a shift in wind, a scent of thunder. How many of these childhood stories can we trust? Perhaps the important thing is that the legends of Grace were told and retold; she flourished in folklore as a wild and resourceful young girl during centuries in which women lived cramped, restricted lives. One story tells of how she climbed up into the rigging of her father’s ship when the O’Malleys were fleeing Algerian corsairs; pulling down her trousers, Grace wickedly mooned the infidel pirates. On another occasion, it’s said, when the family galley was boarded by sailors from an English man-o’-war, Grace jumped, cursing and shrieking, from the yards on to the back of a knife-wielding sailor, in order to alert her father and save his life. It’s with bravery like this that a girl can endear herself to a crew. However Grace managed it, she learned the sailor’s craft early on, and never let it go.

  Like the adventurous childhoods of many headstrong, free-spirited girls, Grace’s ended, at least temporarily, in marriage. In 1546, when she was sixteen, she was married to Dónal O’Flaherty, the son of a chieftain. Although the O’Flahertys were more warlike than the O’Malleys, the two clans had more often been allies than opponents, and this marriage was meant to solidify the link. Grace left Clew Bay and moved south to Connemara, to Bunowen Castle. She had three children with Dónal, two sons, Owen and Murrough, and a daughter, Margaret.

  If Grace had had a different husband, her story might perhaps have ended there. With reluctance she might have accepted her role as the wife of a powerful man, in line to become a chieftain. She might have spent her days organizing the castle’s household, entertaining guests, and rearing children. The O’Flahertys had some ships, but they were not a great seafaring clan like the O’Malleys; their wealth, as was typical, came from land and cattle. As an O’Flaherty wife and mother, Grace might never have put to sea again.

  But Dónal of the Battles, as her husband was called, had a fierce temper and reckless ways that led him into trouble. He was more interested, apparently, in feuding with the neighboring Joyces than in providing leadership and income. As the years passed, Grace grew to assume authority not only over the household, but over the O’Flaherty fighting men. It’s after her marriage that historical sources begin to mention her raids on ships bound for Galway. She cornered them, demanding either tribute or part of the cargo in return for allowing them further passage. Dónal, on the other hand, was eventually murdered by the Joyces, who’d nicknamed him “the Cock,” for his high-handed, posturing ways. “Cock’s Castle” they came to call the island fortress on Lough Corrib that had once been a Joyce stronghold and that Dónal had taken away from them. After his death, they came to reclaim it, but found Grace O’Malley installed. She defended it so vigorously it was rechristened “Hen’s Castle.” It’s still called that today.

  Grace defended it again from English soldiers who came to force her surrender. After days of siege she had her followers strip the lead off the castle’s roof and melt it down, the better to pour over her enemies’ heads. Then, when the English retreated off the island, she sent one of her men for reinforcements. Hen’s Castle remained hers, at least for a time.

  For although many of the traditional Brehon laws gave Gaelic women a more equal role than their counterparts in the rest of Europe—and Grace had been able to keep her maiden name and her right to O’Malley lands—Grace could not legally inherit the O’Flaherty title or lands after Dónal’s murder. With no other means of support, Grace retreated home to Clare Island to, in effect, create her own independent chieftaincy. It’s a measure of her charismatic leadership that a number of disaffected O’Flaherty men chose to follow her, assuming that her skill at sea would translate into wealth and security for them. When her father died, the ships that had belonged to the O’Malleys came to her. She began to assemble a force of two hundred seafaring and fighting men, drawn from many of the clans of Western Ireland. Along with trading and the licensing of fishing rights, piracy grew more important to her, and with it, control of the passage into Clew Bay.

  Piracy, which is essentially robbery, only romanticized because it involves ships at sea, has taken many forms over the centuries. In sixteenth-century England it was to some degree state sanctioned, as Elizabeth I sought to divert the gold and silver flowing from the New World to Spain away from King Philip’s coffers and into her own. Sir Francis Drake and others were semi-officially hired by the crown as privateers to attack Spanish galleons. This century also saw the rise of the pirates of the Barbary Coast, who, after terrorizing Mediterranean waters, had begun to venture into the North Atlantic. Often called Turks, they were in reality mostly Algerians living under the rule of the Ottoman Empire, which stretched from Hungary to the Middle East and North Africa and whose capitol was Istanbul. During Grace’s lifetime, and especially in the seventeenth century, Algiers became a great slave market, where European captives who’d been abducted from coastal villages and ships were taken to be sold or ransomed. The piracy of the Algerian corsairs was thus doubly threatening—your money and your life—and Grace herself had to steer clear of their ships.

  Her own form of piracy seems almost benign, though her victims, mainly the merchants who owned the French, Portuguese, and Spanish caravels and galleons that had a long history of trade with Galway Town, were none too happy when they saw her ships on the horizon. Sometimes she only charged a percentage of their cargo as a tax for allowing them to pass; sometimes she took the whole cargo—and the ship to boot.

  Outside my room at the lighthouse, I leaned forward into the freshening wind (the time when I’d be heartily sick of constant Atlantic blows was still before me). The captain of a ship passing off this rocky coast would hardly guess that on the other side of the island lay a pirates’ lair, the harbor sheltering Grace O’Malley’s growing collection of vessels: the wooden, clinker-built Gaelic galleys, with thirty oars, a single mast, and a lateen sail, whose shallow draughts, like those of the Viking longships, helped with maneuvering around Clew Bay’s reefs and shoals. Stolen Mediterranean caravels and “baggage boats,” the yawls and longboats that carried fish, cattle, goods, and the spoils of plunder, lay there as well. Those sailing offshore would never imagine that a widow and mother of three had put aside domestic duties for a second chance to relive her childhood dreams of seafaring and swashbuckling.

  DINNER THAT night was in the elegant dining room of the lighthouse. Monica’s restrained service hinted that endive salad with goat cheese and spring lamb with new potatoes were a bit wasted on three Americans, two of whom were wearing T-shirts that said “Make Mine a Guinness!”

  He was from Fresno; she was originally from Tennessee. He worked for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and had the look of someone used to smashing down doors. She had a cowed expression (I imagined) and kept on about how beautiful Ireland was, and how friendly everyone was, and how green it was, while Mr. Fresno interrogated me: What was I doing here? How long was I planning to be gone? What did I do in America?

  At first I was vague about my trip, and what I was looking for, but finally I broke down, only to recall how dreams are diminished when shared with the wrong people. I was traveling for a few months, just on my own, to collect material about women and the sea. I was a writer, in Seattle, and hoped to eventually tell some of the stories.

  “What’s that going to prove?” asked Mr. Fresno, his eyes skeptical, his jaw hard, while Ms. Tennessee cut her lamb into dainty pieces. She was faded underneath her makeup, an over-the-hill country singer perhaps, in her forties, wearing cowboy boots and silver hoop earrings, a ring on every finger.

  “It’s not to prove anything,” I said mildly. “It’s just an interest.” A consuming interest, I could have added, one to have made me come all the way here.

  “But you want to make a point
, right?” He had the straggly hair and stubble of a man on vacation, but the bloodhound perseverance of a working detective. “Like, that a few women were sailors or something?”

  “Well, there was Grace O’Malley,” said Ms. Tennessee. Her long dark hair fell in her face, and she didn’t look at him as she spoke. “You know, that pirate lady they talk about. I bet that’s why you came to Clare Island, isn’t it?” She smiled at me, with an encouraging nod. “To learn more about that pirate lady, Grace O’Malley?”

  He ignored her. “What’s your methodology?” he asked.

  “My methodology?” I said.

  “You know, your plan. Are you doing interviews and tabulating results?”

  Now he sounded like a dissertation committee member. In fact, my methodology was somewhat random. I had some leads, some hunches, and boundless curiosity. Where was the fun in knowing what I would find before I set off? Did I dare mention fun? Or passion for the subject? I wasn’t so naive as to expect to discover that women had actually been the majority of seafarers. I’d be happy if I found a few more than Grace O’Malley. In fact, I was happy with what I’d been finding out about Grace O’Malley in the last two days. Who was Mr. Fresno to disparage her? She’d skewer him with her cutlass. Fortunately Monica came in with apple tart and coffee. The conversation shifted, to lighthouses, and Monica, warming, told us the story of the renovation. I left my companions leafing through a book of photographs that showed the progress of turning the decommissioned lighthouse into an inn.