15. A Turn to Piracy
The O’Malleys were Irish nobility, with clients who looked to them for protection. They in turn were clients of another, even more, powerful family. They traded produce and raw materials for luxury goods, fished, ferried passengers, levied tolls on ships in their waters, engaged in opportunistic piracy, and sheltered in castles facing the sea. Grace O’Malley was married in 1546, and bore three children before her husband perished in an ambush in 1565. The era’s misogynistic law barred her inheritance of her husband’s property. So she settled on Clare Island, and made it her stronghold and base of operations. She started her piratical career with three galleys and a number of smaller boats, and preyed on ships and raided coastal targets. She seethed over the laws that deprived her of her husband’s property, and built up her pirate fleet.
O’Malley consoled herself by taking as a lover a shipwrecked sailor. When he was killed by a rival family, the MacMahons, history got its first glimpse of her ferocity, To avenge her lover, she attacked Doona castle where his murderers were holed up, and killed them. That earned her the nickname: “Dark Lady of Doona“. She remarried in 1566, but still mad at her sailor lover’s murder, this amazing lady had another go at the MacMahons in Doona Castle, and seized it by surprising the garrison while they were praying. Around that time, she also went after a thief who stole something from her, then fled to a church for sanctuary. So she surrounded the church and decided to wait him out, offering him the choice of starvation or surrender. He chose the third option, digging a tunnel and escaping.
