Grace O Malley Research Paper

Grace O’Malley was born in 1530, in Ireland, the daughter of the clan chieftain. Well educated and considered to be a formidable woman, she learned the sailing trade from her father. She inherited her father's shipping business, as well as land from her mother. At 15 years old she married her first husband, Donal O’Flaherty and bore him three children. When her father died, she inherited his property and became a wealthy woman.

O’Flaherty had taken a castle from the Joyce clan and when he died they attempted to take it back. O’Malley defended the castle successfully, changing the castles nickname from Cock’s Castle to Hen’s Castle.

Grace lead the O’Flaherty and O’Malley men in extracting taxes from ships traveling through waters near her
She went to London to plead their release with Queen Elizabeth I. The two powerful women spoke in Latin because O’Malley spoke no English and the Queen spoke no Gaelic. Apparently, the meeting was a success and the men released shortly after their meeting. Grace O’Malley died around 1603 at Rockfleet Castle. An English lord recorded O’Malley’s influence more than 20 years after her death.

Christian Davies was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1667, as Christian Cavanagh. Her father died serving the Jacobite Army, so Christian was sent to live with her aunt. She married, Richard Welsh in 1691, while pregnant with their third child her husband disappeared. Eventually Christian received a letter informing her he was in the British Army in Holland. She left the children with her mother, cut her hair, dressed as a man, and joined the Army in search of her husband.

For 13 year years, Cavanagh served in the Army with the British Dragoons and Scots Greys. Wounded multiple times and discharged, but would promptly re-enlist in search of her husband. Extremely successful at pretending to be a man, she was once accused of being the father of a camp follower's child. To avoid disclosing her gender, she paid the woman child