Reviewed by SEAN McMAHON
Ireland, as the balladeer observed, is completely surrounded by water. This is a tendency shared by many other islands but few have such a plenitude of sea loughs, deep-water inlets and navigable rivers.
It is not only surrounded but also internally perforated by water from the Bann clockwise round to the lordly Foyle. Its topography made invasion relatively easy but also allowed its home-grown sea-rovers safe anchorages with their ill-gotten gains.
Des Ekin’s seventeen pilgrimages as detailed in this swashbucklin’ volume makes clear just how extensive the black maritime economy was and how comparable with any of the Caribbean braggarts our nautical men – and women – could be. (Oh arrgh!)
Chief among these latter was the redoubtable Grace O’Malley from (perhaps not) Clare Island who somehow by the nineteenth century had become identified poetically as another avatar of Eire, Banba and Mother Ireland – the romantic Granuaile. Ekin devotes more than two dozen pages to this pirate queen and in the process with reluctant glee punctures nearly all the seven myths that cling to her: she did not cut her hair to look like a boy; she was not a royal queen; she may not have met Elizabeth I as ‘queen to queen’.
In spite, however, of what Ekin calls ‘Grania mania’, the real Grace O’Malley more that merits her place in his book. As does Anna Bonny (1697–1782), herself of Kinsale, who though married to ‘Calico Jack’ Rackham, could not help falling for a handsome shipmate who turned out to be Mary Read, who used the same method of concealing her gender by being a more foul-spoken and ferocious sea dog than the male crew. Both ladies terrorised the Caribbean and continued to do so while pregnant.
Ekin’s trail covers all the maritime counties of Ireland as he takes himself and us on his unholy ‘pilgrimages’ imparting generously stories of his corsairs and also shards of local lore: did you know that Dunfanaghy, the resort that ‘buzzes with Belfast accents’ was ‘once a bustling, prosperous, commercial port’ and an item of keen interest to ‘Long Ben’ Avery ‘the world’s most wanted man’?
There are no fewer than fifteen pages of ‘source notes’ and the author has mined these records to prove that our own comparatively small island can hold its place in the annals of dirty, doughty deeds. There are more pirates than you could brandish a cutlass at: George Cusack of County Meath as bloodthirsty as Blackbeard himself, William Lampart who may have been the inspiration for the foxy Zorro or even Batman.
The list is long but in Ekin’s enthusiastic hands never wearies. Buy the book but don’t be surprised if it becomes the source for a great series for local television.
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