Grace O’Malley Part One: The Pirate Queen | 68
Even The Royals
Wondery
4.4 • 844 Ratings
🗓️ 17 March 2025
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
You’ve probably heard about famous pirates like Blackbeard and Captain Kidd. But over a century before these bad boys roamed the seas, a kickass pirate queen reigned over Ireland’s coast for six decades. Grace O’Malley was told women should lead quiet, domestic lives, locked away in their castles. But she refused this fate and instead, fought tooth, nail, and cannonball for a life where she could sail and pillage like any good pirate. But when her home is threatened by an English invasion, she’ll have to go from infamous pirate to feared rebel.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Wonderie Plus subscribers can listen to Even the Royals early and ad-free right now. |
| 0:04.1 | Join Wondery Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts. |
| 0:08.0 | A quick note about our show. |
| 0:09.4 | We do a lot of research for our stories, but we also aren't your high school history class, |
| 0:13.4 | so some details and scenes are dramatized. |
| 0:16.1 | And today's episode contains language that's fit for a sailor. |
| 0:26.5 | Thank you. episode contains language that's fit for a sailor. Okay, Eresha, has anyone ever told you, like maybe as a kid, that you couldn't do something because you were a girl? |
| 0:34.6 | Well, famously in high school, I wanted to play football, but there wasn't a |
| 0:38.5 | women's team. So they had to let me try out for the boys' team. Uh-huh. And I tore my ACL playing soccer, |
| 0:46.8 | indoor soccer. And so I, my career ended before it could have began. Right. That's crazy, |
| 0:52.6 | because you famously know so much about football and love it so much. |
| 0:56.2 | Well, it was more just the principle. Like football's a boy sport. It's like, all right, fine. Then I'll play it. Fuck you. |
| 1:01.5 | Yeah. Well, luckily, there have been plenty of women in history who've shown us that girls can do anything they put their mind to. |
| 1:08.3 | Hell yeah. Like today's royal, who sailed the high seas, pillaged towns, and slayed her enemies. |
| 1:15.3 | Today we're talking about Grace O'Malley, a 16th century pirate queen, who reigned over Ireland's |
| 1:21.5 | coast for six decades. |
| 1:24.2 | Now, quick note, her Gaelic name is Gronia, but many historians write about her using the |
| 1:28.4 | English name Grace, so we'll be calling her that. Society said that as a woman, Grace should trade |
| 1:34.1 | in sailing for a quiet domestic life. But instead, she raided villages, fought in hand-to-hand |
| 1:39.4 | combat, and sank enemy ships with cannonballs. Along the way, Grace gained a lot of power, |
| 1:45.1 | enough to make an enemy out of a formidable foe, |
| 1:47.6 | the English crown. |
... |
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