Charles Fitzgerald

Kilkee, County Clare, is the birthplace of Captain Charles Fitzgerald, the Royal Navy officer who governed Western Australia and helped destroy the Atlantic slave trade. He joined the Navy in 1809, seized illegal Spanish slave ships in 1839, and participated in the Amistad incident before becoming governor of The Gambia and Western Australia. Fitzgerald died in Kilkee in 1887, returning to the small coastal town where his life began.