New Whiddy documentary tells story of Big Oil's 'bewitching' of small West Cork town

“It must have been like Chernobyl for them – what they saw on the way over to Bantry that night. They said people were praying on the boats to Whiddy,” says award-winning documentary maker Adrian McCarthy whose latest project has recounted the story of Ireland’s worst maritime disaster.

His father was second-in-command at Skibbereen Fire Station in January 1979 on the night of the Whiddy island inferno, which killed 49 men and one woman.

McCarthy, whose accolades include the much-praised tribute to rugby legend Anthony Foley, ‘Rough Rider’ – the Paul Kimmage profile, and Hidden Impact – the study of concussion in rugby, has now turned his attention to the shocking story that was right on his doorstep all this time.

“I had been listening to something on the radio about the 40th anniversary of the oil terminal disaster in 2019, and I rang my dad and asked him was he going. He said he wasn’t, and I said ‘Dad, we have never spoken about it.’”

His father had never really wanted to talk about the horrors he had witnessed that night, just 20 miles from his home – a massive explosion which blew out windows in Adrian’s home town and for miles around the little island.

“I was 11 at the time and I remember my father running out of the house at 1am because there was something going on in Whiddy. My father wasn’t back until about 7pm or 8pm the next evening, and he was a shell of a man really. When I asked him about it in recent years, he said that he came home that night, and saw us and he just went down to the bathroom and broke down.”

Initially, Adrian says, he wanted his documentary to tell the story from the point of view of the firefighters that night. But when he started researching it, he realised there was a much bigger narrative to recount. The real story of ‘Whiddy’ – as told in McCarthy’s new documentary, which premieres at the Cork Film Festival – is how a small town became entranced – or perhaps, bewitched – by Big Oil.

It also tells the story of what happens to families when it all goes wrong. Michael Kingston, a respected maritime lawyer, has spent a lifetime seeking an apology for the failings that led to the loss of his young father Tim, in the 1979 disaster on French oil tanker Betelgeuse, which had been offloading its cargo at Whiddy’s offshore jetty.

Tinged with grief

Michael’s birthdays are forever tinged with grief, as the last time he saw his father was as Tim Kingston left for his job as oil pollution control officer at the terminal, after celebrating his son’s fourth birthday in Goleen.

For his whole adult life, Michael has been fighting for justice for the 41 French families and the relatives of the six Irish and one British men who died that night. A Dutchman was also killed diving to the wreckage in the aftermath of the disaster.

The documentary recounts how the closure of the Suez Canal in 1967 prompted American giant Gulf to find a European base for distribution and it settled on the little island just 2km off the coast of the small West Cork town of Bantry.

Gulf’s ambitious plan was greeted with open arms by the Irish government.

“It is quite obvious that Gulf oil were in bed with successive Irish governments,” says Michael, referencing the gifting of a diamond necklace to then Taoiseach Jack Lynch’s wife Mairin. In fact, the Lynches were invited to Japan as part of a world tour, so Mairin could launch the world’s first supertanker – the Universe Ireland.

“Not one single regulation was put in place from the day that Gulf arrived in Whiddy until the disaster,” notes Michael.

Adrian believes Jack Lynch had a particular affection for the town because his father was from there. “I often thought it was very poignant to see Jack Lynch in Japan and then later unveiling the statue of Saint Brendan in Bantry – a gift from Gulf Oil – and then seeing him coming back to Bantry after the disaster, with the big, black smoke in the background.”

But he also noted how impressive the “suits” from Gulf Oil were, and how they managed to persuade the townspeople to embrace the project from the off.

Adrian says the only sign of oversight seemed to come from Cork County Council which insisted the oil tanks be built on the far side of the island, out of sight of Bantry town, and low on the landscape.

But there was little or no other regulations imposed on the terminal’s owner which did, of course, bring 1200 construction jobs and about 150 permanent jobs to a town that had little other heavy industry at the time.

Once the terminal opened in 1968, the town experienced a massive boom as the oil money began pouring in. Housing estates were built for the workers and local firms were engaged as suppliers.

But it wasn’t long before the downsides began to appear.

In both 1974 and 1975, massive oil spillages were reported all along the West Cork coast, leading to huge ecological disasters. And the detergent brought in to ‘clean’ the water seemed to be almost worse – as one contributor recalls how it stripped the paint off the clean-up boats when spilled.

“But it was interesting to see that when they cleaned up the oil spills they used local companies – so even then the town was making money,” 

notes Adrian.

While the new business was opened in a blaze of positive publicity, it wasn’t long before the owners started to take short cuts.

A decision some years earlier to move the base for the terminal’s two tugboats about 20 minutes away from the jetty, was to prove crucial on the fatal night in 1979.

“When the Department of Transport allowed the tugs to be moved, that was akin to signing the death warrants for those who died on the night of January 7,” says Michael.

A decision to dismantle a bridge from the island to the jetty was also instrumental, as was the lack of proper firefighting equipment on the island, and the reduction of the watchmen from two to one – all elements seen as part of cost-cutting measures by an oil company increasingly under pressure to maintain profits.

One of the main objectives of Michael Kingston’s decades-long campaign is to get new inquests held.

“The inquests were conducted in just one day – July 12 1979 – all 50 of them, and yet the tribunal found that two people had perjured themselves on the very same set of facts. This surely renders the inquests null and void.”

And while he has been seeking an apology for the lack regulation, he’s not optimistic it will come. But what’s more urgent, he says, is to change the law now. “The fear is that this could all happen again. The Department of Transport still hasn’t put the right procedures in place. We are still operating under British Seafarers Acts from the 1800s, when the British themselves have updated their legislation. Ireland is using piecemeal legislation and we’re still not taking safety seriously.”

• ‘Whiddy – When global oil ruled a corner of Ireland’ is having its world premiere screening at DOC NYC - America’s largest documentary festival – on November 12 at 6.30pm at Village East by Angelika cinema on Second Avenue in New York. Its Irish premiere is at the Everyman Theatre as part of the Cork Film Festival on November 20.

‘Whiddy’, by award-winning documentary maker Adrian McCarthy, tells the story of the horrific oil tanker disaster which claimed 51 lives in 1979. The Cork director, whose film premieres at the Cork Film Festival, tells Siobhán Cronin how Big Oil bewitched the West Cork town with the promise of prosperity.

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