Whiddy

Whiddy tells the story of how a small rural town in beautiful West Cork in Ireland welcomed in a major global oil company with open arms only for it to end in a tragedy that silenced and divided the local community and still haunts it to this day. Whiddy’s award-winning Irish director, Adrian McCarthy’s only memory of his father ever crying was the night he returned home from the Whiddy oil terminal disaster which he had been called to as a volunteer firefighter.

It’s hard not to be struck by the beauty of Whiddy Island as you make the short ferry journey from Bantry town in the south west of Ireland. Walking along the narrow roads you could be forgiven for thinking it couldn’t possibly be home to an oil terminal as there is nothing but farmland and sheep. But then it appears, as if out of nowhere. It’s jarring to witness high security fencing surrounding the compound and the huge oil storage tanks. It feels out of place, something that shouldn’t be there, like a nuclear plant or a prison. It’s the antithesis of the natural deep-sea harbour in Bantry Bay – the reason Gulf Oil came there in the first place. The stunning natural landscape now includes the charred offshore jetty, like the remains of a car crash. Situated 400 metres out from the island in the beautiful bay, it is a cinematic souvenir from the oil business and a haunting reminder of both the tragedy itself and what preceded it under the guise of progress.

When Gulf Oil announced at its AGM in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania that it was building a massive new oil terminal on Whiddy Island in Bantry, the locals celebrated like they had won the lottery. Farmers left the land, fishermen hung up their nets. With talk of jobs and prosperity, the decision was huge for this neglected and depressed corner of Ireland. The construction period that followed brought a boom that would have been unimaginable a few years earlier. To thank the town for its warm welcome, Gulf Oil presented it with a statue of St Brendan the Navigator for the town square – which was duly blessed. Archive of the time could have been lifted directly from Bill Forsyth’s film ‘Local Hero’ (1983). Gulf promoted its brand-new terminal with a two-minute advert on NBC television during its coverage of the Apollo 11 moon landing featuring ‘Bringin’ Home the Oil’, a song composed by Irish musicians Tommy Makem and the Clancy Brothers.

However, within just a few short years, oil spills and concerns over the terms that the Irish government had agreed with Gulf, which allowed them to monitor their own safety procedures and incur no harbour dues were beginning to cause rumblings of concern in some quarters. It was also becoming increasingly clear that the super tankers, including the largest tanker in the world at the time, the Universe Ireland, that had initially arrived to much fanfare, and that the terminal was built to accommodate, were only a solution to the latest temporary ‘challenge’ that the global oil industry was facing – the closure of the Suez canal. Both the terminal and the badly needed jobs it produced were under threat. They were only rumblings though, the people of Bantry understandably liked their newfound prosperity.

What once seemed like a fairytale was to turn into their worst nightmare on the 8th of January 1979 when a French oil tanker, the M.V. Betelgeuse, owned by another oil company, Total, was off-loading its cargo at a jetty located just off Whiddy Island and went on fire. For 25 minutes, the French crew and local Irish Gulf Oil employees who were stranded on the offshore jetty, cried for help, and could be heard begging to be rescued over the radios. The explosions that followed were to prove devastating. 50 lives were lost.

But how could this have happened so close to shore? Why did it take so long for those in charge of rescue procedures to react? What caused the fire in the first place? And why was there no harbour authority in place so that the Irish state could at least have some oversight over what was going on at the terminal? A subsequent shocking tribunal report and the blame game and scapegoating perpetrated by the major global players that ensued provided no closure for the ordinary people of West Cork and Brittany – where most of the French crew came from. It seemed that everybody and therefore nobody was responsible. Forty five years on, the families remain desperate for the truth. Amongst them is Michael Kingston, a maritime lawyer, whose father, Tim, left his 4th birthday party on that fateful evening to go to work, never to return. Kingston has been a lone warrior in his search for justice for his father and closure for himself his mother, Mary and all the families who lost loved ones. It has taken its toll.

They are haunted by the disaster itself and the loss of so many lives but they are also haunted by a sense of powerlessness, by a lack of accountability and a sense that things were covered up. Some in the community are also dogged by a painful sense that perhaps they should have seen it coming, that they should never have let the oil industry in, in the first place, or fought so hard to keep it there at all costs.
This is a story about how the oil industry operates; how a small, vulnerable, rural community is transformed by the promise of money and jobs – but at what cost? It is a story about how governments, blinded by the lure of immediate gain, fail to protect their citizens and our environment. It is also a story about expediency and power, about deflection, scapegoating and a fear nurtured by economic vulnerability that silenced a community. Above all, it is a long-overdue testimony to the human tragedy of the 50 forgotten souls who perished that night and a search for truth for their families. This David and Goliath story set in the oil world resonates strongly in the world we live in 2025.

Teaser and pitch deck available upon request.
A Curious Dog Films Production