Tragedy at the Daisy Rocks off Achill Island recalled
By Tom Gillespie
SEVENTY years ago a film crew shooting on Achill Island were unable to capture planned scenes around the dangerous Daisy Rock off Keem Bay because the camera got wet shooting on rough seas.
However, when they resumed filming the following day tragedy stuck when a rogue eight-metre high freak wave struck and capsized the boat, sinking it, and four of the crew drowned.
I remember as a young boy holidaying with our family in Keel village. We would often walk to Keem Bay where my father, Dick Gillespie, would point out the Daisy Rocks and relate how just one member of the film crew managed to swim ashore and raise the alarm.
Decades later, when deep sea fishing off the Daisies with the late skipper Tony Bourke, we experienced just how the sudden swell can virtually come out of nowhere.
Tony’s fishing boat was far superior to that used on Saturday May 12, 1951, when the tragedy took place.
Earlier that year Hugh Falkus, an English actor, playwright, broadcaster, fisherman, pilot in World War II and film producer, heard a BBC radio programme about the industrial-scale fishing of basking shark on Achill Island and the audacious technique used by the fishermen to catch them.
The speaker was a Donegal born man, Charles Osborne, who, after fighting during World War II, settled on Achill Island in the little village of Pollagh to lead the life of a fisherman.
Falkus was fascinated by Osborne’s words and decided to make a low-budget film with a small cast and crew telling the story of the basking shark factory on the island.
He hired Sam Lee to direct and Bill Brendan as cameraman. Charles Osborne was the film’s art director and also played a local fisherman showing the ropes to his English cousin who was played by producer Hugh Falkus himself.
Osborne’s wife played a woman loading a donkey with seaweed, while his youngest son appeared briefly skipping along the road. The young 21-year-old actress Claire Mullen - who later played Clare Shanahan the RTÉ soap Fair City, was the only other person involved in the film. She played the Osbourne character’s sister Kathleen.
Hugh Falkus’s wife of four weeks, Diana Vaughan, was in charge of continuity.
Most of the fishing scenes were filmed from Charles Osborne’s boat, ‘Pride of Cratlagh’, which locals described as a ‘hen house’ before Osborne had repaired it.
The members of the cast were asked to do quite dangerous things including climbing steep, rocky cliffs and going out in the treacherous seas in the small currach.
On Sunday, May 12, when the camera dried out, the crew and cast left for the Daisies to film the sequences missed the day before. There was a thick fog over the island and sea. Only Clare Mullen stayed ashore trying to get some calamine lotion for her windburn.
While the crew was filming around the Daisies, a massive wave struck and capsized the boat, sinking it.
After the boat sank all members of the crew was still alive. Falkus swam around and gathered up pieces of the wreck to build a raft for the survivors to clutch at.
Then he swam back ashore to get help, swimming in the freezing water with a temperature of 10 degrees Celsius. A Scottish fishing boat off Keem Bay rescued him and raised the alarm.
No survivors were found. The bodies of Sam Lee and Diana Falkus were found floating near where The Pride of Cratlagh sank, while, tragically, the bodies of Charles Osborne and Bill Brendan were never found.
Hugh Falkus stayed on the island during the police’s investigations.
A few days later, he decided to complete the film and give the small proceeds to the dependents of the victims.
At the age of 86, in October 2017, actress Claire Mullen returned to Achill Island to relive one of the worst accidents in film history for an RTÉ documentary, Return to Shark Island.
Mullen, who was 20 and on her first acting assignment, recalled: “After I came back I almost fell into a nervous breakdown. I didn’t talk about it to anybody.
“I kind of closed down, so in a way now it’s good to talk about it and remember them and try to get closure.”
Several weeks of filming had already taken place on the project, which was to tell the story of an Englishman who comes to the west of Ireland to start a new life as a shark hunter. The film-makers took a hands-on approach and used harpoons to kill basking shark, filming the creatures as their blood filled the Atlantic waters.
Claire went on: “I remember the first day when we arrived down to the sea and it was red and I realised that it was from the blood of the sharks. I had never seen anything like the butchery.”
As shooting progressed Mullen was forced into dangerous stunts by Osborne, whom she later described as ‘very reckless’. She said: “I wanted to do everything right and I tried to go with the flow. Charles would have us climbing cliffs and things and kind of unwarranted things to frighten people like me. We were all terrified to be honest.”
With Falkus in a state of shock after the drownings, Mullen had to identify the bodies of Lee and Diana Falkus. Those of Osborne and Brendon were never recovered.
After the accident Falkus, who died in 1996, announced that he would complete the film in the hope that it would generate money that could be distributed among the family members of those who had drowned.
Mullen remained on Achill for a few days until a young actor, Kevin O’Connor, was sent by her acting teacher to bring her back to Dublin. The pair later married.