We're delighted to present an extract from Island Boy - Valentia, Skellig and My Life at the Ocean's Edge, the new memoir by Des Lavelle, published by The O’Brien Press.
The compelling story of a man born and raised in Valentia and a unique life lived at the ocean's edge, in Island Boy Des Lavelle looks back over a life full of adventure, and woven with a love of the sea.
Colonel Bill O’Kelly came to visit me in Valentia in the autumn of 1968. He was the liaison officer of the Faraway Productions Film Company, based in Dingle, and he needed a diver/boatman and general Marine Adviser for the production that would eventually become David Lean’s epic of war, betrayal, religion, sex and infidelity – the movie, Ryan’s Daughter.
Colonel O’Kelly’s proposal might be regarded as just a great stroke of luck for this South Kerry boatman, or it could be viewed in light of the fact that my name was already in the public eye as a commercial scuba diver – at a time and a place where such activities were rare indeed. Either way, it did not take much persuasion on his part to convince me that this was an offer I could not refuse. It promised busy days when action was called for, adequate stand-down times to slip home to Valentia occasionally, rewarding work in terms of job satisfaction, as well as remarkably good wages and living expenses on which we could really live! Very promptly, I changed my earlier plans of being a full-time Valentia Island fisherman.
Working in the Special Effects Department, my input entailed setting up marine situations in advance of shooting schedules. It also meant traversing every beach, cliff and crag of the Dingle peninsula, as well as every square mile of the surrounding inshore waters from Minard to Coumeenole to Sybil Point – and later, from Loop Head to the Bridges of Ross to Kilkee.
Rather distinct from the panic and pressure of the typical movie set where everyone invariably wants results 'instantly' or 'now’ or ‘yesterday’, not even David Lean could move the tides, and consequently our marine projects were seldom instant or now or yesterday, as we waited half a day for the tide to come in or half a day for the tide to go out. Add in adverse weather conditions, and it could take a week to complete a simple job of anchoring rafts loaded with guns and ammunition in positions where they could conveniently be ‘blown ashore’ in ‘storm conditions’ under the cameras. Inevitably, of course, as soon as everything was in place, the producers, the directors, or somebody equally near to God, would rewrite the entire shooting schedule and call for our work to be undone again – until the next time.
Even the birds of the air worked for the movies in Dingle at that time. The shooting of one particular springtime love scene in the woods, between Rose Ryan (Sarah Miles) and Major Randolph Doryan (Christopher Jones), was not going well. In fact, it was going very badly, largely because of a personality clash between the two principals, and the springtime woodland scene soon became a summertime woodland scene – and seemed to be headed for an autumn scene … or worse. But with Lean’s typical ‘get the shot at all costs’ attitude, a dancehall was hired in Murrioch, Ballydavid, and an artificial woodland scene was created indoors. A courier was sent to a London butterfly farm for a box of live butterflies to authenticate the indoor set. Wild birds were trapped locally and released on the set. But still the shot was not working.
Time went on. The butterflies had thrived and were even moving on into old age, and the local birds were being so well fed indoors that they were growing fat in the process. Still there was no success with the love scene. One day, I went into the hall for some piece of electrical equipment – a day when there was no human activity there – and as I opened the hall door, a robin flew out. No problem – there were plenty more inside. But when I opened the door to leave, the robin flew back in. Movie life was the Good Life – even for the birds.
Leo McKern had a splendid yacht – the 33ft sloop, Nutkin – and when he wasn't acting the part of Tom Ryan, father of Rose, and being a toady and an informer and selling out on his countrymen, he too spent much of his time on Dingle Bay, where we in our work and he in his leisure would meet frequently. Leo’s ship’s stores were much more varied than ours. Among other concoctions, he had a very fine supply of high-quality poitín, which – he claimed – came from the Dingle Gardaí. But it was his collateral use of the poitín that impressed me: he kept his yacht’s leaking compass topped up with it! I followed this 'First Aid’ tip for some forty years on my own Béal Bocht. And when anyone disbelieved the story, I would point to a little bottle with a handwritten label, ‘Compass Fluid’, and say, ‘Sniff that!’
The script of Ryan’s Daughter called for a gunrunning ship – an old, wellworn, workhorse that would fit into the 1916 setting. Of the dozens of trawlers in Dingle at the time, not one of them would fit the bill. But the Granat, an ancient Danish-built vessel belonging to Christy O’Shea of Valentia, was just right. She was diesel-powered but the addition of a fake smokestack would promptly turn her into a sleazy, gunrunning steamer. This installation was done in advance, and the deal was made for the Granat to show up in Dingle, ready for filming the following week. And she did. But in the interim, Christy had given her a new paint job like never before, and the gleaming ship that arrived in Dingle was not the shabby old tramp steamer that was ordered.
Consternation! Directors foamed at the mouth, schedules were rescheduled, and several camera crews and assorted ‘stars’ were stood down while a team of the company’s painters descended on the vessel. It took just three hours, and the Granat was restored to her shabby, grimy, rusty, battered old self, and thus sailed into the movie world.
Island Boy - Valentia, Skellig and My Life at the Ocean’s Edge by Des Lavelle (published by The O’Brien Press) is in bookshops now.
