Musical gives new life to Unlucky Cabin Boy
Judy MurphyFeatured
Arts Week with Judy Murphy
An 1835 shipwreck that led to the untimely death of 15-year-old Limerick boy Patrick O’Brien so he could be eaten by his fellow crew members is the theme of a stirring musical that comes to the Black Box Theatre next Tuesday night, November 10.
The Unlucky Cabin Boy from Dublin’s Gúna Nua Theatre and Verdant Productions, with music by Limerick’s Brad Pitt Light Orchestra, was commissioned for Limerick’s City of Culture last year. It has now returned thanks to an Arts Council touring grant and will visit Galway as part of a national tour.
Patrick O’Brien from Thomondgate in Limerick City, born in 1820, was the only child of a widow, Catherine O Brien, explains playwright and actor Mike Finn, who scripted the musical in conjunction with David Blake of the Brad Pitt Light Orchestra – David wrote the music and lyrics.
Mike, who is also from Thomondgate, knew of O’Brien’s story thanks to the work of the late socialist TD and historian Jim Kemmy, who had written about the boy in The Limerick Journal history magazine about 30 years ago.
The Brad Pitt Light Orchestra wanted to do something on O’Brien for Limerick City of Culture and approached Mike in what he calls an act of “serendipity”.
He describes the story as a “cracking” one and he’s not wrong. In 1835, to escape a life of poverty, 15-year-old Patrick O’Brien signed up as a cabin boy on the Francis Spaight, which was carrying some 300 emigrants from Limerick to New Brunswick, Canada.
On the return journey, loaded down with timber, the Francis Spaight encountered a storm. Due to an inept crewman, it capsized, resulting in several deaths.
The survivors, including Patrick, were able to right the ship by cutting the mast – but they were stranded in the vast ocean, without food or water and with just a tiny cabin space to shelter in.
After two weeks of clinging to life in appalling conditions, Captain Timothy Gorman resolved that one crew member should be killed and eaten in order to give the others a fighting chance of survival.
Contemporary accounts state that Patrick O’Brien challenged the notion that only the cabin boys should be eligible to be killed. He was given the job of casting lots and drew his own name – there are suggestions that he was set up by the captain.
He was killed, pretty horribly, and eaten by the other crew. These men began to go slowly mad and two more members were killed and eaten before the wreck was discovered by a passing ship, 19 days after it had capsized.
“There was a conspiracy of silence when the crew returned to Limerick,” explains Mike Finn, who is best known for his work with Limerick’s Island Theatre Company. “It wasn’t something they’d have been boasting about,” he says of the cannibalism.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.