The niece of a member of the crack stunt team who worked on the 1956 production of Moby Dick says she is thrilled that the movie is being celebrated by Fishguard’s Ar Ymyl y Tir/On Land’s Edge Festival in September – 70 years after its cinematic release.

Francesca Bosenius, of Llangwm, fondly recalls some of the escapades of her late “Uncle Ted” – Eduardo (‘Ted’) Palmieri – an accomplished horse rider and stuntman who worked on several top films.

He was immortalised in a famous scene from John Huston’s classic movie for his portrayal of the doomed lookout who loses his footing and plunges into the ocean from the Pequod’s top mast, never to re-surface.

Speaking after witnessing the scene for the first time, Francesca laughed as she said: “That was some drop!

“But then that's just the sort of thing uncle Ted would do!

“The story that has been passed down through all of us all is that he apparently had to fall out of the crow’s nest.

“Yet I’ve never found any mention of him in the film credits.

“My uncle was of Italian heritage. My grandparents came over to the UK around the time of the First World War and settled in the south London areas of Mitcham, Tooting and Balham.

“Uncle Ted was big into racing cars and he had an F M Car Sales showroom in Beckenham, Kent, at one time.

“One of his party tricks was driving down Streatham Hill in the 1960s in a sports car sat on the back of the driver’s seat steering with his feet!

“He and my dad, one of his older brothers, knew the ‘Acid Bath Killer’, John Haig. We lived in Crawley at the time and, don't ask me how they knew him, but they did.

“Uncle Ted was born in 1921 and sadly died in 2017. We all knew him as ‘Uncle Ted’ or ‘Uncle Teddy’.”

Another stuntman on Moby Dick was John Sullivan, who would go on to have a small, but memorable speaking role in the 1964 classic movie Zulu as the commander of a cavalry troop desperately fleeing the disaster at Isandhlwana.

During several months of filming in dangerous sea conditions off Fishguard, Sullivan worked alongside other uncredited stuntmen including Joe Powell, who would also appear in Zulu as Sgt Windridge.

According to local legend it was Sullivan who dived head-first from the top mast of the Pe-quod into the waters of Fishguard Bay in order to win a bet struck with director Huston on the last day of filming.

Other sources claim a local man named ‘Texas’ Jones also made the leap!

See onlandsedge.co.uk for further info.

September’s Ar Ymyl y Tir/On Land’s Edge Festival will celebrate the 70th anniversary of the cinematic release of the acclaimed Hollywood movie starring Gregory Peck, Richard Basehart, Orson Welles and Leo Genn; and directed by John Huston – after managing to hook a whopping £44,300 National Lottery Heritage grant.