When the Movies Came to Fishguard: The Welsh Story Behind Moby Dick
FOR a few extraordinary months in the 1950s, a corner of west Wales found itself sharing its streets, hotels and harbour with some of the biggest names in Hollywood.
Gregory Peck was there. So was legendary director John Huston. Richard Basehart, Leo Genn and Orson Welles were among the stars of a production that would become one of cinema’s best-known adaptations of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick.
And much of the action was taking place in and around Fishguard.
More than 70 years later, the story is being celebrated again as Fishguard and Goodwick prepare for the On Land’s Edge – Ar Ymyl y Tir Festival, taking place from Friday 25 to Sunday 27 September 2026. This year’s programme places Moby Dick firmly in the spotlight as the film celebrates the 70th anniversary of its 1956 release.
The cameras had actually arrived in Fishguard two years earlier, in 1954.
Director John Huston’s hugely ambitious version of Melville’s novel required dramatic seas, rugged coastlines and somewhere capable of convincing cinema audiences that they were watching Captain Ahab pursuing the great white whale across the oceans.
Pembrokeshire fitted the bill.
Filming took place around Fishguard Bay and nearby waters, with fishing sequences shot off the Welsh coast. Contemporary records also show that Welsh fishermen were among those used to portray members of the whaling crews.
But the arrival of Hollywood was about much more than a few cameras pointing out to sea.
The production effectively took over the Fishguard Bay Hotel. Contemporary photographs and reports reveal that the previously closed hotel was refurbished for the film company, with the cast and a large contingent of technicians, carpenters, stunt performers and crew staying there. Gregory Peck, Huston, Richard Basehart and Leo Genn could suddenly be encountered in a hotel bar in west Wales rather than on a Hollywood studio lot.
For local people, it must have been an extraordinary sight.
Peck was already an international star and would go on to become one of the defining actors of his generation. In Moby Dick he played the obsessive Captain Ahab, consumed by his determination to hunt down the white whale that had maimed him.
The ship at the centre of the production was almost as much a star as Peck himself.
The Pequod seen during filming was actually a wooden topsail schooner called the Ryelands. When a storm damaged and dismasted the vessel in Fishguard Harbour, Hollywood found itself needing some distinctly Welsh assistance. Local shipwright David “Dafi” Owen was called upon and used his traditional skills to help provide the replacement mast that enabled the production to continue.
It is exactly the sort of small piece of local history that can disappear unless somebody makes the effort to preserve it.
And that is part of what makes this weekend’s celebrations particularly interesting.
The On Land’s Edge festival has been working with local organisations and residents to collect memories and stories connected with Moby Dick, supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.
The weekend begins in spectacular style on Friday evening with a Moby Dick Lantern Parade through Fishguard. Created in partnership with Small World Theatre, the procession will be led by a giant illuminated white whale, accompanied by lanterns made by local schoolchildren and members of the community. It sets off from Ysgol Bro Gwaun at 7pm and is free to attend.
Later that evening, local performers will present Moby Dick – Rehearsed, the theatrical interpretation of Melville’s story created by Orson Welles, who himself appeared in Huston’s film.
And on Saturday there is surely an irresistible opportunity for anyone fascinated by the story: watching the 1956 Moby Dick itself at Theatr Gwaun at 1.30pm, just a short distance from the waters where part of it was made.
Other events across the three-day festival include a sea swim, music, literature, storytelling and performances, giving the weekend a much broader celebration of Fishguard’s position “on land’s edge”.
There is something rather wonderful about the whole story.
Today we have become accustomed to major film and television productions arriving in Wales. Doctor Who, House of the Dragon and countless other productions have helped establish the country as a familiar screen location.
But imagine Fishguard in 1954.
No social media. No mobile phones recording the stars arriving. No instant photographs appearing around the world.
Instead, word spread that Gregory Peck was in town.
One surviving postcard tells of a visitor heading into Fishguard hoping to catch a glimpse of him — unsuccessfully, as it happened — while local residents took their own photographs of the actors, ships and activity taking place around them. Those personal snapshots have since become part of the historical record of the production.
Hollywood eventually packed its cameras away and moved on.
Fishguard remained.
But for a brief period on the Pembrokeshire coast, Captain Ahab sailed into Welsh waters, a Hollywood epic was being created offshore and one of the world’s biggest movie stars could be found drinking in the local hotel.
Seventy years after Moby Dick reached cinema screens, Fishguard has every reason to remember the time the great white whale came to Wales.
ON LAND’S EDGE FESTIVAL WEBSITE
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Did Ewe Know?
Moby Dick wasn’t Fishguard’s only brush with major movie stars. Lower Fishguard later became Llareggub for the 1972 film version of Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood, bringing Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor and Peter O’Toole to the area.