Publications

October 2023. My latest project is to update and expand on a short history I edited for the Cheekpoint Fishing Heritage Project in 2005 on the local and distinctive fishing craft, the Prong. I’m currently completing the writing and looking at ways the work might be made available – perhaps via Amazon – although I hate that business model. I might try a GoFundMe-style approach with advance sales or pre-order.

In 2020 the History Press published Waterford Harbour Tides and Tales.

Andrew Doherty’s new book; Waterford Harbour Tides and Tales is a collection of 23 stories located in the fishing communities of the estuary and the two ports of New Ross and Waterford. The harbour has centuries of tradition based on its extensive fishery and maritime trade. In these tales we travel back to a different era, relive the fear of the dreaded press gangs who raided the communities for crew, join in search of buried gold when pirates seized the sailing ship ‘Earl of Sandwich’ and witness the horror visited on the community in WWII when a German airplane bombed the rural idyll. On every page we learn something of the history of this nautical community, steeped in traditions, customs and imbued with an enviable spirit.  

In 2017 I published my first book – Before the Tide Went out. It’s now out of print, but you can access a digital copy from amazon.

Andrew Doherty vividly brings you into the heart of a now practically vanished fishing community, deep into the domestic lives of the people making a hard and precarious living from the river, only 6 miles from Waterford city centre. You share his affectionate memories of the local people and the fun that was to be had as a child playing in and around the fishing boats and nets on a busy quayside.
He also takes you out on the river, on bright and beautiful days, and on wild and dangerous nights, which he describes with a naturally poetic turn of phrase. You feel the cold, the misery of sea-soaked clothing and the pain of raw hands hauling on fish-scaled nets.
But what keeps you going is what kept him going for 15 years, the camaraderie and pride of spending time with brave, skilled and wise fishermen who could be grumpy, hilarious, sometimes eccentric, but never boring.