On Tuesday 30th April 2024 I was invited to speak at a gathering aboard the Cailin Deise river cruiser. My brief was to give a sense of the social aspect of the River Suir, and the people who resided upon it. Much of what others had to present was on the environmental degradation of the river, tributaries and coastline and initially, I feared my words may have been out of place. But here’s what I delivered.

Slí Sails address

Thanks for the invitation today. My name is Andrew Doherty and I am the project leader of Tides and Tales Maritime Community Project. Our mission statement is: To foster a deeper understanding, appreciation and value of the culture and economic opportunities of the Three Sisters River community through researching and promoting the stories of its people, places, trades and boats.

For centuries these rivers were seen as a connection, a conduit, a method of travel, commerce, trade, fishing and leisure populated by numerous people, trades and river craft. The rivers were not just the motorways of today, these were a superhighway that encompassed our modern infrastructure of plane, train and automobile.

Those times have been largely forgotten, or diminished.  But yet, how did the Vikings travel to Waterford, let alone Kings and pretenders? The choice of siting the new town beside the river and adjacent to what we now know as the St John’s Pill was strategically important in terms firstly of security and then trade.  The Three Sister rivers allowed trade to flow with the regularity of the tides.  Cuan ne Greinne,  the Harbour of the Sun was a strategic location to England, Wales and the continent and crucially a vital harbour of refuge in an era of sail.

In modern times, rivers such as the Barrow or Suir are generally perceived as boundaries, defining county lines or geographic jurisdictions. And there is a broader perspective too. 

The seas around our island nation have been largely ignored.  There’s a strong perception that these were handed away by the state in a favourable deal for the farming sector on joining the European Economic Community in 1973. (as a former fisherman in Cheekpoint I may have a personal position on this)  As a nation we had to scramble to create a state shipping line in WWII, that we might feed ourselves, only to let it collapse in the 1980s.  We have been embarrassed numerous times by our inability to protect our coast and seas.  There is seemingly no strategy or policy to embrace the resource, except for handing it over to private investors.

I don’t know the exact reason for this disregard to our waterways, lakes, rivers and seas. But I wonder is there something of the field ditch involved. The traditional boundary created from unwanted field stone that defined our patch of ground. The ditch was to keep people or animals in or out. The weeds were flung there, the slops from the kitchen, the broken delph, old cans and jars, the waste from the dry toilet. Perhaps the same mentality impacts our notion of our watery boundaries; out of sight, out of mind and of little consequence except as a means of waste disposal.

Waterford has a deep and proud history, but it tends to be told without a maritime perspective. Yet, rivers such as the Suir have an incredible story to tell.  We have an enviable reservoir of social history and folklore, hinted at by placenames, navigation lights, wrecks, pills, embankments, weirs, boats and old quays.

Although to some it may seem like a best-forgotten era of hard work, strife and incredible struggle, to others the river represents a remarkable rich history and heritage, an era to borrow a very apt phrase of “iron men and wooden boats”, of fishermen, sailors, cockle pickers, net makers, lighters and lightermen, of hobblers, pilots, watchmen, jarveys, porters and custom officials.

The work of our project seeks to connect the present society with the past so that we may value and appreciate what these people achieved.  But it is also about those that still continue these proud traditions, fishermen, boatmen and river families that know the stories of the past and practice the skills.  It only takes a generation to lose this heritage.  Although we do not underestimate the challenge of our project, we do believe with support and understanding, real progress to sustain these river communities is possible. 

I invite you if you have not already done so, to explore this past on Tides and Tales, and join our virtual community of river folk, a community of the tides. A community that seeks not to place administrative boundaries on a vital resource that can never be contained, but to unite and celebrate it as a collective good.

©Andrew Doherty 2024

Clodagh Walsh from the Ours to Protect series which is broadcast on WLR and podcast was aboard and did a short report on what was said. And yes I do sound nervous…I hate a microphone and paper, something I will have to work on.

Although it was a lovely opportunity to meet with new people, and reconnect with some others, I came away feeling dejected. I went to sleep that night remembering a letter I wrote to the then Minister for the Marine, Brendan Daly TD. I drafted and redrafted it with a biro, working hard to try make my thoughts clear. I finally picked up the courage to finish it off on foolscape paper, and posted it off. It never occurred to me to keep a copy. I don’t remember it even getting a response.

But in it, I pleaded with the minister to stop castigating salmon driftnet fishermen as the sole reason for the demise of salmon and the pressure on the stocks. It was probably childish in the extreme, but I pointed out pollution, evergreen tree plantations, and habitat destruction in the areas where salmon spawned. Why I asked did no one write in the national newspapers about these issues, or give some balance on the telly or radio when the matter of salmon stocks were discussed. Why was the salmon fisherman the one they all pointed at.

We now know however there were other pressures too such as salmon farm cages, global warming, deep sea trawling on migration routes amongst so much else. But a number of the inputs from the environmentalists present on the day, reinforced what I had stated to the Minister all those years ago. I wrote it in the late 1980s when I believed I would stay a fisherman in Cheekpoint for life, participating in a fishery that would help sustain me and my community.

Is it any wonder I would be sad, to think that almost 40 years later, people are still grappling to come to terms with the degradation of our rivers, and the salmon is still under pressure. And the Cheekpoint fishermen, like their counterparts up and down the river, after hundreds of years, are practically no more.

But as I write on reflection at least these people that I was with that day are trying. It’s easy to point the finger and say they are to blame, but the reality is more complex, its an uphill battle against powerful interests, none of which seem to have the rivers in their thoughts. And although I come at it with a different approach, perhaps I need to find a way to try to support them in what they are doing and hopefully get some support in return. It’s hard to trust, when your experience is to be dismissed. But I came across a quote about it recently that I have found to be true by Ralph Waldo Emerson “Our distrust is very expensive.” There are too many cynics in this world already!