For years I had wondered who the 21-year old Cork fisherman who had told Andrew Weatherall the famous tale about skippering a trawler in a Force 9 gale was. Many of us had. Andrew would reference the story regularly in interviews as the reason why he went to a lot of trouble and expense to get the words ‘Fail we may, sail we must,’ tattooed on both his arms.

Photo of Andrew Weatherall’s famous tattoos - by Aidan Kelly

This evening, February 16th 2021, on the eve of the first anniversary of the death of The Guv’nor, we finally managed to track down the elusive fisherman. His name is Gerard Sheehy and back in July of 2008, after a friend of his asked him to “fill in” for him and pick up Andrew from Cork Airport to drive him to the ‘Cork X Southwest’ festival in Skibbereen, Gerard duly obliged. He would get a free ticket to the festival for his endeavours and spend the night in the DJ booth while The Guv’nor DJ-ed. The two men would also spend a few precious hours chatting together en route to the event and on the return journey the following day.

I’m going to give you a succinct version of the story, based on a conversation I had with Gerard on the phone moments ago. No doubt this will be covered in more detail in the future, as there are stories-within-stories to be told. I’ll do my best to keep it brief and on point.

First, a little background. When Andrew was interviewed by Johnno Burgess for Dummy in 2010, Johnno asked The Guv about his new song ‘Fail We May, Sail We Must’ and if it was a motto he’s lived by.

Andrew elaborated:
”I suppose so. That was handily capsulated by a fisherman I met in County Cork. This young lad picked me up for the gig and he was 21 and was a trawlerman. He wanted to know about the glamourous world of DJing, to which I said, It’s bollocks, it’s discos, tell me about tales of the sea. He told me about being 18 in a force nine gale, his father, the captain, broke his leg so he had to captain the ship. I was thinking, I couldn’t even look after myself at that age let alone a trawler boat in a force 9 gale. I asked him, Are there times when you get up in the morning and you can’t be arsed? And he said, fail we may, sail we must. Which led to me spending hundreds of pounds and a lot of pain having it tattooed up the sides of my arms. I’ve got a pretty good work ethic and sometimes you have a heavy night and want to phone in poorly but if this guy can captain a ship in a force 9 gale I’m sure I can get up and spend two hours in a disco.”

Over the years, I had wondered if there was any truth to the story and who the fisherman might be, but although I’d asked people I know in Cork, nobody had any answers.

I sent out an APB on Twitter yesterday [Monday, 15th February 2021], wondering if anyone knew who the young man in was. There were a buzz about the tweet for 24 hours as it got shared by curious folk, mostly those involved in the music world, but after a few vaguely promising leads which ultimately came to naught, the story fizzled out. Or so I thought. Because, today at lunchtime, 'The Examiner' published a story by journalist Des O' Driscoll stating that I was looking for the elusive fisherman mentioned in Andrew Weatherall’s famous story. And ‘fishing Twitter’, in the guise of ‘The Skipper’’s Twitter account soon got involved and enigmatically informed us ‘We have a few leads already. Stay tuned!’ The search was suddenly very much alive again.

As the story continued to circulate on social media, a man called Billy Cummings came across the article and had a 'Eureka moment' as he read it, thinking 'this must be about my friend Gerard'. He contacted me through my socials to inform me that he believed that Gerard Sheehy was our main, claiming that Gerard had driven Andrew to the festival in west Cork all those summers ago, while also stating that neither he nor Gerard had every heard the origin story of Andrew's famous tattoos.

I was initially sceptical - how could anyone remain in the dark about such a famous story for over a decade, I wondered - but after he forwarded me his friend’s phone number, I was able to observe Gerard's WhatsApp avatar, which is a photo of him holding a large fish. Either this was our man, or a very elaborate hoax. I texted Gerard. He wasn’t immediately available to talk as he was out of coverage for the afternoon, mending a net, but he promised to chat to me later that evening. Luckily, I only had to wait a few hours, as he very well might have been at sea on The Lovon, the boat he inherited from his father and which he skippers these days. Meanwhile, in my house and online, the excitement continued to build in advance of our conversation. Don't forget that this story was unfolding in the dark, fever dream days of February 2021, when the world had shut down in an effort to contain a plague and many of us were confined to our homes, unable to congregate in dance halls, depending on social media as a way to stay connected.

Left: Photo of Gerard Sheehy his WhatsApp avatar when I first contacted him // Right: Gerard’s tattoo

It turns out that Gerard had no idea who Andrew Weatherall was when he first met him at Cork Airport. All he knew was they he had been instructed to pick up a DJ and drive him to a festival. He would only come to learn more about him in later years, usually after reading exchanges on WhatsApp groups, when his friends would contribute if there were any mentions about his “famous DJ friend” in newspaper articles or online.

On that summer afternoon in 2008, Gerard collected Andrew from Cork Airport before driving him to his destination of Casey’s Hotel in Baltimore. During the hour-and-a-half journey to west Cork, he did, indeed, ask Andrew about the glamorous world of DJing, which Andrew adroitly deflected by asking him what he did for a living. Andrew’s interest was piqued when he told him he was a fisherman.

When Weatherall asked him to tell his seafaring stories, Gerard was only too happy to oblige. He was a 21-year old man at the time and this was a subject he was very much at ease talking about, as “I’ve been fishing since I could walk boi”.

Gerard told me that he did indeed recount the tale to Andrew about his father breaking his leg in a storm and how both himself and his companion had to skipper the boat in his stead. At one stage during their conversation, he uttered the words ‘Fail she may, but go she must’, which Andrew immediately picked up on, asking if he could repeat the phrase. Of course, this is a variation of what Weatherall would come to tattoo on both his arms, use as a song title and which his legion of admirers would subsequently come to adopt as a kind of mantra, especially after his death. Over the course of their trip to the festival in west Cork and the return trip the next day, when Gerard drove him back to the airport, Andrew continued to probe Gerard about the phrase. It was the last topic that they discussed when they reached their destination.

What Andrew didn’t know is that Gerard himself had that very variation of the phrase tattooed on his own chest - ‘Fail we may, but go she must’ - in New Zealand two years previously. We can only speculate why Andrew re-edited the phrase a little. Poetic license. Or, a different rhythm he warmed to. Or perhaps he didn’t want to go through the pain of having extra words stenciled on his skin. My guess is that Gerard’s phrase set his mind in motion and that the poet in Andrew decided upon a simple modification ‘Fail we may, sail we must’.

You’ll hear in more detail about their encounter in the weeks and months ahead, but I’m delighted that we finally found our fisherman, Gerard Sheehy, the man whose touching phrase will be remembered by all of us whose lives were touched by Weatherall, the man, and Weatherall, the artist. I’m delighted to tell you that Gerard is also a soft-spoken and thoughtful young man, not unlike The Guv’nor in his manner, who is completely blown away to learn this evening about the seismic impact of a few small words from their brief encounter in the summer of 2008.