Stout for Sportsmen

Tim Koch writes:

Today, 17 March, is St. Patrick’s Day and many people, Sons of Erin or not, will mark this solemn religious occasion by drinking industrial quantities of Irish stout, most famously that produced by the ‘Guinness’ company. In the past, HTBS has produced several items noting rowing connections to the ‘black beer’ produced by the Dublin brewing family.

A summery of the rowing career of the company chairman, Rupert Guinness, 2nd Earl of Iveagh (1874-1967) was in this post of August 2010. Guinness won the Diamonds in 1895 and the Diamonds and the Wingfields in 1896.

Possibly due to the influence of Rupert, the company often included rowing in its frequently acclaimed advertising campaigns. In March 2010, Hélène Rémond shared some nice images she had found, and Greg Denieffe posted these in September 2013.

I recently came across another of the brewer’s advertisements with a rowing (or rather sculling) content, but this time in the form of a traditional celebrity endorsement rather than the clever graphics and slogans for which the company is most famous. On 6 July 1929 the ad posted below was run in the Illustrated London News.

Bert Barry’s Guinness endorsement (click to enlarge).

The text starts:

One man beats three. This is a unique feat in the history of rowing. H.A. Barry sculled over four miles: his opponents each raced only a third of the distance. Yet such was the strength and endurance of Barry that he beat each opponent in turn. In his letter on this page, Barry shows how sportsmen of every kind can improve their strength and endurance by drinking Guinness regularly.

In his endorsement Barry explains:

And there is no doubt that ‘Guinness Stout’ has done me a lot of good these last four years. It has built my muscles up wonderfully and has given me the necessary stamina – what I lacked before to stay a long distance at racing pace.

It is signed, H.A. (Bert) Barry, World and British Champion Sculler.

Advertising alcohol as a training aid for sportsmen may seem strange but this was a very different time. The 1912 Olympic sculling champion, Wally Kinnear, recommended Guinness and Champaign (‘Black Velvet’) as a remedy for over training. The old professionals would sometimes have a brandy and port on the start line as it ‘settled the stomach’. Much worse than associating alcohol with athletic success was the common idea of using sportsmen in cigarette advertising. ‘Camel’ cigarettes were especially famous for this – as this ad in Popular Mechanics of June 1935 shows.

Camels – ‘The mild cigarette the athletes smoke’. They include William Garfield ‘Bill’ Miller who came second in the coxless fours at the 1928 Olympics and second to Bobby Pearce in the single sculls in the 1932 Olympics. He was also U.S. Singles Champion, in 1930-1933. If he did actually smoke it is not surprising that a contemporary newspaper described him as ‘The husky Philadelphian’. The museum Mystic Seaport’s website describes another Bill Miller / Camel advertisement held by them though unfortunately there is no illustration. The handsome Miller was a natural choice for advertisers and, more harmlessly, he also endorsed Palmolive Shaving Cream.

Returning to Guinness, the advertisement does not make it absolutely clear but the ‘relay’ was a race from Putney to Mortlake with Barry sculling constantly over the whole distance but with a fresh opponent taking over from the previous challenger for every third of the course. Thus the race started conventionally but at Harrods a new sculler picked up the race with Barry while the original opposition to the Champion dropped out. There would be another change with a third sculler, perhaps around Chiswick Steps. I do not know if this stunt was done with the Guinness endorsement in mind or if it was something that the company picked up on after the event. However, thanks to the remarkable British Pathe website, we can see film of this possibly unique event.

RIVER RELAY RACE

Bert Barry

Herbert Arthur ‘Bert’ Barry (1902-1978) was the son of W.A. ‘Bill’ Barry (who won Doggetts in 1891 and was Professional Sculling Champion of England in 1898). Bert was a nephew of the great Ernest Barry and uncle of William L. ‘Bill’ Barry. Bert won Doggetts in 1925, and in 1927 he challenged the World Professional Sculling Champion, M.L. Goodsell, for his title. Strangely, the race took place in Vancouver, Canada, and not in Goodsell’s native Australia. The defending champion beat Barry convincingly. However, on a return match over the same course three months later, it was the Englishman who was victorious and he remained the unchallenged World Champion for nearly three years. Pathe has an especially good sound film of Bert sculling with his brother Lou around this period.

BERT BARRY

Bert with the statue of the great sculler Ned Hanlan in Toronto in 1934.

In May 1930, Bert lost the World title in his first defence to Ted Phelps, the first time in over fifty years that two Englishmen had contested for the World Sculling Championship. Bert also failed in the return match five months later. Perhaps he was not drinking enough Guinness?

To Follow the Etiquette

The date is 21 July, 1913, and the well-dressed gentleman wearing a boater, being escorted by mounted police on the towpath at Putney, is none other than Ernest Barry, the reigning world professional sculling champion. Barry is there to defend his title on the Championship course between Putney and Mortlake on the Thames against Harry Pearce of Australia and for £500 aside. Barry won the race at 24 min. 9 sec. Harry’s son, Bobby Pearce, would, twenty years later, in 1933, take the professional championship title from Ted Phelps. Bobby Pearce had begun his sculling career as an amateur, taking two Olympic gold medals in the single in 1928 and 1932, and the Diamonds at Henley in 1931.

The story is actually only an excuse for me to point out that as it is Labor Day in the U.S. today, which means that it is the last day to wear your straw hat if you care to follow the etiquette. So hats off, gentlemen!

British Empire Games Rowing in 1950

The combination of oarsmen from Leander and Thames RC represented England at the rowing regatta at the 1950 Empire Games: bow A.S.F. Butcher (Thames RC), 2. P.A de Giles (Leander), 3. W.A.D. Windham (Leander), 4. H.W. Rushmere (Thames RC), 5. R.D. Burnell (Leander), 6. P.C. Kirkpatrick (Thames RC), 7. M.C. Lapage (Leander), stroke P. Bradley (Leander) and cox J.P. Dearlove. Photograph by G.F. Louden (in Dickie Burnell's Swing Togther).

On 31 August, Tim Koch wrote on HTBS about Jack Dearlove, ‘The Indefatigable Jack Dearlove’. Jack, who had lost a leg in an accident, showed the same fighting spirit as today’s rowers at the Paralympic Games in London. Jack coxed the Great Britain eight to an Olympic silver medal in 1948 and a bronze medal at the Empire Games in 1950. This is a short story about the 1950 Empire Games’ rowing regatta on Lake Karapiro in New Zealand.

The first British Empire Games (now called the Commonwealth Games) were held in 1930 in Hamilton, Ontario, by, as Hylton Cleaver writes in his A History of Rowing (1957), “a group of keen sportsmen and great believers in the Empire”. That year’s winner of the Grand Challenge Cup at Henley, London RC, beat a strong eight from New Zealand by half a length. Bobby Pearce, then still sculling for Australia, became the first Empire Champion in the single sculls, beating Jack Beresford of Thames RC. There seems to have been an Empire Games in England in 1934, but without rowing! So, at the next Empire Games where rowing was included, in 1938, a combination eight of oarsmen from London, Thames, Oxford and Cambridge overpowered an eight from Australia. And then came the War.

After a successful race in the 1949 Grand Challenge Cup final at Henley Royal Regatta, Leander captain Richard ‘Dickie’ Burnell was asked to gather a crew for the British Empire Games, which were to be held in Auckland, New Zealand, in February 1950. Knowing that not all of the members of the Grand Cup winning Leander crew would be available, Dickie began looking around for other ‘outstanding men elsewhere’, as he writes in “The Empire Games Crew, 1950”, which is a chapter in his book Swing Together: Thoughts on Rowing (1952). He did not have to look very far. In 1949, Thames RC had taken the Grand Cup at Henley, and some oarsmen from that crew were eager to swap out the English winter for a much warmer climate on the other side of the world.

In the beginning there had been 17 oarsmen invited to the practise, including also two each from London RC and Kingston RC, but on 23 October, 1949, the selected eight looked as follows:

Bow A.S.F. Butcher (Thames RC)
2. P.A de Giles (Leander)
3. W.A.D. Windham (Leander)
4. H.W. Rushmere (Thames RC)
5. R.D. Burnell (Leander)
6. P.C. Kirkpatrick (Thames RC)
7. M.C. Lapage (Leander)
Stroke P. Bradley (Leander)
Cox J.P. Dearlove (Thames RC)

Added to these nine men were two spare rowers: A.D. Rowe (Leander; who was also in the single sculls) and M.H.N. Plaisted (London RC). Team Manager during the trip was Jack Beresford.

At first, the crew had been coached by Wing Commander Hellyer – of ‘syncopated rowing’ fame – but his doctor put a stop to him participating in winter coaching, and instead ‘Gully’ Nickalls stepped in to coach the eight. Dickie writes that Nickalls’s approach to coaching a crew was, ‘that a crew should first achieve a true rhythm and length in its paddling, and then translate this into its rowing’. However, Dickie states there was not really the time to work this way. He writes:

‘A certain amount of speed has got to be achieved in order to race, and if a crew is held back in order to perfect its length and rhythm in paddling, there is a distinct danger that it will not be ready in time to race. […] When we left England our paddling was really good, and on numerous occasions we disappointed the critics by paddling beautifully and then becoming rushed and scrappy in our rowing.’

The 1950 Great Britain Empire Game crew. Dickie Burnell, sixth from left in a dark scarf, kept a ‘captain’s log’ during the crew's practise in England and later on Lake Karapiro. Picture © John Dearlove.

Dickie kept a ‘captain’s log’ during the crew’s practise at Henley, the trip to New Zealand and the practise there, and parts of it are published in “The Empire Games Crew, 1950”. The team left England on 23 January, 1950, and when they arrived they heard that their boat had not arrived yet, so they had to borrow an old Sims. The long trip took its toll on the English crew, who also had problems with the diet. Eventually, their own boat arrived and also the riggers. But at the race, on 6 February, it did not really help, ‘the race was naturally a bitter disappointment to us all’ Dickie states. The Aussies won – ‘they were strong and well together, and rowed in something very like our own English Fairbairn style’, Dickie writes.

In the Australian boat rowed: bow R.N. Tinning, 2. P.A. Cayzer, 3. A.P. Holmes, 4. B.H. Goswell, 5. R.L. Selman, 6. E.O. Longley, 7. E.O. Pain, stroke A.W. Brown and cox J.E. Barnes. New Zealand’s crew was young, a little inexperienced, but ‘exceptionally tough’ and had rowed on Lake Karapiro for several weeks. They raced hard and almost overcame the Aussies. New Zealand’s crew: bow E. Smith, 2. B. Culpan, 3. D. Rowlands, 4. G. Jarratt, 5. M. Ashby, 6. W. Tinnock, 7. K. Ashby, stroke T.C. Engel and cox D. Adams. English sculler A.D. Rowe came in second after M. Wood, the reigning Olympic Champion from Australia. The bronze in the single sculls was taken by I.R.G. Steven of South Africa. T. Hegglum of New Zealand came in fourth.

There were some lessons to be learned after the Englishmen’s trip to New Zealand, which Dickie also recognises in a follow-up chapter in his Swing Together.

More about the British Empire Games Rowing tomorrow, 7 September.

Olympic Rowing Memorabilia Up For Auction!

Here is an interesting report from HTBS’s Greg Denieffe in England. Two auctions on Olympic Games memorabilia is coming up this week, Greg writes:

Two important auctions of Olympic Games memorabilia take place in London this week just days before the 2012 event gets underway. Posters, torches, medals, photographs, tickets and programmes from previous Olympiads will go under the hammer.

On Tuesday, 24 July, Graham Budd Auctions, which specialises in sporting memorabilia, will sell more than 600 lots with items from every Olympic Games since Athens, 1896, the first of the modern era. You can check out their catalogue here.

It is simply a wonderful treasure trove of sporting memorabilia. There are a few rowing related lots but for HTBS readers, lots 288 to 291 will be of special interest:

Lot 288. A 1936 Berlin Olympic Games gold medal winner’s diploma awarded to British rower Jack Beresford for victory in the double sculls with Dick Southwood. Estimate: £2,500 - £2,500.

Lot 289. An International Olympic Committee diploma awarded to the British rower Jack Beresford. Estimate: £1,500 - £2,500.

Lot 290. Jack Beresford’s C.B.E. honour diploma. Estimate: £200 - £300.

Lot 291. Jack Beresford’s blazer badges. Estimate: £400 - £600.

There are full details and photographs of all 4 lots and a search facility to identify the other rowing related lots.

At Bonhams on Wednesday, 15 July, many of the 215 lots date from 1948, the last time the Olympic Games was held in London. Britain was recovering from the Second World War and the so-called ‘Austerity Games’ took place at a time when food rationing was still in place. A record 59 countries sent teams, although Germany and Japan were not invited and the Soviet Union declined its invitation.

Of special interest is lot 36 which was covered in detail in the HTBS post on 28 June 2012, The Auction Of Pearce’s Rowing Memorabilia. With an estimate of £30,000 to £50,000 there won’t be many with deep enough pockets to take on the auctioneer.

Also of interest to collectors will be Lot 86 - A winner’s silver medal and official Olympic Games 1928 blazer badge won by British Olympian, Terrence ‘Terry’ O’Brien in the men’s coxless pairs. The circular medal, the obverse depicting a victorious athlete being carried by a crowd, the reverse depicting the Goddess Nike with “IX Olympiade Amsterdam 1928”, 55mm., two short spindles soldered to top and bottom, the blue cloth blazer badge embroidered with “Olympic Games 1928 Rowing” and a flying Union Jack flag; together with a framed and glazed portrait of Terry O’Brien. Estimate: £1,000 - 1,500.

The Auction Of Pearce's Rowing Memorabilia

As HTBS reported on 19 April, famous oarsman Bobby Pearce’s Olympic gold medals in the single sculls from Amsterdam in 1928 and Los Angles in 1932, and other rowing memorabilia which belonged to him, will be auctioned by Bonhams in London this summer, on 24 July. It is one lot, only, with a pre-sale estimate of £30,000-50,000 (€37,000-62,000 or US$47,000-78,000). This might seem to be a high price, but now when the lot has been officially opened to view, the winner of the auction will, indeed, get a lot of rowing ‘goodies’.

In the lot is for example, Pearce’s two Olympic gold medals from 1928 and 1932, and other championship medals; Olympic diplomas; prize certificates from the Australian championships 1927-1929 and the Sculling Championship of New South Wales, 1926/27, 1927/28, and 1928/29; framed photographs of Pearce; the 1931 Pineapple Trophy of the Diamond Sculls at the Henley Royal Regatta; a collection of scrap books and photograph albums from 1927-1939, dealing with the Amateur World Sculling Championships and Professional World Sculling Championships, the Olympic Games, Empire Games, and Henley Royal Regatta, and much, much more.

In the lot is also material related to Bobby Pearce's father, Harry Pearce, who was a professional sculling champion, who, in 1911, raced Richard Arnst for the World Sculling Championships (Arnst won).

View the entire lot here. Personally, I hope the lot goes to a museum or another institution which will put these wonderful medals, trophies, diplomas, etc of Bobby Pearce on display for the public to see.

Bobby Pearce Olympic Gold Medals To Be Auctioned Off At Bonhams

On 4 April, HTBS wrote about an interesting sale at the auction house Bonhams in London. It was Frederick Septimus Kelly’s 1905 Pineapple Trophy Goblet (Diamond Challenge Sculls at Henley Royal Regatta), which was sold for £3,800 (exclusive of premium and VAT).

Bobby Pearce at the 1932 Olympic Games.

 

 

In time for the Olympic Games in London this summer, on 24 July, Bonhams will be holding an Olympic Games sale and among the many sport treasures will be a lot including Henry ‘Bobby’ Pearce’s Olympic gold medals in the single sculls from Amsterdam in 1928 and Los Angles in 1932, and other rowing memorabilia which belonged to him.

Bobby Pearce (1905-1976) began to row early, having rowing in his blood. His grandfather, Harry Pearce, Sr., was Australian sculling champion and so was his father, Harry Pearce Jnr., who also tried, unsuccessfully, to become professional World Sculling Champion, racing Dick Arnst in 1911 and Ernest Barry in 1913. Bobby Pearce turned professional after the 1932 Olympic Games, taking the world title in 1933 by beating Ted Phelps.

In an interview Bobby Pearce’s son, Bobby Jnr., said about the sale: “This is a remarkable archive of Olympic and Australian memorabilia, paying homage to my father’s great sporting achievements. I would hope that a suitable home for this collection could be found in Australia.”

At the Bonhams auction Bobby Pearce medals and his other rowing memorabilia will appear with a pre-sale estimate of £30,000-50,000. It is very likely to bring in much more. Catalogue will be available four weeks before the auction. Go to Bonhams here.

The Beautiful Rower

The Beautiful Rower

Swans floated, looking perplexed.
Cormorants stood
Skeptical watch atop pilings.
Seagulls laughed
At the "ugly duckling"
Rower trying
To be one of them?

Philip Kuepper
(September 2011)


Reading this poem, I cannot help thinking of Bobby Pearce (seen on top) and his encounter with some ducks in one of his heats in the single sculls at the 1928 Olympic Games in Amsterdam. Read that story here.

More Tobacco Cards

Bernard Hempseed of New Zealand sent me an e-mail today about some of the tobacco cards he has in his collection. Bernard writes,

Further to the three cards you loaded on HTBS on 23 April. Here are some scans of several others that I have. The two from ‘Who’s Who in Sport’ (Major Goodsell; above) were issued in the UK and Commonwealth countries by Lambert & Butler in 1926, and there are 50 in the set.

The card from ‘Sports Champions’ (E.A. 'Ted' Phelps; on the left) was issued by Ardath in 1935 and again 50 in the set. The card from ‘Champions’ (Eric Phelps) was issued by Gallagher also in 1935.

The card from ‘Kings of Speed’ (Henry 'Bobby' Pearce) was issued by Churchman in 1939 which would have been one of the last sets issued before WWII which stopped most issues.

There may be other cards from other series and/or issuers but these are the ones I know of.

An earlier set were the ones from Allen & Ginter (USA) which was called ‘The World’s Champions’ and had the following: William Beach, John Teemer, Ned Trickett, Ned Hanlan, Wallace Ross, Jake Gaudaur, George Hosmer, John Mckay, Albert Hamm, and George Bubear. These were issued in 1887. They are hard to get but high quality copies exist on the net and can be downloaded. Hanlan, Beach, Gaudaur, and Teemer also feature on a set of ‘Old Judge’ cards, I guess issued about the same time. These can also be found on the net.

Thank you, Bernard! If you are getting interested in collecting cards of this kind, go to Bill Miller's web site, Friends of Rowing History, by clicking here.