The Great Bourne Family

On Wednesday 13 July, in an HTBS entry, I asked for help to identify a small pamphlet called Oarsmanship, which I have in my rowing library. This 15-page brochure has not a cover, no printing year, and no name of the author. So far an 'anonymous' reader has suggested that it might be G.C. Bourne, who went up to Oxford in 1881. It is not a bad suggestion, but I am not sure if it really matches Bourne, who published his famous book A Text-Book of Oarsmanship in 1925. I have taken a good look in my copy of that book, but the writing style differs from the one in Oarsmanship. It is true that both authors mention old master Dr. Warre, but that would have been common practise during this time as Warre had such a major impact on the rowing style at Eton and Oxford for many years. I guess my question still is unanswered.

However, by coincident I just received an old article from 30 March 1946 (published in the Picture Post) about the the Bournes, "The Greatest Rowing Family": Dr. Gilbert C. Bourne, his son Robert 'Bob' C. Bourne, who stroked four winning Oxford crews in the Boat Race 1909-1912, and his son, Robert 'Bobbie' M.A. Bourne, who was awarded his Blue in 1939, but had to give it up ten days before the Race due to hurting his hand. When World War II broke out he joined the 4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantary but was captured before Dunkirk. He spent five years as a P.O.W. After the war, he went up to Oxford again and earned his second Blue. At first his stroked but was moved to No. 4. The 1946 Boat Race was won by Oxford. (In the 1947 Boat Race, Bobbie Bourne was also rowing at No. 4, but that year the Race was won by Cambridge.)

On top is a sketch from 1882 when Gilbert C Bourne rowed bow in the winning Oxford crew in the Boat Race. The following year, still at bow, Bourne took his second victory in the Race.

The Bournes: 4 - 'Beja', The Old Master Coach

Here continues the story of Dr. Gilbert Charles Bourne, famous coach at Oxford.

In A Text-Book of Oarsmanship Bourne agrees that the orthodox style has changed since Warre’s days, and that the style has been taught differently by different coaches, all being campaigners for the English orthodox style. The general factor that all the 'orthodox' coaches of the day could agree upon was that the Cambridge coach Steve Fairbairn’s new 'style' was wrong and therefore should be rebuked, which Bourne also does in his book. One error among many that Bourne found with Fairbairn’s Jesus College crews, who fully rowed according to Fairbairn’s method, was that they “always had an air of dreaminess about it.”

The year after, in 1926, Steve retorted Bourne in the book Rowing Notes. Regarding his dreamy Jesus crews, he writes, “Dr. Bourne […] says my crews look dreamy. They could not have given higher praise, especially as the criticisms were intended to be against the style in which I coach my crews. [- - -] Does not looking dreamy only mean being very smooth? In my opinion the dreamier a crew looks, the nearer it approaches to the poetry of motion.”


A jocular rhymester gave his view of the orthodox style in the Cambridge student magazine The Granta:

Beware the Orthodox, my son,

The slides that check, the arms that snatch;

Beware the drop-in blade, and shun

The Bourneish shoulder-catch.

A few oarsmen and coaches thought that a mix of the two styles were to be preferred, “each style has its own particular merits, and when the best points of each are blended then, in my opinion, perfection is very nearly achieved,” Vivian Nickalls wrote in 1932. But to “blend” the two different styles would be a rare thing to suggest during Bourne’s and Fairbairn’s lifetime. It would however be a more openly discussed subject during the 1950s and 1960s. Vivian Nickalls’s thoughts to “blend” the styles would be expressed some thirty years later by H. R. A. ‘Jumbo’ Edwards in his The Way of a Man with a Blade (1963) where he writes: “… by ‘orthodox’ I mean teaching the best method of moving the body to achieve maximum muscular efficiency in propelling the boat. The Fairbairn method was to teach the oarsman to perfect his bladework and to apply the maximum power to it throughout the stroke. Of course, the ideal is achieved by a combination of these two methods. Putting it another way, orthodoxy was the teaching of the pure art of rowing, while Fairbairnism was the application of the art to winning races. […] It is the greatest pity that Steve and Beja [Dr. Gilbert C. Bourne] never worked together. They would have produced wonderful crews.”

‘Jumbo’ Edwards should know as he had rowed for them both, at Oxford and later for The London RC. It is significant that Edwards dedicated his luminous book “to the memory of the greatest of Old Masters Steve and Beja”.

Dr. Bourne only published one book on rowing during his life time. However, the year after his death, in 1933, his manuscript about his younger days was published, Memories of an Eton Wet-Bob of the Seventies, which is a very exciting read for anyone interested in Eton and Oxford of those days. It is not, however, an easy book to find in an antiquarian bookshop nowadays.

In tomorrow's entry the story about the Bournes continues, then about Bobbie Bourne.

The Bournes: 3 - The Theoretical Coach

Bob Bourne’s father Gilbert Charles Bourne, was born in 1861. At the age of six, the family doctor declared him unfit for sports as he had a heart disease. However, at a new medical examination at Eton, young Bourne was given a ‘clean bill of health’. He immediately began to row competitively but, as The Time’s obituary put it, “as his style was unpleasing to the authorities, he was given only a humble position in Lower Boat choices.” It all changed in the spring of 1878, when Bourne unexpectedly was picked for Trail Eights, and he rowed bow of the Eton eight, and the crew reached the final of the Ladies' Plate at Henley that year. He was Captain of the Boats in 1880 and 1881.

G. C. Bourne rowed in the bow seat in Oxford’s winning Blue boat, both in 1883 and 1884. In front of him sat, at two-seat, R.S. de Havilland and they would later become advocates for the English orthodox style taught by the famous Dr. Edmond Warre, head-master and their rowing coach at Eton.

G.C. Bourne, who became a famous professor and coach at Oxford, used his studies in zoology, marine biology, and mathematics to mix in with his coaching. He coached Oxford for several periods from 1885 to 1927 (12 of his Blue boats won The Boat Race). His love for theory, whether it was to coach, to build boats, or the best dimensions of oars – their length and the width of the blades – is clearly seen in his wonderful book A Text-Book of Oarsmanship with an Essay on Muscular Action in Rowing, which was published in 1925 (reprinted in 1987).

Here is a 5-minute newsreel from 1925, Getting Well Together, “by courtesy of Doctor Bourne” [who is coaching the dark Blues in this film!]:

GETTING WELL TOGETHER

More about Dr. G.C. Bourne in tomorrow's entry!

Go Fishing, Or The Eight That Forgot No. 3

After some serious rowing stuff as the lives of F.S. Kelly and Samuel F. Gordon, it could be nice with some ‘light’ material. I have chosen a funny post card from the mid-1910s. Unfortunately, I cannot read the name of the caricaturist.

While the men on the right seem to be deeply engaged in a momentous discussion of the secrets of rowing, the eight on the left has left in a hurry, forgetting No. 3 on the shore. The heavy coxswain, who probably is the coach of the crew, is making certain that his boat is rowing in the correct way - the English Orthodox Style.

A jocular rhymester gave his view of the English Orthodox Style in some verses in the Cambridge student magazine The Granta in 1927:

Beware the Orthodox, my son,
The slides that check, the arms that snatch;
Beware the drop-in blade, and shun
The Bourneish shoulder-catch.

The ‘Bourneish’ is referring to Dr. Gilbert C. Bourne, an ex-Eton wet-bob who had rowed in two winning boats for Oxford in the Boat Race in 1882 and 1883. His son, Robert C. Bourne, stroked four winning Oxford eights against Cambridge in 1909, 1910, 1911, and 1912 (with his father as the coach). Dr. Bourne was a strong believer in the English Orthodox Style, which is clearly shown in his book A Text-Book of Oarsmanship with an Essay on Muscular Action in Rowing, which was published in 1925. In his book, Bourne trashes the Jesus College coach Steve Fairbairn from Australia, who had other ideas on how to row.

Mischievously, Fairbairn said that rowing styles were like seasons in Australia, ‘bad, damned bad and bloody awful.’

The post card is sent on what seems to be 26 November 1917 with a half-penny stamp to a Mr. D. Masefield, who lives, or at least is staying at, Wyndham Hotel on Old Street in Cardiff. It reads: ‘Thought this card rather fine. Would be pleased to see you on Friday, and maybe we could go fishing for a change. Your friend Ernest’

Is Ernest an old oarsman who is tired of pulling a competitive oar and instead would like to go fishing with his fellow ‘oar’, Mr. D. Masefield? We will never know…