Roll Those Reels...

HTBS has often use newsreels from British Pathé, which actually was founded as Société Pathé Frères in Paris in the 1890s, to show old crews of Oxford and Cambridge practicing or racing, and when the professional scullers were battling for a championship, and sometimes an oddity like girls rowing on a roof top or London RC doing their 'jazz rowing'. Whether you are a rower or not, British Pathé's treasure trove has something for everyone.

Right now BBC Four is showing a documentary series about the company, The Story of British Pathé. The first programme was shown on 18 August, "The Birth of the News", and three more programmes are to follow. Read more about the series here. (Unfortunately, the iPlayer do not allow viewer outside Britain - or maybe outside of Europe - to watch). To read The Daily Telegraph's review of the first programme, please click here.

Of course, now I have to show a couple of newsreels. I have picked two which show the same rowing 'oddity' (but it is still rowing!), gondolas, which has two 'celebrety' gondolier, Ernest Barry (in 1921) and Humphrey Bogart (in 1951)!

ACTION!!!

VENICE ON THAMES

VENICE

Row, Row, Row The Pope...

Albino Dei Rossi rowing Pope John Paul II in 1985.

Last Sunday, Pope Benedict XVI was visiting Venice and was rowed on the Grand Canal in a gondola. Prior to his outing, there was an argument within the gondolier community which gondoliers was actually going to take him around. It seems to be a great honour to row the Pope in your gondola. One gondolier was out of question by veritable being a woman – one of 425 gondoliers in Venice. So, 424 more to go – whom to pick?

Aldo Reato, who is the head of the gondoliers, had a good solution, I think, when he told Il Gazzettino: “I’ve had enough. It’s a shame the Pope can’t row the gondola himself, otherwise I would have given him an oar and he could have gone himself.”

Eventually, Pope Benedict XVI picked two pairs, the brothers Bruno and Francesco Dei Rossi, whose father Albino rowed the late Pope John Paul II during his visit to Venice in 1985. The other two were Gianpaolo D’Este and Igor Vignotto, are two well-known gondoliers in the Venice regattas. Read an article about the row to row the Pope here.