In Memory of Oarsmen who Died in the Great War

Martinsart's British Cemetery, where F. S. Kelly is buried.

This year media are writing celebratory pieces on the First World War that began 100 years ago, on 28 July 1914 to be more exact. The River and Rowing Museum in Henley-on-Thames has just started a very promising blog, Home Front Henley, about the War. Read it here.

HTBS has several times written about oarsmen who fell in the Great War. To mention a few of the more famous ones: Frederick Septimus Kelly, Julian Grenfell, Eric Fairbairn, Guiseppe Sinigaglia and Bernhard von Gaza. We have also posted articles on War Monuments at rowing clubs and other places and war recruitment posters.

In his book The Boat Race: The Story of the First Hundred Races between Oxford and Cambridge (1954) author Gordon Ross lists 42 names of British Blues who paid the ultimate price during the 1914-1918 War - twenty-one Dark Blues and twenty-one Light Blues.

On 1 August Martin Cross published a wonderful piece on FISA’s World Rowing website about the First World War and oarsmen who fought on the battlefields around the world. Read his piece here and watch his video (below) on how he, in May, sculled the River Somme in France to commemorate the brave oarsmen who died:



In the June/July issue of British Rowing’s magazine Rowing & Regatta, Cross also had a well-written piece about his Somme row.

Though the following video has been posted on many places around the web during the last couple of weeks, it is worth watching and listen to over and over again. This is oarsman and composer F. S. Kelly’s Elegy for String Orchestra, written at Gallipoli in memory of Rupert Brooke, the poet and fellow soldier, who had died on board a French hospital ship just off the Greek island of Skyros, where Kelly and his comrades buried Brooke.

Guiseppe, Wally and Friends

WDK, New York Herald

Tim Koch writes,

After posting my recent piece on Guiseppe Sinigaglia and his rivalry and friendship with Wally Kinnear (particularly at the Coupe des Nations d’Aviron in Paris between 1912 and 1914), I remembered a picture archive first noted on HTBS by Hélène Rémond. The Gallica Digital Library is part of the National Library of France. Type in ‘aviron’ (rowing) and all sorts of goodies appear. The pictures can be viewed in fantastic detail as they were originally shot on large format ‘plate’ cameras and have been scanned in very high resolution. To enlarge, initially click on the magnifying glass symbol on the top left and then, in the new window, click on the magnifying glass with the plus sign on the top right.

I found a very nice picture of Sinigaglia posing in his boat at the 1913 European Championships and another of him racing on the on the Grand Terneuzen Canel on the same day.

It was also interesting to find a previously unknown picture of Wally Kinnear at the 1913 Coupe des Nations. It had been wrongly labelled as ‘the English rower Pettmann’, instead of ‘the Scottish sculler Kinnear’.

Not all the pictures are of Frenchmen. Here are two World Champions, on the left Darcy Hadfield of New Zealand, then still an amateur, and on the right, the professional sculler Ernest Barry of Great Britain.

Here is a selection of my favourite faces from the archive, chosen on character rather than rowing achievements: Gaston Delaplane photographed in July 1911; The aristocratic looking Anatol Peresselenzeff, posing in August 1913. He was a man with French and Russian connections who also sculled for Thames Rowing Club in London; I do not know who Monsieur Pichard was but I suspect that he enjoyed his sculling. A rare unposed picture; M. Horodinsky was probably tough opposition; It looks as though the stylish M. Cheval is patiently awaiting the invention of lycra.

C’est Magnifique.

Guiseppe Sinigaglia – ‘The ‘Italian Giant’

Guiseppe Sinigaglia – ‘The ‘Italian Giant’.

Tim Koch writes,

HTBS of 29 July asked, "Is the Mystery Man the Champion Sculler Guiseppe Sinigaglia?" The answer is ‘No’. Sinigaglia was 14 stone 10 pounds (93.5 kg / 206 pounds) and 6 foot 4 inches (193 cms). This is big for modern times. By the standards of the turn of the century he was, in the words of The Times newspaper, ‘the Italian Giant’. The man in the picture is of average (or even below average) size compared to everyone else in the photograph.

What I know of Guiseppe Sinigaglia comes through my researches on the career of William ‘Wally’ Kinnear (1880-1974) the world’s best sculler in the period 1910 to 1913. The paths of the two men crossed several times.

Kinnear raced in the Coupe des Nations d’Aviron, a 4,000-metre race on the Seine in Paris, in 1912, 1913 and 1914. Though 14 lbs / 12 kg lighter and 4 inches / 10 cms shorter, he beat Sinigaglia to second place in the first two races but lost to him in 1914, claiming that a tug washed him down for part of the way. The French newspaper Le Martin reported on the 1913 race:

Kinnear showed his imposing superiority. He defeated his competition without rushing, when it suited him.

In 1965 Kinnear recalled his first Coupe des Nations in an interview recorded on audio tape by his son, Donald:

.... I met an Italian called Sinigaglia, a big 6 foot 4 man, 14 1/2 stone... to cut a long story short, I beat him. Before the race on the Seine I was introduced to a man called Deperdussin. He had a big factory on the river, he made all sorts of aircraft... He said to me if you beat this Italian I’ll present you with one of my sculling boats.... His warehouse or factory was a mile from the start and when I passed his place I was just been beaten by Sinigaglia, he went by me and I thought ‘there goes my French sculling boat’. Anyway I stuck to Sinigaglia and after another half mile .... I looked to my right hand side and there he was, beaten, stopped and that’s how I won my first Coupe de Nations.

W.D. Kinnear after winning the Coup des Nations d’Aviron in 1913. The legs are not obviously those of a champion.

Kinnear then recalled what happened after he lost in Paris in 1914:

.... Sinigaglia asked me if I was going for (Henley’s Diamond Sculls) after that, I said no I’m not, I’m finished sculling at home. So he came over for the Diamonds..... and in the final he met the man who had beat me in the first heat in 1912 when I was stale, a chap that I could scull rings round.

This was C.M. Stuart. There follows a long story about the victorious Stuart boasting that ‘he knew that he could do it’ while not acknowledging that Kinnear was over-trained in preparation for the upcoming Stockholm Olympics. Fifty years on, Kinnear was still rankled and clearly contemptuous of Stuart:

.....for the final of the (1914) Diamonds it had turned a bit cold, very cold, and being an Italian he.., they don't like cold weather... his advisor and trainer came up to me and said Sinigaglia refuses to go out for the final, he’s sitting there and you must come and talk to him.... I couldn’t talk Italian, I could talk English in my own way, and I said to his trainer, you tell him that he's a bloody coward. He told him and he flared up in a Italian way and he had to keep him off me and I said, all right just you go out, you’ve got Stuart... what are you worrying about, just because he beat me, you think you’ve got something to do, you’ve got nothing to do. All you’ve got to do is listen for my voice half way over the course and I’ll shout out ‘Now Sinigaglia!’ in my own way and you’ll hear that. Well he went, he came down the course, he was leading off the mark and he led for just a few hundred yards up the river and then he let Stuart go sailing by and Stuart was as white as a sheet and I said ‘Now Sinigaglia’ (laughs) and he just opened up and went by him and beat him anyhow. From that day I felt that I should not have done that, there was a feeling against me for some time, they had just felt that I had sponsored an Italian to win the Diamonds and beat an Englishman at Henley. But I’ve got reasons of my own for that...

Thus Kinnear claimed a share of the credit for Sinigaglia’s victory. The idea that he would not go out because it was cold seems a little unlikely but Johan ten Berg writes that Sinigaglia ‘is mentioned as one of the entries (in the 1912 Holland Beker), but as he isn’t mentioned in the results in the newspapers, he may not have started’. Johan continues, ‘In another article it states that Gerhard Nunninghof, Kölner Club für Wassersport, won a heat on walk-over as Sinigaglia did not show up at the start’. Thus the man did have a record of not turning up for his races. Nowadays, he would perhaps be treated by a sports psychologist.

More certain is that the Henley programme had the big man at 14 stone 10 pounds (93.5 kg / 206 pounds) while Stuart was down as 11 stone (70 kg / 154 pounds) so it is arguable that the Italian would have eventually passed the Englishman even without Kinnear’s inspiring call (which in any case would be rather difficult to hear on the water). Further, the account of the race in The Times newspaper of 6 July 1914 does not fully agree with Kinnear’s version:

Stuart, who rowed 37 strokes in his first minute, dashed off with the lead, the Italian doing 38. Sinigaglia hit the piles at the top of the Island and this enabled Stuart to lead by two lengths at the quarter mile. Sinigaglia reduced this by half a length at the next signal and, spurting hard, was nearly level at Fawley. A great race followed to the mile. Stuart answered his opponent’s spurts and kept just ahead. Sinigaglia sculled with great power and at the lower end of the Enclosure Stuart suddenly stopped, completely rowed out and had to be lifted from his boat onto the umpire’s launch. Sinigaglia finished alone.

(Sinigaglia’s Henley opponents had a hard time of it. In a heat against Dibble of Don Rowing Club, Toronto, on 3 July, the Canadian fell out of his boat at the finish and had to be rescued by the umpire).

The newspaper report on the final may be more accurate than Kinnear’s recollections but is not such a good story. There is a poignant conclusion to the Wally’s memories of France in the summer of 1914:

I had a good time in Paris. An English gentleman, a millionaire, took me all over the place... We had a wonderful time... we were having lunch on the Marne, on the lawn having Champagne with this gentleman and within a month the Germans had overrun this part...

Within two years of the outbreak of the First World War, Guiseppe Sinigaglia, ‘the Italian Giant’, the winner of the 1914 Coup des Nations and of the 1914 Diamond Sculls would be dead – along with millions of others. It must have seemed that ‘Champagne on the lawn’ had ended forever.

Le Martin, 4 June 1912. The order of the Coup des Nations at this stage is probably the French-Russian, Peressenlenzeff in the lead followed by Sinigaglia and then Kinnear.

Is the Mystery Man the Champion Sculler Guiseppe Sinigaglia?

A photo from the 1912 Holland Beker, which was won by Bernhard von Gaza, who is standing behind the table with the cups, wearing a hat and a victory sash. Johan ten Berg writes that ‘the little man seen on the right next to von Gaza is Gerhard Nunninghof, Kölner Club für Wassersport. Nunninghof's partner in the double scull, Paul Rosskath, is further to the right with his hands in his pockets. I suspect that the man between the two women on the right might be Georg Voth, Rostocker Ruder Club, Rostock’. The 'mystery' person in this picture is the man second on the left from von Gaza. Is this the Italian renown sculler Guiseppe Sinigaglia, the 1911 two-time European champion and later the winner of the Diamonds? (Click on the picture to enlarge it.)

Editor Johan ten Berg of the Netherlands, one of HTBS many friends, sent an e-mail with an interesting photograph from the 1912 Holland Beker, which was won by the German sculler Bernhard von Gaza (who HTBS has written about before, as an author of rowing books and as the winner of the 1911 Holland Beker, where the runner-up was the Cambridge sculler Eric Fairbairn).

The German sculler was killed during the First World War (as was Eric Fairbairn), but ‘in the 1912 picture there is possibly another rower that was killed during the War’, writes Johan. He continues, ‘the man happens to be Guiseppe Sinigaglia (S.C. Lario, Como)’ from Italy. Johan writes that he is not certain, but surfing around on the internet, finding some photographs of the Italian sculler, it might well be him in the picture. Johan writes that Sinigaglia ‘is mentioned as one of the entries [in the 1912 Holland Beker], but as he isn’t mentioned in the results in the newspapers, he may not have started’. In another article it states that Gerhard Nunninghof, Kölner Club für Wassersport, won a heat on walk-over as Sinigaglia did not show up at the start.

Is this Guiseppe Sinigaglia, asks Johan ten Berg?

Maybe a reader in Italy can help us to answer the question if the man in the photograph above is the famous Italian sculler Sinigaglia?

Guiseppe Sinigaglia might not have won the Holland Beker, but he was a very successful oarsman. In his hometown of Como, he became the 1911 European Champion first in the double scull (with Teodore Mariani) and then in the single scull, where he was described as ‘outstanding elegant’ and ‘much admired, even by his opponents’. Sinigaglia did not compete at the Olympic rowing regatta in Stockholm in July 1912, but a month later, he did race in the single scull at the European Championships in Geneva, coming second after the Belgian sculler Polydore Veirman, who had taken the Olympic silver medal in the Swedish capital, being beaten by the Scotsman Wally Kinnear. Veirman was a very good all-round oarsman who had become European champion already in 1901 in the eight.

The 1913 European Championships were held on Veirman’s homewater in Ghent. The single scull final proved to be a total fiasco: the umpire stopped the race twice and ordered two re-starts. In the end he disqualified Sinigaglia and the French sculler Peresselenzeff (of Russian origin), and as Veirman capsized, the victory went to the only sculler still afloat, Frederich Graf, the first German to become European champion. It has to be mentioned, though, that Graf, who was self-taught and never had a trainer or coach during his sculling career, had been in the lead throughout all three starts. The First World War put a stop to the 1914 European Championships, but the Italian sculler took the Diamond Challenge Cup at Henley that year, beating C.M. Stuart of Trinity Hall, Cambridge.

Wanting to serve his country, Sinigaglia signed up in the Royal Italian Army, where he in 1916 advanced to the rank of lieutenant. On 9 August 1916, he led his men in a charge at Monte San Michele. At the attack Sinigaglia was hit by Austrian fire and, badly wounded, he died the following day, 32 years old. He was awarded the Silver Medal of Military Valor, and later the stadium in Como was named after him, Stadio Giuseppe Sinigalia.

Read more about Giuseppe Sinigalia on Wikipedia, in Italian or in English.

In a newspaper on 18 February, 1915, was a report that von Gaza had been injured in his left arm by a grenade. A year later, in March 1916, the German sculler was awarded the Iron Cross. On 19 December the same year, a newspaper reported that von Gaza had died on the western front a few days earlier.

Many thanks to Johan ten Berg for sending the photographs and giving information about Sinigalia.