Ran Laurie – The Man with the Narrow Blade?

Ran Laurie stroking the 1936 Cambridge crew. Jack Wilson in 7-seat and Noel Duckworth coxing.

After my review of Daniel James Brown’s brilliant book The Boys in the Boat (on HTBS on 19 August), he and I have had some fruitful e-mail exchanges about rowing, a sort of continuing ‘discussion’ that, in a way, started when we first met at one of his book signings in Connecticut in June. One of the things that we have chatted about is the stroke’s ‘narrow-blade-question’. In his book, Brown writes,

In the British boat, Ran Laurie dug furiously at the water. He was still relatively fresh. He wanted to do more. But like many British strokes in those days, he was wielding an oar with a smaller, narrower blade than the rest of his crew – the idea being that the stroke’s job was to set the pace, not to power the boat. With the small blade, he avoided the risk of burning himself out and losing his form. (p. 312)

I have a hard time believing that Ran Laurie, one of the great Cambridge strokes before the Second World War, had a smaller, narrower blade than the rest of his crew in an important race like the Olympic final, which I mentioned in my review on 19 August. I also contacted some of my rowing history colleague, who, like me, had never heard of such a thing (this, of course, does not mean that it did not exist!).

William George Ranald ‘Ran’ Mundell Laurie

Then, the other day I received an e-mail from Brown where he told me that, while he is now preparing the paperback edition of The Boys in the Boat which is coming out next year, he had found the source for Ran Laurie’s ‘narrow blade’: Stanley Pocock’s book “Way Enough!” – Recollections of a Life in Rowing (2000). In his autobiography, George Pocock’s son, Stan, writes,

Speaking of different-sized blades and the effect of wind on the load reminds me of an incident at the Berlin Olympics. In those days, it was not uncommon for a coach to reduce the size of the stroke man’s blade to make sure he didn’t row himself out – the rest of the crew could provide the horsepower; the stroke’s job was to set the pace. In the first heat, the British pushed the Americans to a new Olympic record in a following wind. On the day of the Finals there was a head wind blowing, and the Americans, in winning, left the Brits (who had made it through the repêchage) far behind. Afterward, their stroke [Ran Laurie] told Dad [George Pocock] that he had not been able to pull hard enough to row himself out. The lighter water caused by the head wind had rendered his small blade too small. (p. 77)

So there it is, in black and white – well, I’ll be damned!

But, then again, I am still a little skeptical. Although, if it is correct what Stan Pocock writes, it was probably the coach that decided that the British stroke in the eight should row with a narrow blade, not Laurie himself, but I am incredibly surprised that a coach would tell an oarsman on that level that he should save himself and let the rest of the crew deliver the power in the boat. I believe that I have read most of what there is to read about this exceptional oarsman, and Laurie does not seem to have been a man who was cutting corner in his rowing career. He was a very powerful oarsman. About Ran Laurie, his son Hugh writes:

I remembered rowing a pair with my father. I was a teenager in full-time training, six foot three and fourteen stone, he was GP in his mid-fifties who did a spot of gardening, and I had to go like hell to keep the boat straight. The power, and the will, was almost frightening. He simply never paddled light. He would jump off that stretcher as if he meant to break it.
(p. 79 in Battle of the Blues: The Oxford & Cambridge Boat Race from 1829, ed. Christopher Dodd & John Marks; 2004)

Ran Laurie and Jack Wilson after they crossed the finish line as Olympic champions in the pair in 1948 on the Henley course.

It is said that Ran Laurie always believed that if his great friend and rowing partner, Jack Wilson, whom he had rowed with at Cambridge, had been a member of the 1936 British Olympic eight, Great Britain would have taken the gold medal. Unfortunately, Wilson had already left England for his new job in Sudan Political Service when it was time for the Olympic rowing.

After coming home to England from the Berlin Games, Noel Duckworth, the cox of the British eight, wrote a critical account in The Cambridge Review:

The crew which was chosen was at best a patched-up affair. The crew lacked life, dash and determination because it had spent all its enthusiasm and energies previously at Henley. If only a crew had been chosen a good time before the Games and had used Henley as a canter preliminary to hard racing, England would have won. But as it was, against the quasi-professional continental crews this thin, emaciated, time-worn crew stood no chance.
(From Michael Smyth’s Canon Noel Duckworth: An Extraordinary Life; 2012, p. 23)

Duckworth should know these things. He had coxed three winning Cambridge crews against Oxford in the Boat Race, all three years with Ran Laurie (and Jack Wilson) in the boat, in 1934, 1935 and 1936. Laurie also took the 1934 Grand Challenge Cup at Henley in the colours of Leander (with Duckworth as coxswain) by stroking his crew in a new record time in their first heat, overpowering London Rowing Club at 6 min. 45 sec. Next day, Leander knocked off another second by defeating Thames Rowing Club. In the final, Leander had no problems beating Princeton University, winning in 6 min. 45 sec.

Laurie did not row for Leander at the 1935 Henley Regatta. Instead, he stroked his college, Selwyn College, in their attempt to take the Ladies’ Challenge Cup. In the first round, they beat St. Edmund Hall, Oxford, but lost in the second round to Radley College. He also rowed with Jack Wilson in the Silver Goblets that year. They won their first heat, but withdrew after that. Wilson, however, took a cup at Henley that year, as he was in the Pembroke College crew which took the Grand.

In 1936, Laurie was back in a Leander crew again, when he stroked the Leander eight for the Grand. In the crew was also: bow A.D. Kingsford, 2. F.M.G. Stammens, 3. M.P. Lonnon, 4. T.G. Askwith, 5. J.C. Cheery, 6. J.M. Couchman, 7. D.J. Wilson [this is not Jack Wilson!] and cox D.R. Rose. They lost in the final, on 4 July, 1936, to an excellent crew from Ruder Club, Zürich, Switzerland. Despite the British eight's loss at Henley, the crew was picked to represent Great Britain at the Olympic rowing regatta thirty-nine days later, however, with some changes in the crew. Instead of Stammens and Wilson, Desmond Kingsford and Hugh Mason were picked to row in the Olympic eight. (Mason had rowed in the winning Cambridge boat earlier that spring). Duckworth took the cox place instead of Rose for the Olympics.


Here is a short clip of the Cambridge crew training for the 1936 Boat Race.

Back to the ‘narrow-blade-question’ – was this, then, a 1930s English habit? No, it seems not to have been. According to Brown again, it was also used by Harvard. In an unsigned article that Brown has found, and kindly shared with me, in The Harvard Crimson of 15 June, 1929, the Crimson stroke James Lawrence used a narrow blade, as Brown writes in his e-mail, ‘in order to conserve energy’:

The selection of Lawrence has raised high hopes among many of the Crimson followers since his previous record as stroke of the Junior Varsity crew indicates that at least he will be able to display the endurance necessary to handle the raise of heat at the end of the race. While not pulling as strong an oar as other oarsmen who have been previously tried out this season in the stroke seat, the favor of a narrow oar, such as was employed by John Watts '28 last year, may remedy the situation and allow him the reserve necessary for the final effort.

(To read the entire article, please click here.)

I do have a better understanding for a narrower stroke blade in this case, simply because the battle between the varsity crews of Harvard and Yale is a four-mile race (6,437 metres), not 1.9812-metre race – according to the official report of the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, 6,500 feet was the ‘regulation length’. This has, as we know, been changed to 2,000-metre which is the distance at the Olympic rowing these days.

I do not think that the last thing has been written here on HTBS about the 1920s and 1930s use of narrow-blade for a crew’s stroke. I welcome more information about this practice, so please contact us if you have any ideas or more sources on this ~ thank you.

Thanks to Daniel James Brown for sharing his find about Ran Laurie's narrow blade and the article in The Harvard Crimson.

One Push...

In a September 2006 interview in Life Magazine, Hugh Laurie said about his famous rowing father, Ran Laurie:

My father didn’t deliberately coin aphorisms. He was far too modest a man to think that anyone would be writing down his profundities. I do remember him saying some very good things like “Any idiot can win.” That’s always stayed with me. What he meant was “Winning doesn’t actually teach you anything.” You win. End of story. But the losing and how you deal with it and what you take from it - that’s the interesting bit.

The whole thing about rowing is that you’re facing the wrong way. If you fall behind, you can’t see who’s winning. That starts to mess with your head: how you keep in contact until you push for the finish line.

My father and I were discussing these very strategic pushes and he said: “Well, you could do all that, but I remember when I rowed, we’d just have one push. You put everything into that one push, and if it doesn’t work, well, we all lose some races.” The funny thing about it was, he never did lose any races. He won everything. But I thought it was a wonderful way of looking at life: You have one big push. Put everything you’ve got into it. If it doesn’t work, well, we all lose some races. If you’re trying to hold back, if you don’t commit, you’re never going to get results.

Clever man, that Laurie Senior….

Hugh Laurie 'Crewed...'?

Here is a short clip from the Craig Ferguson Show. Hugh Laurie explains the motivation in rowing, and although he has now been in the U.S. for quite some time, he still has a problem with 'crewing'...

Enjoy!

Men Of A Certain Breed

In the book Battle of the Blues (ed. Christopher Dodd & John Marks; 2004) the actor and comedian Hugh Laurie writes about his famous father, Ran Laurie, who rowed in three winning Boat Races for the Light Blues between 1934 and 1936, and took the Grand at Henley for Leander in 1934. Ran Laurie also stroked the British eight that took a fourth place in the eight at the Berlin Olympic Games. After World War II, in 1948, Ran Laurie and his rowing partner, Jack Wilson, both came back to England after a career in the Colonial Service in Sudan. They later that year took an Olympic gold medal in the pair at the Olympic rowing event in Henley-on-Thames.

Hugh Laurie writes in Battle of the Blues (p. 79),

"I have a picture over my desk of my father and Jack Wilson receiving their gold medal on the pontoon at Henley in 1948. Jack is loose-limbed and dashing, my father ramrod straight to attention. I think it describes the two of them very well - or perhaps each is describing a part of the other - for these were two really remarkable men. Tough, modest, generous and, I like to think, without the slightest thought of personal gain throughout their entire lives. A vanished breed, I honestly believe."

Hugh Laurie also talks about his father on the British television-show Parkinson (this was before his "House" days...) how he did not know that his father, who clearly was a very modest man, was an Olympic rowing champion. So when his parents suggested that the three of them were to go on a fishing trip, with his father at the oars, young Laurie very skeptically asked his mother: "Does he know how to row?"

Hugh Laurie, who tried to follow in his father's footsteps - or should I say wake - at the oars, confesses that he is 'not made of the same stuff.' My own father was not an oarsman, though he supported my Swedish rowing club, when I became a member. I came to think of my father earlier today. He and Ran Laurie were of the same generation, and I can only agree with Hugh Laurie, men of that generation were of a certain breed.

Here is a clip with Hugh Laurie on the Parkinson show:

Movies With Tenuous Rowing Connections

HTBS special correspondent in London, Tim Koch writes:

The Social Network may be the most recent example of films that have a small rowing connection. The now defunct ‘Tideway Slug’ has listed many here.

I recently saw a film (not on the slug’s list as it shows no images of rowing) that contains two things of aquatic note. Firstly, the only rowing song of any fame or merit, the Eton Boating Song, and, secondly, my favourite definition of Henley Regatta.

North West Frontier is a 1959 British production set in India under British rule. Typically for a film of this period, the British are either heroic (Kenneth Moore, an army captain) or lovable (Wilfrid Hyde-White playing himself, as usual) while the ‘foreigners’ are either sinister (Herbert Lom, made up to appear half Indian) or comical (I.S. Johar, who played Gupta, the faithful Indian train driver). Lauren Bacall, playing an American nanny, was excused the sinister / comical rule on account of her glamour. The plot centres around the attempt to get a young Indian Prince to safety on an old steam train while perused by rebellious tribesmen. Gupta is hurt and Moore gives him a lady’s parasol to shelter under. “Here you are old Gupta, you are ready for Henley Regatta” he jokes. Gupta is puzzled. “Please sahib (a respectful form of address for a European man), who is Henry Regatta?” Moore laughs. “It’s not a ‘who’ Gupta, it’s a ‘what’. The most sahib sahibs in England put on a lot of silly little hats and row them selves up and down a river.” Gupta is amused. “That is very funny sahib, why do they do that?” Moore is a little weary. “I’m not sure, it’s one of the things I left England to get away from… but there is a rather nice little song that goes with it…..” He proceeds to sing part of the ‘Eton Boating Song’ while getting sympathetic looks from Gupta.

Jolly boating weather,
And a hay harvest breeze,
Blade on the feather,
Shade off the trees,
Swing, swing together,
With your bodies between your knees,
Swing, swing together,
With your bodies between your knees.

The song was composed for Eton’s ‘Fourth of June’ Celebrations (see HTBS 11th May 2010) in 1863. The full lyrics are here.

You can hear an Eton College choir sing it here.

Hugh Laurie (Old Etonian and Cambridge Blue) calls it “a bizarre homoerotic anthem” but sings the first verse here.

The song is ripe for parody. Most recently a satirical TV programme produced the Eton Voting Song which also contains some nice archive of the inscrutable Eton Wall Game.

If you are so inclined, a simple internet search will find many obscene versions, notably ‘The Sexual Life of a Camel’.

More Laurie

Talking about Hugh Laurie, when I was writing my previous entries about Hugh Laurie and his famous rowing father, Ran Laurie, I was desperately looking for an old issue of the Telegraph Magazine, which I knew that I should have in my archives (please read “messy piles of rowing stuff which is all over the place…”). I remember that Hugh Laurie was on the cover of the magazine, which was in the published mid-1990s.

Well, the other day, when I was looking for some rowing things in the closet off my Rowing Room, I found a box with old magazines – and there it was! The magazine, from 4 May 1996, which was a supplement to The Daily Telegraph, has a feature article about Laurie written by Lynn Barber Tangles. This is the time when he and Stephen Fry had finished their fourth round of the very popular Jeeves and Wooster series, and Laurie’s novel The Gun Seller had just been published.

Laurie says in the article that he thinks it is his Presbyterian upbringing that has made him feel guilty that he never had to pay any great price for being successful. He says about his father, who was still alive at that time, “my father, who is a man of extraordinary gifts and great accomplishments and really a heroic figure […] is the most modest man alive. If there is any queue that he can stand absolutely at the back of, he will find it. So that was the prevailing attitude. And I still admire that, I admire it in my father and I admire it generally, but it just so happens that in this particular career I’ve chosen it’s not actually very practical.”

In the interview, Hugh Laurie mentions that he showed his father The Gun Seller, which he dedicated to him, before it was published. Ran Laurie got upset on the number of invectives in the book, so Hugh Laurie decided to re-read the novel, “Oh God,” he says in the article, “there are quite a few, actually. More than my father would like to read.” So, being a good son, he took them out.

That is one thing I like about Hugh Laurie, he is such a nice and decent chap.

Rowing Interview about Laurie's "House"

As I have written about the British actor Hugh Laurie earlier on this blog, it might interest you that, today, "row 2k" published an interview with Princeton Heavyweight coach Greg Hughes as he and one of his crews are the ones you see rowing on the river in the beginning of the show, "House". To read the interview, click here.

Hugh Laurie's Henley article

As I mentioned in an entry on May 31, the actor Hugh Laurie has published a funny article, “Traffic, trivia and daylight snobbery”, about the Henley Royal Regatta in The Sunday Telegraph on July 2, 1990. Here is the beginning of the article.

“Well, Henley Royal Regatta has come round again. If the two words that spring to your lips on hearing this news are “so” and “what”, more or less in that order, I shall not hold it against you. Although I have competed in the Regatta three times, and been a spectator since I was cork-high to a Jeroboam, I’d be the first to admit that Henley is a very peculiar institution.
The last time I raced at Henley was in 1980, in the final of the Silver Goblets. It was a very bad year to pick. The regatta had been overrun by the American Olympian squad who were looking to kick some sand into English faces after their boycott of the Moscow Games.
With my partner, James Palmer, I squared up to two brothers by the name of Borscheldt, [sic M. & F. Borchelt] who were 19 feet tall and made entirely of Kevlar. Or maybe they were called Kevlar and made of Borscheldt, I can’t remember. Anyway, they were munching canapés on the flight back to Boston by the time we finished.
Soon after that defeat I hung up my rowing trousers and beat my oar into a ploughshare, but to this day I cannot shake off a considerable fascination with Henley. It is, as I said, a very peculiar institution.
But by golly it is a popular. Nowadays, something like half a million people visit it each year. You could explain this by saying that Henley is an important part of the ‘social calendar’, but how many of us own one of those, or would even know where to buy one?"

The Rowing Lauries

One of the most popular TV-series in America right now is House, where the British actor, Hugh Laurie, plays the very rude but brilliant-minded Dr. Gregory House. I have been a fan of Laurie for a long time, and although I enjoy watching him in House, as a P. G. Wodehouse reader, my favourite TV-series, with Laurie in the lead role, is Jeeves and Wooster. In an interview with the magazine Parade in April 2009, Laurie says that his father was a respected doctor, but that he, Laurie the younger, has “made a lot more money as a fake doctor than my father ever did for all his hard work.”

Like his father, William George Ranald Mundell Laurie - “Ran” Laurie, for short – Hugh Laurie rowed for Cambridge getting his Blue in 1980, where his boat lost to Oxford with a trifle of 1,5 metres. Click below to see a couple of seconds of that race:




Hugh Laurie also competed at the Junior World Championships in 1977, and at the Henley Royal Regatta in the coxless pairs in 1980. About the last race, and his “fascination with Henley”, he wrote a very funny article in, I think, The Sunday Telegraph on 2 July 1990:

“The last time I raced at Henley was in 1980, in the final of the Silver Goblets. It was a very bad year to pick. The regatta had been overrun by the American Olympian squad who were looking to kick some sand into English faces after their boycott of the Moscow Games.
With my partner, James Palmer, I squared up to two brothers by the name of Borscheldt, [sic M. & F. Borchelt] who were 19 feet tall and made entirely of Kevlar. Or maybe they were called Kevlar and made of Borscheldt, I can’t remember. Anyway, they were munching canapés on the flight back to Boston by the time we finished.”

If Hugh Laurie is now a famous actor, his father will still be the more famous oarsman of the two. Ran Laurie, born in 1915, rowed in three victorious Cambridge boats, 1934, 1935, and 1936. Laurie stroked the two last ones to easy wins. Jack Wilson, who would become a great friend of Laurie’s, was in the same three crews. When Laurie stroked the British eight to a fourth place at the Olympic Games in Berlin in 1936, with Wilson not in the boat, Laurie “attributed the difference between first and fourth place at the Olympics to Wilson’s absence from the crew,” Christopher Dodd writes in his obituary of Ran Laurie (The Independent, 10 October 1998).

Both Laurie and Wilson joined the Sudan Political Service in 1936. Two years later, in 1938, when both men were on leave, they entered the Silver Goblets at Henley for fun, and won the final easily. Laurie had earlier won the Grand Challenge Cup for eights at Henley in 1934. Laurie and Wilson both stayed in Sudan during the Second World War, but when they both came back to England with their families, they returned to Henley in 1948 for a second go at the Silver Goblets – and won easily again! As Henley was a qualification regatta for the Olympic rowing events in Henley later that year, the “Desert Rats”, as they came to be known, suddenly found themselves representing their country at one of the prime rowing races in the world. They trained at Cambridge for four weeks – and drew extra food rations – and in the Olympic race they managed, according to Laurie, to have “the best row we ever had” winning the Olympic title with a length.

Their shell is now on display at the River and Rowing Museum in Henley-on-Thames. It would take 40 years before another British boat would take an Olympic gold medal in the coxless pairs, this time the winners were Steve Redgrave and Andy Holmes in Seoul in 1988.

Jack Wilson, born in 1914, died a year before Ran Laurie, in 1997. As a matter of fact, Wilson was born in Bristol, Rhode Island of British parents. Next time my family and I drive through Bristol, I will take off my hat in respect.