Book Review: Bonnie Brave Boat Rowers

Two years ago, Christopher Dodd, rowing writer and historian at the River & Rowing Museum in Henley-on-Thames, published his Pieces of Eight: Bob Janousek and his Olympians about the coach from Prague who ‘saved’ British rowing, which had hit rock bottom at the end of the 1960s. While Pieces of Eight is a 224-page book about amateur oarsmen going to the World Championships and the Olympic Games, Dodd’s most recently published book, Bonnie Brave Boat Rowers, is a thin 97-page book about, as the sub-title reads, ‘The Heroes, Seers and Songsters of the Tyne’. So not only has the author swapped rivers, so to say, instead of amateur rowers, in his new book, he is telling stories about England’s professional oarsmen and the boat builders of the Tyne during the 1800s and the beginning of the 1900s – indeed, a far cry from any Olympic Games in modern time.

By now, there is a fairly good amount of published books about the most famous professionals who started to ply their oars and sculls on the Tyne before they travelled the world for world titles and high wages, especially the latter. Of course, Harry Clasper and James Renforth are mentioned in the book, but in the first chapter Dodd writes about Jack Hopper of Hexham, a nowadays forgotten professional sculler (unless you remember Dodd’s article about him in the Regatta magazine of December 1987; which, as a matter of fact, I do).

Hopper, alias Smith of Scotswood, entered as a 20-year-old in the 1922 Newcastle Christmas Handicap with his eyes on the £100 prize money, quite a nice sum for a working lad at this time. He entered under both his real and false names to confuse the organisers and the other contenders. Though, this would be his first Christmas Handicap, Hopper was the fastest mover in any of the bookmakers’ books. He reached the semi-final, but there he was found guilty of a foul. He was also unlucky in the other Christmas Handicap races he entered, in 1923, 1924, 1927 and 1933. He never won any of these races, though he did reach the final in 1933 when he raced against Bert Barry of Putney, who, earlier in December that year, had beaten the Australian Major Goodsell for the world title. Hopper got a 15 second handicap, which would be impossible even for Barry to catch up. However, Hopper ran into the Redheugh Bridge – it seems his ‘flagger’ had lost him in the fog – so the world champion finished the race alone and claimed the prize money. Soon thereafter the handicap ‘fizzled out’.

Jack Hopper left an epitaph in 1983, Dodd writes. Hopper said: ‘As regards professional racing, there’s nothing honest about it, nothing at all.’

In the second chapter, before Christopher Dodd (on the right) embarks on telling the story of the famous boat builders on the Tyne, most of whom had been, or still were, professional rowers when they were crafting their boats and shells, he beautifully writes about the Tyne, Newcastle, its industries and the bridges in the city in a short account. When he gets to the boat builders, it is Matthew Taylor who starts the list. Taylor, a ship carpenter, who was hired by Royal Chester Rowing Club for £2:5s a week as a trainer in 1854, built an outrigger fixed-seat four, the Victoria, which had a smooth bottom, a boat with which the club took Stewards’ Challenge Cup at Henley in 1855. Taylor is credited for introducing the keel-less boat (that is with the keel inboard).

However, it is not certain that Taylor was the first one to build a keel-less boat, Dodd writes. J. B. Littledale, Royal Chester’s captain, stroke and benefactor, has also been claimed for the design, and so has Harry Clasper, whose son, Jake Clasper (a boat builder in his on right), once wrote that he coxed his father and his crew in a smooth-bottom boat at the Thames Regatta in 1849. Boat builder Robert Jewitt had a dispute with Clasper in a newspaper saying that he was the one, who in 1843, built a boat with the keel inboard. It is clear that we will never know who the first keel-less boat builder was. The Victoria – now at the River & Rowing Museum – is not the only boat mentioned in this chapter. Other famous ones, St Agne’s, The Five Brothers and Lord Ravensworth, to mention a few, are also to be found in this chapter. Another boat building company that is brought up is Swaddle and Winship, which built some famous eights for Oxford and Cambridge in the 1870s.

In “Pulling clivor on the coaly river”, the third and last chapter in Bonnie Brave Boat Rowers, we meet songwriters and singers whose songs were sung in pubs and music halls to celebrate the local professional sports heroes who by the 1860s were almost all oarsmen. As much as the writers praised the Tynesiders, they ridiculed the oarsmen from the Thames. Dodd writes: ‘They sold their latest works as pamphlets, and they did for Tynesiders what newspaper columnists, bloggers and chat shows do today.’

James Renforth

As the songwriters rejoiced in the local oarsmen’s victories, they dismayed in their defeat. When James Renforth, a former iron worker, who became world champion in the single sculler by beating the ‘southerner’ Harry Kelley on the Thames in November 1868, died at the oar during a world championship race in the four in Canada in 1871, the cable that reached the people by the Tyne was first not understood. The songwriter Joe Wilson, a friend of Renforth’s, wrote:

Ye cruel Atlantic cable,
Whay’s myed ye bring such fearful news?
When Tynesdie’s hardly yeble
Such sudden grief to bide.
Hoo me heart it beats iv’rybody greets,
As the whisper run throo dowley streets
We’ve lost poor Jimmy Renforth,
The Champein O’Tyneside!

It is always such a delight to pick up a book by Christopher Dodd, who is a master of telling stories. No one can spin a yarn of a rowing tale as well as he can. Not only is this little book incredibly well-written, some passages are even beautifully written. Congratulations and well done, Chris!

Do yourself a favour now, drop what you have in your hands, and order a copy of this book immediately – unless, you can wait till you are in Henley-on-Thames next time, which better be soon.

Bonnie Brave Boat Rowers is published by AuthorHouse: eBook: ISBN 9781491895535. Softback: ISBN 9781491895528.

eBook or Softback available from www.bonnierowers.com ; www.bookstore-authorhouse.com and all good book stores on the web.

Softback copies are also available from these shops in Henley: River & Rowing Museum, Richard Way Book Shop, Bell Bookshop, Leander Club, and Henley Royal Regatta, and all other good book shops.

Signed copies can be ordered direct from the author – send mail address and cheque for £9.95 plus postage (UK £1.17; EUR £3.70; Rest of World £4.75) to:

Christopher Dodd, River & Rowing Museum, Mill Meadows, Henley-on-Thames, RG9 1BF, UK

For more about Dodd’s books please visit www.doddsworld.org

This review was updated on 21 May, at 4:30 p.m., as I, in the first version, wrongly made Major Goodsell an American. He was an Australian, of course, which was kindly pointed out by Tom Weil ~ thanks.

The Bonny* Boats of Newcastle

The Tyne God, the symbol of the River Tyne. A carving of such appears on a wall of Tyne Rowing Club in Newburn, near Newcastle.

Tim Koch writes:

A recent HTBS posting asked about Swaddle and Winship boat builders, a Newcastle-on-Tyne firm which built much admired racing boats in the 1870s and 1880s. I cannot produce anything like the full story of the firm, but I can provide some background to their work plus some (fairly random) aspects of their history.

Newcastle’s High Level Bridge on the River Tyne, the starting point for many famous professional sculling races.

To the casual observer of British rowing history, it would be easy to get the idea that very little has happened beyond Putney and Henley or Oxford and Cambridge and I am probably one of those who are guilty of promulgating this idea. I cannot correct this is in one posting but it is true that Newcastle-on-Tyne, an industrial city in the North East of England born of mining and ship building, has made a very large contribution to the sport of rowing and to the art (or science) of boat building. By the mid-nineteenth century, rowing on the River Tyne was a massive spectator sport among ordinary working people and a lot of money was changing hands through betting. Many improvements in boat design and in rowing technique came out of Newcastle, most famously from its three favourite sons, Robert Chambers, James Renforth and, in particular, Harry Clasper.

An early painting of Harry Clasper. Rather like the painting of another Newcastle sculler, Edward Hawkes, this picture appears to have had Clasper’s head added at a later date. The depiction of the boat cannot be taken as entirely accurate either.

Professional scullers were the first sporting heroes of the industrial working class (long before soccer players took this role). These oarsmen were not the ‘gentlemen amateurs’ of London and the south, they were tough working men who needed their boats to go fast so they could make the big money that gambling brings. Then as now, for many people with a less than privileged start in life, success in sport or show business was the only conceivable way to improve their lot. For this reason (and unlike many of the conservative amateur oarsmen) professionals produced or readily adopted new innovations such as outriggers, carvel hulls, sliding seats, swivel rowlocks, overlapping handles and keel fins and adapted their rowing styles to fit the new equipment. Further, it is mostly forgotten that for a long time England had two famous ‘Championship Courses’ for boat racing. One was the 4-mile, 374-yard Putney to Mortlake course on the Thames and the other was the 3-mile, 570-yard High Level Bridge to the Scotswood Suspension Bridge course on the Tyne.

This illustration records a race typical of the calibre of those that took place on the Tyne Championship Course. After one of the greatest and most innovative of all scullers, Ned Hanlan, had become champion of Canada in 1877 and of the United States in 1878, he travelled to Britain in 1879 to take on the best the country could offer. The venue for his race against the English champion, William Elliott, was not on the Thames but was on the Tyne, before a crowd of 10,000. The Englishman used a Swaddle and Winship and Hanlan took two of the company’s boats back to the United States. The top picture shows the start at the High Level Bridge and the lower picture shows the finish at the Scotswood Suspension Bridge.

It should be of no surprise therefore that Newcastle should produce a highly respected firm of boat builders such as Swaddle and Winship. Rowing historian Eric Halladay held that by 1880 the three most important boat builders were John Hawks Clasper (a Newcastle man based in Putney), Sims of Putney and Swaddle and Winship of Scotswood, Newcastle-on-Tyne.

From references in The Times it seems that the Cambridge Boat Race crew used Swaddle’s boats from 1876 to 1883 and Oxford from 1878 to 1882. The firm’s ‘big break’ came in the 1876 University Boat Race when they built the winning craft. The quote below is from The Australian Town and Country Journal of 27 May 1876 (they may have taken it verbatim from a British publication such as Bell’s Life):

Cambridge (use) the new boat built for them by Swaddle and Winship, of Newcastle-on-Tyne, it having developed better qualities than their Searle boat... she is considerably lighter than their Searle... A novelty about the new ship is a somewhat peculiar arrangement of the ‘riggers,’ which dispenses with a consolable amount of the supporting woodwork and, as far as it can go, diminishes her weight... This is the first eight oar ever built in the north – at any rate in modern times – for either University, and should Cambridge win in her this year the firm of Swaddle and Winship is certain to become in great request, just as Clasper made his reputation as a builder by the boat in which Goldie first showed Cambridge the way to victory after a decade of defeat.

At least two of the eights Swaddle and Winship produced for the Boat Race became particularly well known, the Cambridge boat of 1877 and the Oxford boat of 1879.

Rowing historian Chris Dodd says this about the start of the 1877 ‘Dead Heat’ race it in his 1983 book, The Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race:

...the race started at 8.27am.... There was brilliant sun and a chilling wind, and Oxford had won the toss and chosen Middlesex, and were on the water first. Cambridge had a last minute panic about their Swaddle and Winship (boat). It was a short heavily cambered craft, and..... was very fast in calm water but stuck her nose into the wind if there was one, needing a great deal of rudder. The wind was from the west-northwest, the worst possible for Cambridge, and so they fixed a false keel to the boat at the last moment...

I am currently making a video for HTBS about the 1877 race and recently went to the River and Rowing Museum at Henley to interview Chris. To my delight, he produced what is alleged to be the bows of the boat made by Swaddle and Winship for CUBC in 1877. Unfortunately, it has no provenance beyond what is painted on it. It is illuminated with the names of the Oxford crew on one side and the Cambridge crew on the other. Both sides say ‘Portion of Boat used by Cambridge Crew. Dead heat.’

Allegedly the bow of the Swaddle and Winship boat used by Cambridge in the 1877 Boat Race. The Light Blue crew is recorded on the stroke (port) side....

... and the Dark Blues are on the bow (starboard) side.

As to the Oxford boat of 1879, The Times of 12 March 1884 had a report on a ‘sportsman’s exhibition’ held in London which included a display of racing boats.

The Oxford boat shown has been used in the (Boat Race) since 1879 [actually 1879 to 1882, TK], and is considered to be the best boat the Oxford crew has ever used. This was built by Swaddle and Winship of Newcastle-on-Tyne, and the same firm lent other specimens of boat building which have been used successfully in great races.

The 1879 Boat Race at Hammersmith. Between 1878 and 1882 both crews used Swaddle and Winship boats.

Of course, by implying that approval by the gentlemen amateurs of Oxford and Cambridge was the ultimate accolade, I continue to marginalise rowing outside of the south of England. My only (rather inadequate) defence is that the history of professional and north of England rowing has been sparsely recorded compared to amateur rowing in southern England.** Even successful amateurs from places like Tyneside are little remembered, men like William Fawcus of Tynemouth Rowing Club who won amateur sculling’s ‘Triple Crown’ in 1871 with victories in the Diamonds, Wingfields and Metropolitan. In his biography of Jimmy Renforth, Ian Whitehead complains that ‘He is largely forgotten by the natives of Tyneside...’

I can provide no definite information on who Mr Swaddle or Mr Winship were – though I am sure that this knowledge exists. Certainly in the late 1860s and 1870s there was a well-known oarsman called Thomas Winship, who Ian Whitehead says was from ‘a well-known Tyne rowing family’. Between 1869 and 1871 he was part of the ‘Tyne Champion Four’ with Jimmy Renforth, James Taylor and John Martin. Their most notable victory came in 1870 when defeated the St John, New Brunswick crew, champions of North America, on Lake Lachine in Quebec.

There is a lot of research still to be done (particularly by reference to local newspapers) on the contribution of Swaddle and Winship to rowing in Britain. In fact, Swaddle’s influence went further afield as many of their boats were sold abroad. The Australian Town and Country Journal of 17 September 1880 noted that ‘The cost of a Swaddle and Winship wager boat delivered in Sydney, would be about £30’ (as the boat cost £18, the cost of delivery from Newcastle to Sydney was, presumably, £12). This information comes from Trove, a splendid online resource provided by the National Library of Australia consisting of a vast collection of digitised newspapers, books and images. Trove shows that Australian papers had many references to Swaddle’s boats taking part in numerous races in Australia (and in England) between 1876 and 1889. It was not just singles that were imported, in 1882 Melbourne Rowing Club had an eight sent over. These were their ‘glory years’ when the name of ‘Swaddle and Winship’ was respected not only on the Tyne and on the Thames but also on the Parramatta and the Yarra and, no doubt, on many other famous (and not so famous) courses throughout the rowing world.

Another typical race over the Tyne Championship Course. On 3 April 1882, Ned Hanlan (in a Phelps and Peters boat) beat R.W. Boyd (in a Swaddle and Winship boat) for the titles of both World and English Sculling Champion – and for a £1,000 prize. To get an idea of what this was worth, Ian Whitehead says that in 1870 an unskilled man would earn £1 a week and a skilled man £1.50. Thus, £1,000 could mean ten years pay for twenty minutes work.

*Bonny - a term used by people from the Tyneside region of North East England meaning ‘beautiful’.

** Notable exceptions are Harry Clasper: Hero of the North (1990) and Rowing: A Way Of Life - The Claspers of Tyneside (2003) by David Clasper, The Sporting Tyne: A History of Professional Rowing (2002) and James Renforth Champion Sculler of the World (2004) by Ian Whitehead, The Tyne Oarsmen: Harry Clasper, Robert Chambers, James Renforth (1993) by Peter Dillon. Chris Dodd is currently producing a work on Tyne rowing.

Famous Scullers' Monuments

Bernard Hempseed, author of Seven Australian World Champion Scullers (see entry on 26 February, 2011) writes about famous sculler's monuments:

Further to the post on the Ned Hanlan Monument on July 29, 2010 There are several other monuments to scullers, and in particular to World Champions of the professional era.

Bill Beach
The William Beach Memorial is situated in Cabarita Park which is on the banks of the Parramatta River in Sydney. This river was the site of several of Beach’s victories, and the place where many other races of the professional era were run. Beach lived from 1850 to 1935 and the monument was erected by his friends in 1938. A copy of the programme for the unveiling of the monument can be found here. A plaque on the monument describes Beach as the “Undefeated Champion Sculler of the World.” It then lists his seven opponents, the place of each race, and the year in which each race took place. Ned Hanlan is listed as “Hanlon” which was an alternative spelling of his name and was sometimes to be found in the newspapers of the day. Above the plaque is a bronze bas-relief of the face of Beach (see photo on top) with his rather prominent moustache. Separately at the foot of the monument is a modern stainless steel plaque which discusses rowing including Trickett’s win, Henry Searle, and other racing on the river and in Sydney.

The plaque on the Beach Monument.

Edward Trickett
Trickett became World Champion in 1876. After his death in 1916 he was buried in the Uralla cemetery (New South Wales.) There, a memorial to him was erected by public subscription in 1918. Of recent times the memorial has been removed and is now in the care of the McCrossin’s Mill Museum where Trickett’s achievements are commemorated.

Henry Searle
Searle became World Champion in 1888 after beating Peter Kemp in a race in Sydney. His next race was against Canadian William O’Connor which took place on the Thames in London which Searle won. On his way back to Australia Searle caught typhoid and passed away in Australia in late 1889. A crowd estimated at 170,000 packed Sydney for his funeral service. A memorial to Henry Searle was erected in 1891 on The Brothers rocks on the Parramatta River. It consists of a plinth on which is a broken column which symbolises a life taken young. Similar columns are sometimes found in Victorian era cemeteries. (The column was manufactured to appear broken rather than being broken after erection.) The Searle Monument became the traditional finishing post for sculling and rowing races on the Parramatta. On it is a plaque but I have never been able to get close enough to read it as I have only ever passed it on a ferry. The captains of ferries are not known for being accommodating to historians. Perhaps a Sydney person could get in a boat and get close to it and take a photograph.

Three earlier era scullers are commemorated by monuments. Robert Coombes was World Champion 1846–1851 and after he died in 1860 a large monument was erected over his grave. You can read about it here.

Another Robert, this time Chambers, also had a great monument raised over his grave and a picture can be seen by clicking here. Chambers was a Tynesider who was World Champion for two periods vis; 1859–1865 and 1866–1868. He was another to die young, aged 37, in 1868.

The other famous Tynsider to become World Champion was James Renforth who gained the title in 1868. Renforth famously died in 1871 shortly after competing in a four oared race in Canada. It seems that he had an undetected heart condition possibly connected to an epileptic condition. He was even younger than Chambers being only 29 at his death. You can read about the monument raised to honour him here, and a piece by Chris Dodd about the restoration of this monument here.

James Renforth collapsing in the arms of fellow oarsman Harry Kelly.

There are a number of streets in Tennison Point, Sydney named after scullers and also some in Surfer's Paradise. Last time I was in Sydney I got in a taxi and went around these streets and took photographs of the street name signs.

There may be other monuments to scullers around the world but these are the ones I am familiar with. All these scullers (and many others, and rowers too!) have an entry on Wiki if you want further information about any of them.

Many warm thanks to Bernard for sharing these interesting stories!

Saratoga Boat Race 11 September 1871

Regarding Bill Lanouette’s entry on 29 January, 2011, about the professional sculler John Biglin (seen above in a waterclour by Thomas Eakins), HTBS’s Tim Koch in London looked for Biglin in the London Times archives and found two articles, “a brief report on 2nd September 1871 of a race in Halifax, Nova Scotia is mostly of interest because it says that 50,000 spectators watched the event. The report of 29th September 1871 further illustrates the great interest that there was in rowing at the time by its in depth coverage,” Tim writes, which is, as he also states, “very different to today.”

Regarding the latter article, it was taken from The New York Times about a regatta in Saratoga on 11 September, 1871. Competing at this regatta in fours were the Biglin brothers, the Ward brothers, the Dutchess County crew, and two boats from England, the Taylor-Winship crew and the Tyne crew, “who pulled along leisurely in white jerseys with black ties round their throats, in memory of their deceased comrade Renforth.” Poor James Renforth had died just after a race in St. Johns, Canada, on 23 August the same year.

Following are two articles from The New York Times about the Saratoga Boat Race, about the preparations of the regatta and an introduction of the crews, published on 8 September and another article with results, published on 13 September. Enjoy!

James Renforth of Gateshead Champion Sculler of the World

In 2002 Ian Whitehead, Keeper of Maritime History at Tyne & Wear Museums, published The Sporting Tyne - A History of Professional Rowing, in which he told the story of the greatest oarsmen on the River Tyne: Harry Clasper, Robert Chambers, and James Renforth. This latest offering is a biography of just one of those men, James Renforth, born in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1842. With no school education, Renforth became a smith’s striker, and in early 1866 started ferrying the workers demolishing the old Tyne Bridge. Later that year, he won his first sculling race.

Rowing was a growing sport in the mid-1800s, and professional rowing caught the eye of the working class, especially for placing bets. As Whitehead puts it ‘professional rowing was all about money’. Renforth quickly showed that he was among the best and became a popular sporting hero. In November 1868, just two and a half years after his novice race, he defeated Harry Kelley – the champion and top London sculler – for the Championships of the World; for the Tynesiders there was a special joy that the loser was a ‘Cockney’ from the Thames. The stake was £200 – equivalent to £40,000 today!

At the Paris International Regatta in 1867, a Canadian four won a race in great style, but in 1870 the same crew – known as ‘the Paris four’ – lost a race for the World Championships to Renforth and his crew. After the race, Renforth fell out with his fellow oarsmen, and he turned to his great rival, Harry Kelley, to row a pair instead; it was a rare Tyne-Thames alliance.

In a re-match with the Canadians on 23 August 1871 on the Kennebeccasis River at St John, New Brunswick, Renforth stroked a new crew that included Kelley, to an apparently easy victory. But suddenly, in mid race, Renforth called out ‘Harry, Harry, I have had something!’. He collapsed at his oar, the crew rowed ashore, and hours later the most distinguished rower of his time was dead; he was just twenty-nine.

Stories of this race have been told many times, but one great value of this book is that Whitehead discusses why Renforth died – was he poisoned or did he die of natural causes? With so much money involved, professional rowing was known for its ‘dirty tricks’. Whitehead also brings up a third possibility: drug abuse. He dismisses this, however, as there is no evidence of drug-use in Renforth’s life. But the rower did suffer from epilepsy and it is likely that his ‘sudden unexplained death’ was a complication of that illness. The champion’s fate came as a tremendous shock to the Tynesiders. Some lines in a contemporary music hall song go: ‘We’ve lost poor Jimmy Renforth,/ The Champein of all Champeins,/ The hero of all rivers, far an’ near.’

Ian Whitehead is to be congratulated for his excellent, well-written, and nicely illustrated biography of the most prominent oarsman of the era. It is to be hoped that it reflects a renaissance in a wider interest in professional rowing and sculling.

James Renforth of Gateshead, Champion Sculler of the World by Ian Whitehead; published by Tyne Bridge Publishing, 2004.

This review was published in Maritime Life and Traditions, No. 26, Spring 2005.