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!

John Biglin, The Hard-Assed Coach?

Rowing historian Bill Lanouette of Washington DC now and then sends an e-mail with some interesting facts. This morning, I received a photograph from him. The picture is showing the professional oarsman and coach John Biglin with the Amherst College crew in 1872. Bill writes, “Biglin glowers at the camera while his college boys seem to flit and flutter about. Under his savage training they won a race in a regatta in Springfield in 1872. Hard to believe from this photo.” Bill continues, “Doesn't Biglin look like a hard-assed coach? The press said his training methods were ‘decidedly savage’ and you can feel it in his glare.”

Indeed you can. Thank you for sharing this great photo with the readers of HTBS, Bill! The photograph is from Armherst College Archives.

An October Race 131 Years Ago

The other day rowing historian Bill Lanoutte of Washington DC sent me an e-mail with an article from Omaha Daily Bee, Saturday October 10, 1874. On the front cover of the paper is a report of a race on the Hudson between professional scullers John Biglin (picture from Daily Graphic 16 July 1873) and Joseph Ten Eyck (in the article as ‘Teneyck’). This 131-year-old article reads:

A large crowd of sporting men assembled this morning to witness the great boat race between Joseph Teneyck and John Biglin, distance three miles, for $1,000 and the State championship. At 9 o’clock preparations were made for the contest.

Charlie Ward was selected as judge for Biglin, and Thomas Lewis for Teneyck. Commodore Voorhees was appointed referee. At 9:20 Teneyck launched his shell, and a few minutes later Biglin rowed up to the starting point. The betting, which had been at $100 to $80 on Biglin, was now $100 to $60.

Teneyck took the lead at the start but was soon passed by Biglin, who rowed a much more powerful stroke.

At the coal dock, half a mile from the start, Biglin was leading Teneyck by half a length, and the latter struggling hard to again lead. As boats approached the upper stake boat Biglin began to ease up, and Teneyck by a powerful spurt drew up to a level with Biglin, when the latter shot his boat to the front and turned his stake boat, one mile and a half from the starting point in eleven minutes. The return race was an exciting one, Teneyck drew up level with Biglin and a hard struggle ensued for the first position; here Biglin’s splendid staying qualities began to tell, and he took the lead and won the race. Time 23 minutes; Teneycke’s time was 33:02.

My thanks to Bill for sharing his find!

Birthday Girl!

Today’s entry is another very personal one: our daughter, Ingrid, is turning 8 years old. Earlier today, my dear wife snapped a photo of Ingrid, standing below a poster of the professional oarsman John Biglin. This is, indeed, very appropriate, as this image, painted by Thomas Eakins in 1873, probably is the first ‘image’ that Ingrid recognized as a young child.

At the two previous houses we lived in, from the time Ingrid was a baby to a 5-year-old girl, we had this poster hanging above the staircase between the first and second floor. Each morning, when I took her down to the kitchen for breakfast, we would pass the Eakins print. It became a ritual to say to Ingrid every morning: ‘Ingrid. Say good morning, John Biglin!’ And sometimes, she did.

Then in 2005, when I was sitting on the sofa in the living room, admiring an article that I just had managed to get published in a magazine – an article about the American sculler Charles Courtney and the decline of professional sculling in the U.S. – Ingrid came climbing up on the sofa and onto my lap, asking: ‘What are you doing, Papa?’ I answered as off-handedly as I could: ‘Oh, it is just a little article I got published, and…’ when Ingrid suddenly interrupted me, screaming for joy, ‘Look, look, Papa, there is a picture of John Biglin!’ And right she was, that cute girl. There was an illustration of John Biglin, not the one in oil, but one of the water-coloured ones Eakins painted of his friend. She made her father very proud.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY - sweet girl!

To Be, Or Not To Be... A Blogger

Against better judgment I have become a blogger.

If you would have told me a couple of months ago that I would start a blog, I would have called you insane, a liar, or something even worse. But things can change in life.

After my contract as boating coordinator for one of the local rowing clubs along the Mystic River came to an end, and with that, my responsibility to write and edit the club’s newsletter, I was without a continuing forum to write about rowing and its rich history. One of my rowing friends (I do hope he allows me to call him that), Tom Sanford, a true gentleman of the old rowing breed, sent me a very kind e-mail saying that he would miss my writing on rowing and was there no other way that I could continue…

Well, I wish I could say that there was a heap of newspapers and magazines in line begging me to write for them about rowing - but there is not. If it had not been that Per Ekström, the Editor-in-Chief for the Swedish rowing magazine Svensk Rodd, is a very dear friend of mine, I would probably not be asked to contribute to that quarterly publication either.

And let us face it, how many rowing periodicals are there around these days? There is the Rowing News (formerly Independent Rowing News) in New Hampshire and ARA’s Rowing & Regatta in England, and Rachel Quarrell’s and Chris Dodd’s eminent online Rowing Voice, but that is more or less it. Even the New York Times stopped publishing their small notes on rowing news in the sport section a couple of years ago – not that I ever wrote for that newspaper, though.

For a couple of years, I had some small articles and reviews on rowing books published in the beautiful Maritime Life and Traditions, which was a magnificent American/British magazine that ceased to be in 2006. Before that I had been a regular contributor for a newspaper in Sweden whose culture editor allowed me to write whatever I wanted for his pages. Of course I took the opportunity to write about all kinds of different aspects of rowing as a culture phenomenon: there were articles about Thomas Eakins’s paintings showing the professional rowers, the Biglin brothers; James Tissot’s lovely painting depicting his mistress Kathleen Newton in On the Thames, (also known as Return from Henley); the Swedish author Frans G. Bengtsson’s Viking novel The Long Ship, which has some humorous rowing segments; the opening of the River and Rowing Museum in Henley-on-Thames, etc.

By the way, that paper also went down the pipes. I sincerely hope that these publications’ failings had nothing to do with my writing…

So, when I had not been writing for a week or two, and got rather grumpy, my dear wife, who is a blogger par excellence, gave me the idea that I would maybe like to start a blog on rowing history, and well, here I am blogging away, although, I should know better…