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….

Americans At Henley In 1895

This drawing from the archive of Life Magazine depicts an event that comes with a good story that, although it has been told many times, is worth telling again. In 1895, Cornell University was going to compete at the Henley Royal Regatta for the first time. The American eight, however, was going to experience what R.D. Burnell calls, in his Henley Regatta (1957), “one of those unfortunate episodes.”

In the first round of the Grand Challenge Cup, Cornell was meeting the favourites, Leander, who had won this event four years in succession. The two crews seemed ready at the stake boats, but when the umpire called out “Are you ready?” several of the oarsmen in the Leander boat called out “No!” The umpired did not hear this and yelled “Go!” Cornell started, while some of the English oarsmen took one stroke and then stopped. They were counting on that the umpire was going to call back the Americans for a re-start. However, the umpire thought Leander made a bad start and allowed the Americans to go on. With Leander still at the start, Cornell crossed the finish line, winning the race.

Among the Henley crowd, it was commonly considered that the Americans, when they saw that their opponents did not start, should have stopped rowing. When they failed to do so, they were regarded to have shown unsportsmanlike manners. “Moreover,” Henry Bond writes in A History of Trinity Hall Boat Club (1930), “[the Americans were rowing] in a style, taught them by their professional coach, quite at variance with English doctrines.” The Americans’ coach was Charles Courtney, who had been a very successful amateur, then professional, sculler before he was hired to train Cornell’s oarsmen. It did not help that Courtney would not fraternize with the rest of the rowing community at Henley, which was also seen as a mark of incivility.

The drawing is showing the next day’s semi-final race between Trinity Hall and Cornell, where the Cambridge crew did the impossible; they rowed Cornell to a stand-still, or as Bond writes, that ‘the Hall’ “began to gain steadily, and when they were passed, Cornell collapsed, and the Hall paddles in amid the greatest noise ever heard at the Regatta.” Burnell states, that the town of Henley was very noisy that night. The Americans’ battle-cry “Cornell, Cornell, I yell Cornell” was now defied with the newly coined “The Hall, the Hall, I bawl the Hall.”

In the final the following day, the Hall beat New College in a great race.

A footnote is that there was actually a countryman to the Americans in the Trinity Hall boat. No. 6 was B.H. Howell of New York. He would later become more known as a victorious sculler in the Diamonds and the Wingfields, but that is another story.

A Suitable Bachelor?

Among the many exciting rowing images in the archive of Life Magazine (see entry on 1 December), I have picked one where the main interest is some of the spectators, not the rowing race which is going on in the background. I do not know from which magazine or paper this drawing is taken, but two scribbles, one on the left, saying “March”, and one on the right, saying “1872”. It is showing a scene from the day of The Boat Race, or as the sub-title reads: “The Oxford and Cambridge Boat-Race: an ex-university oarsman looking on”.

If we were without the sub-title, we would still understand that it was an image of The Boat Race, as the scruffy-looking man in the lower right-hand corner is selling flowers with bands in the colours of the two crews. He has two bands around his hat saying ‘Cambridge’ and ‘Oxford’.

The key person in the picture is the “ex-university oarsman,” an ‘old Blue’, who is dressed in a black coat and top-hat. The white collar around his neck reveals that his is a clergyman. His eyes are staring out towards the activities on the river, and he seems unaware of the stir his good-looks are making among the women around him in the crowd. The ladies, all from the upper-classes, have totally lost interest in the boat race, instead almost ogling the young man’s noble face with a Roman nose, steady, clear eyes, a ‘Cary Grant’ chin, and side-whiskers; the latter a fashion of the day.

In an earlier entry, called “The Female Spectator”, posted on 28 September, I have brought up the interface between the young women as on-lookers and the young men rowing. In this case, with the image above, the ‘masculine ideals’ can be found in an ex-oarsman among the audience.

(The actual boat race was rowed on 23 March, 1872, and Cambridge won with three boat lengths!)

"Life Magazine" Pictures

One reason for me posting and publishing texts and images on this blog is to let everyone in on my passion for rowing history. I cannot understand those sport historians who ‘lock up’ their treasures and knowledge only to be admired behind closed doors by a select few devotees. Luckily, the rowing historians I know do not belong to these narrow-minded individuals. Instead they can be counted in the lot of sharing people.

One good example of the latter group is Tim Koch of Auriol Kensington RC in London, who sent me an e-mail a couple of days ago where he very kindly asked if I was aware of the Life Magazine’s archives which went on-line last year. He writes, ‘If you put “rowing” in the search you get some great old rowing prints and photographs (in full size and high resolution if you click twice).’

So I did, and I can only agree with Tim, what marvellous things you can come across. One of Tim’s favourites you can see above, while I will take a closer look and post some of mine on a later occasion. You, dear reader, will be able to make your choice by clicking here (put in ‘rowing’ in the search box).

Many thanks to Tim!