Oarsmanship By An Eton House Master?

In an attempted to solve the mystery with the pamphlet Oarsmanship, (see Friday's & Saturday's entries) I send an e-mail to rowing historian, Tom Weil, who quickly sent back a reply. Tom writes:

"Regarding your pamphlet Oarsmanship: I was, at first, given my confidence that my bibliography lists almost everything at this point, and my recollection of a couple of pamphlets with rather simple titles, fairly optimistic about being able to answer your question. No such luck.

Of course, the limitation “For private circulation only” offers two consolations: first, that it was not made commercially available, and, second, that the number of copies may have been extremely limited. Nevertheless, it is humbling, as always, to stumble upon another unknown printing.

My best guess is that this little pamphlet was written by one of the house masters at Eton sometime 1900-1930, and distributed to the boys of his house. The principal clue is the Spottiswoode et al. publisher - they are particularly linked to Eton publications."

Thank you, Tom! It is of course thrilling to think that I might have a rare publication piece in my collection. At one point, I thought it might have been a small thing written by R.S. de Havilland, ‘Harrvy’ (on the right), who in 1913 came out with his famous little pamphlet Elements of Rowing, which was published by Spottiswoode, but the writing style (and rowing style, for that matter…) is not Harrvy’s.

Is there any more takers out there?

The Bournes: 3 - The Theoretical Coach

Bob Bourne’s father Gilbert Charles Bourne, was born in 1861. At the age of six, the family doctor declared him unfit for sports as he had a heart disease. However, at a new medical examination at Eton, young Bourne was given a ‘clean bill of health’. He immediately began to row competitively but, as The Time’s obituary put it, “as his style was unpleasing to the authorities, he was given only a humble position in Lower Boat choices.” It all changed in the spring of 1878, when Bourne unexpectedly was picked for Trail Eights, and he rowed bow of the Eton eight, and the crew reached the final of the Ladies' Plate at Henley that year. He was Captain of the Boats in 1880 and 1881.

G. C. Bourne rowed in the bow seat in Oxford’s winning Blue boat, both in 1883 and 1884. In front of him sat, at two-seat, R.S. de Havilland and they would later become advocates for the English orthodox style taught by the famous Dr. Edmond Warre, head-master and their rowing coach at Eton.

G.C. Bourne, who became a famous professor and coach at Oxford, used his studies in zoology, marine biology, and mathematics to mix in with his coaching. He coached Oxford for several periods from 1885 to 1927 (12 of his Blue boats won The Boat Race). His love for theory, whether it was to coach, to build boats, or the best dimensions of oars – their length and the width of the blades – is clearly seen in his wonderful book A Text-Book of Oarsmanship with an Essay on Muscular Action in Rowing, which was published in 1925 (reprinted in 1987).

Here is a 5-minute newsreel from 1925, Getting Well Together, “by courtesy of Doctor Bourne” [who is coaching the dark Blues in this film!]:

GETTING WELL TOGETHER

More about Dr. G.C. Bourne in tomorrow's entry!

The First Rowing Bibliography & Elements Of Rowing

Anyone who has the intention to write either a light or a serious study on rowing literature should consult Frederick Brittain’s Oar, Scull and Rudder, a masterly rowing bibliography published in 1930. Although the first work on rowing – according to Brittain, A Treatise on the Art of Rowing as Practised at Cambridge by “A Boating Man” – was published already in 1842, it took ninety years for the first bibliography to be published, making Freddy Brittain a pioneer as the first rowing bibliographer. In his introduction, Brittain, a don of Jesus College at Cambridge University, describes the deep research behind his work, which contains around 240 books and pamphlets, and 700 articles on rowing in periodicals and encyclopedias. Most of the items on the list came from his own collection of rowing literature, but he also gainfully included entries of works that he had never seen, but read about or heard of.

Thomas E. Weil, one of the world’s leading rowing historians and collectors, shows the impressive range of rowing literature in Oar, Scull and Rudder in his excellent essay "The Don’s List – Extracts from and notes on Frederick Brittain’s Oar, Scull and Rudder (the first rowing bibliography)", published on the Friends of Rowing History’s web site Rowinghistory.net. However, Weil does point out some weaknesses in the book. While Frederick Brittain “happily listed volumes of verse with rowing content, the don did not include rowing-related prose fiction, passing up a host of juveniles, including the important American favorite by ‘Oliver Optic,’ The Boat Club, and such classics as Hughes’ Tom Brown at Oxford, Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat, Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows (“simply messing about in boats”), and Beerbohm’s Zuleika Dobson.”

Brittain also left out popular works by American authors like Ralph Paine, Ralph Barbour, and Albertus Dudley, to mention a few, who had written juvenile sport books – including rowing – since the turn of the century and onward.

Nowadays, eighty years after it was published, Oar, Scull and Rudder is hard to come by in the antiquarian book trade. So are almost all of the publications that Brittain mentions in his book. One example is Reginald S. de Havilland’s Elements of Rowing, a little pamphlet published in 1913 by Eton College where de Havilland, or “Harvvy” as he was known, was the rowing coach. The pamphlet is only 11 pages [Brittain states 77 pp, but that must be a misprint] and it has “suggestions […] to helping those boys who are engaged in coaching junior fours at Eton” as stated in the foreword. It has short chapters on: “body”, “feet”, “hands”, “swing”, “forward like a spring bent down”, “finish”, “straps”, “the oar”, and “summary”.

Elements of Rowing was reprinted in The English Style of Rowing by P. Haig-Thomas & M. A. Nicholson (1958), a book that pays homage to the old English orthodox style taught by de Havilland and his predecessor, Dr. Edmond Warre, head-master and rowing coach at Eton. In Haig-Thomas’s and Nicholson’s book, de Havilland’s text has two “extra” headings, “slide” and “in the water” following “summary”.