The Mysterious Affair of 'Les Braves Belges'

Postcard correctly identifying the 1907 winners of The Grand Challenge Cup.

HTBS's Agatha Christie, aka Greg Denieffe, writes:

Hercule Poirot is in his office sitting at his desk. In front of him is a strange contraption at which he is staring. It is the latest computer, the RAM-ING Speed 4X. There is a knock on the door.

Poirot: Come in, Come in.

Hastings enters and is surprised with Poirot’s demeanour.

Hastings: What’s the matter Poirot? Are you okay?

Poirot: Nothing is the matter mon ami, quite the contrary. Come and see this … this thing on my new computer. It is a ‘blog’ called ‘Ear Ze Boat Sing. I have been working all night to help these poor fellows identify the first ‘Vainqueurs’ whom I am proud to call ‘mes collègues Belges’.

Hastings: Are you sure you are okay Poirot?

Poirot: Ah, my little English friend – I see you are still upset about the results of Le Grand Challenge Cups of 1906, 1907 and 1909. Now, let me tell you what I have found out about ‘Les Braves Belges’.

Sport Nautique de Gand boathouse from 1906 to c.1960.

According to my good friend Jan Martens, one of Ghent’s rowing clubs was founded in 1883 as Sport Nautique de Gand (SNG). The club started out modestly but four years later was a founding member of the Belgian Rowing Federation (BRF). In 1898, their first flag, in their new colours of blue and white, was presented to the club (the initial club colours were black and white). Two years later a different flag, light blue with white lettering “Sport Nautique de Gand 1883” was adopted at the request of the BRF in order to differentiate the club from the local Cercle des Régates. Around 1890 SNG had become the foremost rowing club in Belgium and international successes would follow.

A royal appellation was granted in 1907 after a resounding victory at Henley. Use of the French language was a sign of the times and the club became ‘Société Royale de Sport Nautique de Gand’.

After the Second World War, the club was active in promoting the Watersportbaan, finished and dedicated in 1955. In 1964, a new name was adopted, Koninklijke Roeivereniging “Sport Nautique” Gent, and put on the new flag presented in 1971; three years later, the current name, Koninklijke Roeivereniging Sport Gent, now completely in Flemish, was introduced.

And yes Hastings... I have found photographs of these fine fellows, take a look. What a beautiful moustache has Monsieur Van der Waerden.

Winners of the Grand Challenge Cup 1906.

Official result of the final: Club Nautique de Gand, Belgium, beat Trinity Hall, Cambridge, by three lengths – time 7 minutes, 9 seconds.

Équipage: Urbain Molmans, Albert Heye, Alphonse Van Roy, Guillaume Visser, M. Orban, Réme Orban, Oscar de Somville, Rodolphe Poma (stroke), Raphael Van der Waerden (cox)

Above is another photograph of the 1906 ‘Grand’ winning crew. Was this really a composite crew of ‘Club Nautique’ and ‘Sport Nautique’ as the postcards suggests?

Winners of the Grand Challenge Cup 1907.

Official result of the final: Sport Nautique de Gand, Belgium, beat Christ Church, Oxford, by one length – time 7 minutes, 31 seconds.

Équipage: P. de Geyter, Guillaume Visser, Urbain Molmans, Alphonse Van Roy, François Vergucht, Polydore Veirman, Oscar de Somville, Rodolphe Poma (stroke), Rodolphe Colpaert (cox).

Despite the official result, this postcard gives the 1907 winners as Sport Nautique & Royal Club Nautique de Gand. The royal appellation applying to the official winning club from the previous year.

Two postcards with the winners of the Grand Challenge Cup 1909.

Official result of the final: Royal Club Nautique de Gand, Belgium, beat Jesus College, Cambridge, by one length – time 7 minutes, 8 seconds.

Équipage: Urbain Molmans, Guillaume Visser, St. Kowalski, Réme Orban, François Vergucht, Polydore Veirman, Oscar de Somville, Rodolphe Poma (stroke), Alfred van Landeghem (cox).

Both these postcards identify the 1909 vainqueurs as Royal Club Nautique & Royal Sport Nautique de Gand, the royal appellation now applying to both clubs.

According to Peter Mallory in The Sport of Rowing (2012), writing about the resounding victory of the Belgians (Club Nautique de Gand) in 1906:

The Ghent Eight were led by the dominant international sweep rowers of their day, Guillaume Visser and Urbain Molmans. Before rowing 4 and bow in the winning Grand Challenge Cup Eight at Henley in 1906, Visser and Molmans had rowed to Gold in the coxed-pairs, coxed-fours and eights at the European Championships in 1903, Silver in the coxed-pairs and Gold in the coxed-fours and eights in 1904, along with Gold in the coxed-pairs and coxed-fours and Silver in the eights in 1905.

So, Hastings you can see that there is a mystery to be solved.

Hastings: What mystery is that exactly, Poirot?

Poirot: It was not until 1970 that the venerable Stewards of Henley Royal Regatta changed the rules to allow composites to compete in the Grand Challenge Cup. Did the equally venerable gentlemen of Ghent find a way around this rule? I think so. You see Hastings, Visser and Molmans were docks foremen and members of Sport Nautique de Gand.

Hastings: I say Poirot, that’s just not cricket!

Poirot: Perhaps not Hastings, but I do not think a crime has been committed because in 1906 they must also have been members of Club Nautique de Gand – at least for HRR entry purposes. And, of course, in the following year the entry was made in the name of Sport Nautique de Gand. And yet again, in 1909, the Ghent entry was back in the name of Club Nautique de Gand, which by then was ‘Royal Club Nautique de Gand’. The photographs and postcards do not lie but they do not tell the whole truth.

Hastings: Of course! They rowed under ‘a flag of convenience’. But what happened to them in 1908? I know that the Stewards introduced a rule change excluding overseas entries from the regatta that year owing to the Olympic Regatta being held in Henley in mid-July. Surely, they represented Belgium at the Olympics?

Poirot: Ah! Hastings, is that the time? I must leave straight away for a meeting with Chief Inspector Japp. Perhaps another time, yes? Au revoir.

Hastings (an old Etonian) is determined to find out what happened in Henley-on-Thames at the 1908 Olympic Regatta and decides to use Poirot’s computer. Initially he is foiled by the demand for a password, but eventually he types in felicity4me and sure enough it works! He finds that Great Britain was represented by Cambridge University BC and Leander Club, and it was the latter that beat Belgium, represented by Royal Club Nautique de Gand, to win the gold medal in the eights.

Great Britain leads Belgium over the finish line to win gold at the 1908 Olympic Games in Henley-on-Thames.

There are reports on all the eights’ races at the 1908 Games here.

The 1908 Belgian crew was Oscar Taelman, Marcel Morimont, Rémy Orban, Georges Mijs, François Vergucht, Polydore Veirman, Oscar De Somville, Rodolphe Poma, Alfred van Landeghem (cox).

An analysis the Belgian crews who raced at Henley between 1906 and 1909 prove that ‘Club de Gand’, ‘Sport de Gand’ and the ‘Belgian Olympic eight’ bore remarkable similarities. Of the 15 rowers used in the four years, seven men raced in three or more years, while Oscar De Somville (7) and Rodolphe Poma (stroke) raced in all four years. It is also noteworthy that De Somville and van Landeghem were Olympic silver medallist in the eights in the Paris Games in 1900.

Crews 1906, 1907, 1908 and 1909:
Urbain Molmans: HRR 1906 (Bow) – HRR 1907 (Three) – Olympics 1908 (NA) – HRR 1909 (Bow)
Albert Heye: HRR 1906 (Two) – HRR 1907 (NA) – Olympics 1908 (NA) – HRR 1909 (NA)
Alphonse Van Roy: HRR 1906 (Three) – HRR 1907 (Four) – Olympics 1908 (NA) – HRR 1909 (NA)
Guillaume Visser: HRR 1906 (Four) – HRR 1907 (Two) – Olympics 1908 (NA) – HRR 1909 (Two)
M. Orban: HRR 1906 (Five) – HRR 1907 (NA) – Olympics 1908 (NA) – HRR 1909 (NA)
Remy Orban: HRR 1906 (Six) – HRR 1907 (NA) – Olympics 1908 (Three) – HRR 1909 (Four)
Oscar De Somville: HRR 1906 (Seven) – HRR 1907 (Seven) – Olympics 1908 (Seven) – HRR 1909 (Seven)
Rondolphe Poma: HRR 1906 (Stoke) – HRR 1907 (Stroke) – Olympics 1908 (Stroke) – HRR 1909 (Stroke)
Raphael Van der Waerden: HRR 1906 (Coxswain) – HRR 1907 (NA) – Olympics 1908 (NA) – HRR 1909 (NA)
P. de Geyter: HRR 1906 (NA) – 1907 (Bow) – Olympics 1908 (NA) – HRR 1909 (NA)
Francois Vergucht: HRR 1906 (NA) – HRR 1907 (Five) – Olympics 1908 (Five) – HRR 1909 (Five)
Polydore Veirman: HRR 1906 (NA) – HRR 1907 (Six) – Olympics 1908 (Six) – HRR 1909 (Six)
Rodolphe Colpaert: HRR 1906 (NA) – HRR 1907 (Coxswain) – Olympics 1908 (NA) – HRR 1909 (NA)
Oscar Taelman: HRR 1906 (NA) – HRR 1907 (NA) – Olympics 1908 (Bow) – HRR 1909 (NA)
Marcel Morimont: HRR 1906 (NA) – HRR 1907 (NA) – Olympics 1908 (Two) – HRR 1909 (NA)
Georges Mijs: HRR 1906 (NA) – HRR 1907 (NA) – Olympics 1908 (Four) – HRR 1909 (NA)
Alfred van Langehem: HRR 1906 (NA) – HRR 1907 (NA) – Olympics 1908 (Coxswain) – HRR 1909 (Coxswain)
St. Kowalski: HRR 1906 (NA) – HRR 1907 (NA) – Olympics 1908 (NA) – HRR 1909 (Three)

(Errors and omissions excepted.)

The defeat of the Belgians in the final of the Olympics, which earned several of their members a silver medal, did not merit a mention on the menu of the Banquet held by Royal Club Nautique de Gand to celebrate the club’s achievements during the 1908 season. Six men were elected as ‘membres emerites’ and from this we can identify that Messrs Kowalski, Morimond, Poma, Taelman, Veirman and Vergucht were ‘Club’ men.

Polydore Veirman, the six-man of the 1907, 1908 and 1909 crews featured on the cover of the 1911 menu after claiming the sculling championship of Belgium. He also took a silver medal in the single sculls at the 1912 Olympic rowing in Stockholm.

Poirot never found out that Hastings had cracked his computer!

Was the First Wanker a Belgian Oarsman?

The Belgian “vainqueurs” or victors of the 1907 Grand Challenge Cup at Henley Royal Regatta.

HTBS is proud to welcome famous rowing historian and collector Thomas E. Weil as a guest writer of today’s blog post. Thomas has a special take on the word “wanker”, which he thinks may have originated in the rowing world.

Thomas writes:

“Wanker” is a disparaging term, used widely throughout the Commonwealth countries, which has been “ranked as the fourth most severe pejorative in English” (Wikipedia, citing Advertising Standards Authority, December 2000, accessed via Wayback Machine. Retrieved January 14, 2012. (pdf)). While a number of sources trace its origins to post-WW1 (the Online Etymology Dictionary, for instance, cites its earliest appearance to “British naval slang for ‘midshipman’ (1929)”, I am inclined to agree with the statement that “The terms wank and wanker originated in British slang during the late 19th and early 20th century” (Wikipedia, citing A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English. Eric Partridge, Paul Beale. Routledge, 15 Nov 2002).

Falling squarely within this earlier time frame, my hypothesis for the origin of the term points directly to the results of the Grand Challenge Cup event at Henley Royal Regatta in 1906, 1907 and 1909, when, to the shock and horror of the English rowing world, the premier eights prize of the kingdom was won by non-English crews.

Several American eights had crossed the Atlantic to be vanquished over the almost three-quarters of a century that the Grand had been contested, but European crews had only rarely bothered to venture the short distance across the English Channel to challenge for the trophy before 1906. So, when Belgian crews from two clubs in Ghent won England’s most precious rowing prize three times in four years (and skipped the fourth because it was an Olympic year), English oarsmen were inconsolably traumatized. What was a frustrated Englishman to do?

It probably didn’t help matters much when the Royal Club Nautique de Gand struck a commemorative medal that showed a toga-wearing woman seated on a Roman galley deck victoriously blowing a trumpet while the British lion cowered at her feet.

The commemorative medal struck by the Royal Club Nautique de Gand. On the other side of the medal it says: "De Stad Gent/Great [sic!] Challenge Cup/Henley".

Nor would the British have been pleased at the sight of postcards touting the victories that popped up in the mail following the Belgian accomplishments. The postcards, which showed the crews posed on a bench or seated in their boat, were often headed “Vainqueurs au Grand Challenge Cup a Henley” (see image on top of a 1907 postcard).

Was the choice of “vainqueurs” (or “victors”), rather than the more typically English and modest term “winners”, particularly provocative? Perhaps it was. Was it so provocative as to have instigated a vicious verbal counter-volley?  It could have been ...

“Vainqueur”, for practical purposes, is pronounced “vang-cur”, with the emphasis on the second syllable. Given the not uncommon practice in some circles of pronouncing a “v” like a “w”, could annoyed Englishmen have picked up on the Belgians’ own term, and started sarcastically and disparagingly referring to them as “wang-curs”, or “wankers” (with the accent on the first syllable)? Certainly they could have!

Did they? Who knows, but all of the ingredients for an international slanging war were there, and the timing is right for the supposition that first uses occurred some time in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. And that usage may easily have been exacerbated in later years by the contempt for the Europeans who crumbled so quickly in the face of Germany’s WWI advances, only then to be saved at the cost of so many British lives.

Should our breasts not swell with pride to think that the sport we love may have been the source of “the fourth most severe pejorative in English”? Absolutely. (And might we be grateful that it was the Belgians and not the French who first succeeded at Henley, in which event we might be using the term “grenwee” instead of wanker? Peut-être ...)

The Union Nautique of Liège Celebrates its 140th Anniversary

The entrance of UNL's club house.

Hélène Rémond writes from France,

As I visited Liège during my recent holidays in Belgium, I took the opportunity to stroll around the Parc de la Boverie where the rowing club Union Nautique de Liège (UNL) is settled at the tip of the island surrounded by the river Meuse and the Derivation canal, a 20-minute walk from the city centre.

The UNL boat house.

The Hennebique Bridge.

While crossing the beautiful setting of the park, the visitor can spot one sculpture of the Liège artist Mady Andrien called Le Rameur (“The Rower”), which was installed in 1998 on the Mativa embankment by the Derivation canal – a canal created in the 19th century as the river was hardly navigable for the large vessels which were used by the industries in the city.

Parc de la Boverie

Mady Andrien's Le Rameur.

One of the rowing events that the club organizes in May every year is La Boucle de Liège, commonly referred to as “La Boucle”. It is a long-distance race (close to 17km) with handicaps. It’s opened to all categories of rowers (from Wallonia or Flanders but also from abroad), and all types of boats are represented. The 18th edition will take place in 2014. The first three winners are awarded prizes and there is a huge barbecue for the participants at the end of the day.

“La Boucle”

The club also takes part in national competitions, and its members have raced in international regattas, too. In 1952, J. Van Stichel and R.M.A. Georges won the Double Sculls Challenge Cup at the Henley Royal Regatta. They were symbols of the national union as Van Stichel was Flemish and Georges was a Wallon. Club president Michel Orban says, “Today, Union Nautique is a popular club where young and older rowers from all walks of life practice rowing or sculling. We are offering beginners courses for children aged 11 and older.”

Van Stichel and Georges, winners of the 1952 Double Sculls Challenge Cup at the Henley Royal Regatta.

UNL president Michel Orban.

Competitive rowing in Belgium was born in Liège
As the bridge of Arches was reconstructed at the end of the 1850s, the City of Liège inaugurated the new work of art by a celebration including regattas in the presence of King Leopold I. These regattas were organized by the Société Nationale Regatta d’Anvers, which promoted boating as early as 1858, and Sport Nautique de la Seine (in Paris), which was founded in 1855. These organizations were happy to promote rowing – as this kind of sporting event was new in Belgium. As the regatta organized on 29 October, 1860, was very successful, young people decided to found a club to encourage boating and to organize other rowing events.

This is how the first Belgian rowing club was born in 1860: Sport Nautique de la Meuse was founded on 18 November. The only boat the club had at that time was an iron boat, which was under cover in a barn, close to the Saint-Léonard embankment. A few months later, Sport Nautique bought a wooden boat from the Parisian club, the Gig Hébé, which had taken part in the first regatta in Liège.

The Schlemmer Restaurant used to accommodate the members of Sport Nautique de la Meuse. The owner of the restaurant was actually the grandfather of a president-to-be of the UNL, which was created a few years later, in 1873. Today, they are two of the 25 clubs affiliated to the Royal Belgium Rowing Federation representing the French-speaking league and the Flemish Vlaamse Roeiliga.

In 1867, the zoological park Parc de la Boverie agreed to welcome the Sport Nautique boathouse (a wooden shed that did not satisfy the members). Negotiations were underway to get a more convenient place to build a boathouse, but no agreement was reached. In 1873, the administrative committee asked the City for some financial help to organize regattas but the request was turned down. Sport Nautique had no teams to compete anyway and this is when Union Nautique de Liège was launched.

Venetian gondola at the 1905 World Fair.

The year 1894 saw the first match between the two clubs, a 3,000-metre distance race. 1905 was a golden year when the World Fair was held in the city. There were many events celebrating everything nautical at the Fair, including boat racing, and with splendid fireworks. The Parc de la Boverie was accessible thanks to the Hennebique Bridge. This also meant that new members found their way to UNL. The club welcomed women in 1928.

Painting of a UNL crew by Belgian painter Paul Daxhelet (1905-1993) (the link is in French).

Etching by Paul Daxhelet.

More information in French at www.srunl.com