2013 Rowing History Forum: Not just for Nerds...

Henley’s River and Rowing Museum (RRM). The Times newspaper recently put it on its list of the top fifty museums in the world.

Last Saturday, 12 October, the Rowing History Forum was held at the River and Rowing Museum in Henley-on-Thames. Here is HTBS’s Tim Koch’s report:

For many people the prospect of spending the day at something entitled ‘The Rowing History Forum’ holds about as much appeal as a 5k ergo test. However, those who attended the fourth such event at the River and Rowing Museum on 12 October had no regrets. They were entertained and informed by tales of things such as the largest oared vessel ever built or of cheating death on the high seas. Add to these stories of bloody blazers, a levitating sculler and Dutch foetuses and there was something for everyone.

Professor Boris Rankov, six times Boat Race winner and professor of Roman history, spoke eloquently on rowing galleys in the ancient world. The unpredictable winds of the Mediterranean resulted in the development of rowing rather than sailing boats for both trade and war. Originating with craft having a single tier of 25 rowers on each side, one man to an oar, from 600 BC a second and later a third level of oars were added to increase power. As it was impracticable to add a fourth level, from 500 BC extra men were added to each blade and within 200 years there were oars manned by eight people, some pushing and some pulling. By 200 BC, Ptolemy IV of Egypt had built a galley of 137 metres / 450 feet in length. Its longest oars were 19 metres / 62 feet and it was rowed by 4,000 oarsmen (though, not surprisingly, it moved ‘precariously and with difficulty’).

Professor Boris Rankov with the museum’s mock-up of a section of a trireme (from the Latin meaning ‘three banks of oars’).

Doggett’s Coat and Badge winner Bobby Prentice enthralled the audience with an account of how he and another Doggett’s man, Colin Briggs, fought for survival when their boat overturned during the infamous 2005 Atlantic Rowing Race. Even Bobby’s humorous and self-deprecating style could not disguise the fact that it was a story that could easily have ended in tragedy.

The River and Rowing Museum curators gave the Forum an update on some recent acquisitions and projects in progress. Chris Dodd reported on an unpublished manuscript written by Julius Beresford which may give new information on his famous fall out with coach Steve Fairbairn. Chris also talked about a possible ‘e-book’ on Tyne rowing. Eloise Chapman showed the recently donated archive of Lucy Pocock (of the famous rowing and boat building family) who was a women’s sculling champion before the 1914 – 1918 War and later went to the United States where she briefly coached women’s rowing at the University of Washington.

Lucy Pocock pictured in a silver frame that she won as a prize at Henley Town and Visitor’s Regatta in 1906.

Eloise also spoke of the British Rowing / Amateur Rowing Association film collection recently given to the museum. It is hoped that it would be available online sometime in the future. Suzie Tilbury displayed an 1844 rowing vest, perhaps the oldest one known, and a Henley prize from 1848, a model wherry in silver. Delightfully, it was won by a local man and it has stayed in Henley ever since.

The silver wherry won by Henry Sergeant in 1848 for the event run between 1845 and 1850 for ‘amateur scullers residing within twelve miles of Henley on Thames’.

Peter Mallory is both a rowing and an art historian and so was well qualified to talk on the recent River and Rowing Museum acquisition, the 19th-century portrait of Newcastle sculler Edward Hawks. Peter showed the historical processes which resulted in this work by very cleverly juxtaposing classic paintings with the Hawks and other rowing pictures. He then spoke on the social and economic story behind its commission and execution. Possibly, the painting was a ‘vanity project’ by Hawks, who may have hoped to sell prints of it. The painter himself had no pretensions at great art. Among other things, the body proportions are wrong, the boat is depicted in a very crude way and the figure appears to be hovering above the ground. Strangely, it is still a delightful picture.

Edward Hawks, sculler (left) and Peter Mallory, art and rowing historian (right).

A glimpse into the fascinating history of Dutch student rowing was given by Rob Van Mesdag. Before the 1939 – 1945 War, Dutch freshmen had to become what were called ‘foetuses’ and undergo harsh initiations before joining student boat clubs. The big event in Dutch student rowing then and now is the regatta known as ‘The Varsity’, founded in 1878. It is an event full of tradition such as the members of the winning university swimming out to the victorious boat and (according to this) throwing coxswains at frozen chickens. Post Varsity celebrations are famously drunken affairs and there seems to be a large amount of nudity. A more explicit picture is here but I am pleased to see that these chaps follow Henley rules and keep their ties on. Click on these thumbnails for more health and safety violations.

Algemene Rotterdamse Studenten Roeivereniging (‘Skadi’) wins the 124th Varsity in 2007. Picture: P. Kemps.

A meticulously researched work by Ian Volans was entitled ‘What was it about Victorian Oarsmen? Rowers who helped to shape other sports’. In particular, EC Morley of London RC and HT Steward of Leander were among the seven founders of soccer’s Football Association and JG Chambers of CUBC and Leander formulated boxing’s ‘Queensbury Rules’.

A tantalising preview of his forthcoming book on rowing blazers was given by Jack Carlson. The lavishly illustrated publication will show the great, the good and the ordinary of the rowing world resplendent in the blazers of their club or country, all pictured by a top fashion photographer. Jack also debunked some ‘blazer myths’ including the one that the scarlet blazer of St John’s College, Oxford, commemorates an oarsman killed when St John’s attached a sword to their bow at a bump race.

Jack Carlson in front of the museum’s current exhibition of rowing blazers.

To summarise a presentation by Terry Morahan is a difficult task as he always seems to have several highly involved researches into rowing history going on at once. However, this year two of them seem to have reached very satisfactory conclusions. With Leander founded in 1818, it is usually thought that the world’s second oldest public rowing club is Der Hamburger und Germania Ruder Club (1836), but Terry claims it is in fact the (Royal) Northern Yacht Club which was established in Belfast in 1824 and today is based on the Clyde in Scotland. Records show that a race ‘for four oared gigs the property of members of the club’ was held in 1825. For his next trick, Terry produced ‘the oldest rowing blazer in the world’. It was the Eton School rowing jacket worn by General Sir George Higginson (1826 – 1927) in 1844. Much to the surprise and delight of all present, Terry then presented it to the River and Rowing Museum. It was a rather nice end to a most enjoyable day and thanks are due to all the speakers, the RRM, the Friends of Rowing History and American Friends of the RRM.

Terry Morahan (left) presents ‘the oldest rowing blazer in the world’ to Chris Dodd of the River and Rowing Museum.

GRR: London’s Other Marathon

The Great River Race approaches Hammersmith from Putney, passing the former Harrods Repository on the right.

Here is Tim Koch’s report on this year’s Great River Race, GRR:

The Great River Race took place on London’s River Thames on Saturday, 7 September, on a 21-mile course from London Docklands to Richmond in Surrey. While it is certainly ‘great’ with more than 300 boats from the UK and around the world, it is not (officially) a ‘race’. In my report on the 2011 GRR, I summarised the event thus:

The rules of the event say that the boats must be rowed, sculled or paddled and most boat classes must carry a coxswain plus a passenger (who may take turns at the oar or paddle). The ‘passenger rule’ comes from the Watermen’s historic responsibility to carry passengers on the Thames (small children are often favoured for this role). Also, no sliding seats or riggers are allowed and each boat must fly a flag. A huge variety of boats take part and this is coupled with the inclusive atmosphere of the event which attracts men and women, the young and the old, the competitive and the leisurely.

A race or not, the GRR is an event that is best left to pictures, not words.

Visitors from the Netherlands in a lifeboat or, in Dutch, reddingboot. I do not know how many boats came from what foreigners tend to call Holland, but I seem to have photographed a number of them.

An entry from the Royal Netherlands Naval College, an officer training establishment, the equivalent to Newport in the United States or Dartmouth in Britain.

I think I am correct in saying that this is a currach, an ancient design of boat from the west of Ireland (St. Columba is said to have used one). There is no one standard design but they are a very light, wood framed boat with a canvas (or at one time, skin) covering. Several years ago I had the opportunity of seeing several such boats close up and initially was not very impressed. They seemed very crudely made and the oars had no spoons – they were simply long poles! However, I changed my mind when several elderly, small and wiry gentlemen put down their glasses of stout, took off their jackets, rolled up their shirt sleeves and made the currachs seemingly fly across the water. It was later explained to me that the oars, about ten-foot in length, have no spoons as they would be caught in rough seas. The trick is to dig perhaps half the length of the oar into the water to give it a large surface area to work against. The oar locks are block and thole pin.

A boat flying the flag of Scotland, Saint Andrew’s Cross or the Saltire, passes under Hammersmith Bridge.

Women from Helford River Gig Club in Cornwall pass under Hammersmith Bridge. The club writes about them here. HTBS has previously written about the remarkable revival and worldwide spread of Cornish Gig Racing.

Proving the worldwide popularity of Cornish Pilot Gigs, this one is from the Netherlands club WSV de Spiegel based in Nederhorst den Berg in the province of North Holland.

Another Cornish Pilot Gig, this time from Langstone Adventure Rowing who are based in Hampshire in the South East of England. They say that they are a centre for traditional fixed seat rowing and that they ‘...coach teams and individual rowers to reach their goals, be it to row across the English Channel.... to take part in events such as the Great River Race... or to raise money for charity’. They also run team building sessions and ‘gig rowing for fun, fitness and friendship’.

They keep on coming.

Who are the Poplar Dockers from Gravesend?

I know even less about this boat and crew than I do the Poplar Dockers!

More people I cannot tell you about apart from the fact that they look like they are having fun.

The Thames is never quite wide enough. A lifeboat crew from the Netherlands club AVR Avira, based in Duiven in the east of the country, clashes with a Great River Race self-build ‘jolly boat’.

I would love to know more about this boat – or even why the crew is dressed as monks. It looks like a very traditional design.

Is this the same type of boat as the one above?

The end of a long day.

Fairbairn and von Gaza at the 1911 Holland Beker

At the 1911 Holland Beker Regatta.

A couple of days ago, not only did editor Johan ten Berg send some interesting news about Co Rentmeester’s latest book, which HTBS wrote about yesterday, Johan also sent along a marvellous old photograph from the 1911 Holland Beker Regatta. In his e-mail, Johan writes that he found Stephen Cooper’s two-piece extract from his book The Final Whistle about George Eric Fairbairn very interesting (posted 1 August and 2 August) as Johan has used the photograph on top in his book Holland Beker.

The distinguished looking gentleman in the middle – back row in a cap and bow tie – is Eric Fairbairn, who competed for Jesus College, Cambridge. The organisers of Holland Beker still have his entry form, Johan writes. Fairbairn looks a little unhappy in the picture which might be explained by the fact that he lost the final by half a boat length to the German gentleman sitting on the left, holding the Cup, the famous sculler from RG Wiking Berlin, Bernhard von Gaza, who also became German champion in the single sculls that year. The German would return the following year to claim the Holland Beker Cup one more time. Not only did von Gaza row well, he also wrote books about how to row and scull.

Sculling for the Holland Beker in 1911 was maybe not the first time Fairbairn and von Gaza met. As Cooper writes in his The Final Whistle, Fairbairn took a silver medal in the coxless pairs at the 1908 Olympic Rowing Regatta held in Henley-on-Thames, where von Gaza also took a medal, a bronze in the single sculls.

The fellow sitting on the right in the photograph is Kurt Hoffmann, who became champion in the Junior class. (In 1912, Hoffmann would beat von Gaza to become the German champion in the single sculls.) Johan ten Berg has very kindly translated the caption of the photograph as it appeared in the sport magazine De Revue der Sporten: “Sitting on the left: Bernhard von Gaza (RG Wiking Berlin), champion seniores and on the right Kurt Hoffmann (Favorite Hammonia Hamburg), champion juniors. Standing on the left: Carl Jurrjens, J. J. Blussé, Prof. Damsté, Fairbain (Cambridge), G. W. A. van der Zee, Van Waning Bolt, the first Dutchman single sculler ever”.

Johan writes: “The first Holland Beker was lost by prof. Damsté in 1886 in a race against F. Schilling. Since Damsté is in the photo – I suppose he was an official – I speculated that the man in the background is F. Schilling. His portrait from 1887 is in the Holland Beker, too. I think it is the same man. It makes sense that he was there because it was the 25th anniversary race.” Johan continues, “It was common in those days that all competitors joined for the official photograph, that is why Fairbairn is in the photo as well.” The Cup that Hoffmann won was lost for half a century, but Johan accidentally found it when he was doing research for the Holland Beker book.

Sadly, neither Fairbairn nor von Gaza would survive the First World War. Fairbairn was killed in 1915, while the seven-years-older von Gaza died in 1917 at Langemark, West-Vlaanderen in Belgium.

A warm thank you to Johan ten Berg for sharing this information and the lovely photograph from the 1911 Holland Beker. By the way, Johan is already working hard on his next rowing book, a book about Dutch rowing which is to be published in 2014.

Co Rentmeester: Oarsman And Photographer

American sculler Jim Dietz training on the rowing machine for the 1972 Olympic Games. Photograph © Co Rentmeester.

The other day, HTBS received an e-mail from Johan ten Berg, editor in Holland. Amongst the publications that Johan has been the editor of is the wonderful book Holland Beker, which was reviewed on HTBS on 28 September, 2011.

The latest book that Johan has been working on is by Co Rentmeester, who represented the Netherlands in the single sculls at the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome. After the Olympics, Rentmeester emigrated to the USA where he began to study photography. He earned a degree in Photography in 1965. He immediately started working for Life magazine as a freelancer, and was hired a year later as a staff photographer. Rentmeester covered the Vietnam War for Life and also the 1972 Olympic Games. Before the latter, Rentmeester created a beautiful photo essay about the American sculler Jim Dietz's pre-Olympic training. (Jim Dietz was inducted into the Rowing Hall of Fame in 2010) This essay is re-published in Rentmeester’s new book, Johan tells HTBS. The book, which covers many other sports and is being printed right now, is bilingual, Dutch/English, as there is a market both in Rentmeester’s native country as well as his ‘adopted’ country.

In 2006, Co Rentmeester produced and directed the beautiful The Perfect Stroke, a 55-minute film documentary of the famous regatta Holland Beker. Among the many scullers in this film is the recent Olympic champion Mahé Drysdale. Watch the promotional trailer below.



Rentmeester is still taking pictures and also coaching rowing in America.

More about the Holland Beker in tomorrow's post.

Triton Gets A New Four

Three weeks ago, Johan ten Berg, oarsman and editor of the brilliant book about the regatta Holland Beker, sent me a short e-mail with an interesting photograph. On Saturday, 31 March, Johan’s rowing club USR Triton in Utrecht had an event where a new coxed four was inaugurated. The new boat was given the name Prof dr. Gerard ‘t Hooft after club member Professor Gerard ‘t Hooft, Nobel Prize winner in Physics (1999), whom HTBS has written about earlier. Johan’s photograph shows Professor Gerard ‘t Hooft baptizing the new shell.

HTBS hopes the boat will serve USR Triton well for many years!

Three Rowing Nobel Laureates

In yesterday’s entry, Tim Koch sort of had reply to Sunday’s entry about rowing Nobel Prize winners, writing “Taking a random sample of great rowing universities we can see that Cambridge has produced 85 Nobel Prize winners, Columbia 72, Oxford 48, Harvard 43, Cornell 40, Princeton 32, and Yale 18. Someone with a lot of time on their hands could undoubtedly find a few rowers in this lot but it’s not going to be me.”

I was actually thinking the same thing, that among the rowers from some of these fine educational institutions, there might be a Nobel Prize winner, but I don’t have a name. Then late Sunday, I received an e-mail from Johan ten Berg, editor of the marvellous book about Holland Beker, which I wrote about on HTBS at the end of September.

Johan kindly pointed out that his rowing club, USR ‘Triton’, in Utrecht, Netherlands, has had not only one member getting a Nobel Prize, but three (3!). Johan goes on to say that one of the founding fathers of ‘Triton’, which was established in 1880, Willem Einthoven, received the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1924 for inventing the ECG (or EKG). Einthoven is seen in the 1883 photograph above in the 2nd seat in the coxed four. In the 1990s, he was also depicted on a stamp in the Netherlands.

The two other ‘Triton’ rowing Nobel laureates are Nico Bloembergen, Nobel Prize in Physics (shared) in 1981, and Gerard ‘t Hooft, Nobel Prize in Physics (shared) in 1999.

Very impressive, indeed, Johan. Thank you very much for sharing!

Are there any other rowing Nobel Prize winners out there?

New Rowing Book: On Holland Beker

While many good books have been written about the history of rowing: the rowers, scullers, rowing clubs, the World Championships and the Olympic rowing events, etc., very few books have been published about a special regatta; of course, with the famous exceptions being the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race, the Yale-Harvard Regatta, and Henley Royal Regatta.

Earlier this year, however, a gorgeous book was released in the Netherlands about one of Europe’s most prestigious rowing regattas, “the Championships of the Netherlands for Gentlemen Amateurs in Single Scull Outrigger”, or as it is also known, Holland Beker, which was sculled for the first time in 1886. The Ladies’ Trophy was added in 1988. To celebrate this regatta’s 125 years, the Regatta Association decided to publish Holland Beker to be handed out to the competitors, but also to be used in the next few years “to recruit athletes to compete at the regatta in Amsterdam”, Johan ten Berg, editor of the book, writes in an e-mail. Editor ten Berg has had several contributors writing the interesting history of the Holland Beker, which not only reflects on Dutch rowing, but also European rowing as well.

As an old book editor, let me tell you what a pleasure it is to read and flip through the pages of this beautiful book, whose pages have two columns with the text both in Dutch and English. The book, which has a slip case, has wonderful photographs in black&white (and some “hidden” pictures in colour), but also fold-outs and facsimiles of letters, maps, and documents, which proves that the group behind this publication has, indeed, done everything aesthetically possible to produce a marvellous printed work that can raise awareness among the top elite rowers in the world, that the Holland Beker is open for everyone; and, at the same time, give the rowing history buffs their adrenaline to run faster…

A good example of this is the interviews of nine great scullers, some of them the best in the world at one time, who all have won the cup, which is a “Wanderpreis” which means that it sometimes disappeared abroad for a year when a foreign sculler became the title holder. The interviews, made by journalist Tjerk van Weezel, shows the scope of famous cup winners: the Dutch scullers Rob Groen (winner 1963 and 1964), Jan Wienese (1965 and 1966), and Irene Eijs (1995); the Germans Peter-Michael Kolbe (1975 and 1986) and Thomas Lange (1987), the Czech Ondřej Synek (2005, 2007, and 2010), the Belarusian Ekaterina Khodotovitch (1996, 1997, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2010), the New Zealander Mahé Drysdale (2008 and 2009); and – hold on to your hats – the Finn Pertti Karppinen (1980) – see photograph on top.

Yes, the big scoop in this book is the interview with the legendary Pertti Karppinen, who has not been interviewed ever before outside his home country, due to language problems (not Karppinen’s, but the interviewers, who did not speak Finnish). In an e-mail the good fellow Johan ten Berg reveals that the book production group invited Karppinen to Amsterdam during spring, and he was accompanied by his daughter, who is studying in the USA, and who acted as translator.

In the interview with the “Gentle Finn”, he says that he kept records in note books of all his practice sessions through the years, a year in Karppinen’s case being between Easter to late November when there was no ice on his training waters, nor was it too dark to row. Karppinen also tells stories of his never ending battles against Kolbe. I distinctly remember seeing Karppinen at regattas in Sweden and Denmark, for example at the Nordic Rowing Championships, where he just seemed to be invincible; an untouchable sculling Legend and God.

The other eight interviews are also very interesting – Tjerk van Weezel has really done a stupendous work – as the scullers not only tell about the racing at Holland Beker, but their training and philosophy behind competing at the (old) European Championships, and the Worlds, and the Olympics.

Coming from Scandinavia, I found it extremely interesting and thrilling to see a facsimile letter from Axel Lindqvist of Dansk Forening For Rosport, the Danish Rowing Association, written in November 1945, assuring one of the organisers of Holland Beker, a Mr. Jongejan, that the cup had been in safe hands during the Second World War, as the Danish title holder, Viggo Olsen, who won it in 1939, had had the cup locked up in a bank safe in his home town of Sorø, outside of Copenhagen. The letter becomes a document of its time, when Mr. Lindqvist writes to his Dutch friend asking if he has received a packet, probably with food. Lindqvist offers to send more packets, but would first like to make sure that the first one has arrived. That you had to be careful for certain reasons after the War is made clear when the Dane writes:

“And my friend Weber. If he is alive, I should be glad to send him a packet also. That is, you understand, if he isn’t blacklisted. One has to be careful in these times, you see. I had a lot of friends i[n] Norway, some of them stuck to Quisling, and I don’t know them more.”

Lindqvist, who before the War had worked for the Ministry of Finance, writes that he has been made head of a special Danish government investigation bureau which is “blacklisting the Quislings” in Denmark.

(Click on the image of the letter to enlarge it)

The Holland Beker is, indeed, a grand book which tells the great story of a valuable and significant European regatta. John ten Berg mentions in an e-mail that the book is actually not for sale, as it is used as a hand-out to the participating scullers, but, with Chairman of the Holland Beker Regatta Association Nico Rienks’s blessing, the HTBS readers can order copies by e-mailing the regatta secretary at secretarishbwv@hollandbeker.nl

The book costs €35 (Euros), and the postage, of course, varies depending on where you want the book to be shipped, and via air or surface. Indeed, a marvellous book it is!