Play Up, Play Up & Play THE Game

The Army isn’t all Work (1919).

Greg Denieffe writes:

At the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, the British Army had approximately 710,000 men at its disposal. The years 1914 and 1915 were known as the years of the Volunteer Army, but in January 1916 conscription was introduced for single men aged 18-41. Recruitment posters played an important part both before and after its introduction.

Lord Kitchener (Secretary of State for War) believing that overwhelming manpower was the key to winning the War, set about looking for ways to encourage men of all classes to join up. General Sir Henry Rawlinson suggested that men would be more inclined to enlist in the Army if they knew that they were going to serve alongside their friends and work colleagues. He appealed to London stockbrokers to raise a battalion of men from workers in the City of London and by the end of August 1914, 1,600 men had enlisted in the 10th (Service) Bn. Royal Fusiliers, the first ‘Pals Battalion’ and the so-called ‘Stockbrokers’ Battalion’.

The 1st Sportsmen’s Battalion – The 23rd (Service) Battalion, Royal Fusiliers was formed in September 1914 and was made up of men who had made their name in sports such as cricket, boxing and football. This battalion proved so popular that a 2nd Sportsmen’s Battalion – The 24th (Service) Battalion, Royal Fusiliers followed in November 1914. The recruitment poster (above) does not play (pun intended) on the sporting prowess of potential recruits. Perhaps this is why the BBC in the first episode of Britain’s Great War called War Comes to Britain used an Australian Imperial Force (AIF) recruitment poster when discussing the Pals Battalions (28:00-29:30).

In Australia, the outbreak of the War was greeted with enthusiasm. Even before Britain declared war on Germany on 4 August 1914, it had pledged its support alongside other states of the British Empire and almost immediately began preparations to send forces overseas to participate in the conflict. Like Britain, as the war went on, casualty rates increased and the number of volunteers declined but unlike in Britain, the issue of conscription was put to a public vote, firstly in October 1916 and again in December 1917. On both occasions the country voted ‘No’ to conscription.

The 1916 AIF enlistment poster featured in the BBC documentary Britain’s Great War.

In 1916 the AIF launched a poster campaign aimed at recruiting a battalion of sportsmen into the defence forces to be known as The Sportsmen’s 1000. The artwork featured a portrait of Lieutenant Albert Jacka with images on each side of the portrait of cricketers, men playing bowls, golf and tennis; sculling and yachting, horse and car racing, hockey, boxing and Australian rules football. Jacka was the first Australian to receive the Victoria Cross during the First World War for his bravery at Gallipoli. The VC appears on his chest with the words: “Sports” The medal of medals.

It was said that one of the reasons Jacka was such a good soldier, and had such a fighting attitude, was that he had been a boxer before the war. The campaign to enlist sportsmen was fuelled by a strong belief that by playing sport, young men developed specific skills and qualities that could be used on the battlefield.

Albert Jacka’s military career was one of outstanding bravery. He enlisted in September 1914 in the AIF and landed in Gallipoli on 26 April 1915. For his action on 19 May 1915 he was awarded the Victoria Cross, the first for the AIF in the First World War, instantly becoming a national hero. He quickly rose through the ranks and on 29 April 1916 was commissioned second lieutenant. He received a Military Cross for action at Pozieres in August 1916 and a bar for action at Bullencourt in April 1917. He received his commission as captain on 15 March 1917. Wounded twice and then gassed in May 1918, he saw no more action. He returned to Melbourne to a hero’s welcome in 1919. He was demobilised in 1920 and died at the age of 39 on 17 January 1932. At his funeral, Jacka was described as ‘Australia's greatest front-line soldier’.

You can see why he won his VC in this short video:

AIF enlistment poster produced in 1917.

This poster, published by the State Parliamentary Recruiting Committee, depicts Lieut. Jacka VC, as a role model for a huge campaign to enlist more sportsmen into the Australian Imperial Force in 1917. It features two common recruiting devices used in Australia, a well-known local soldier and a target number of men required for a specially named group. In the centre is an oarsman, carrying his oar like of a pikeman of old, surrounded by other sportsmen as they are summoned by Jacka to ‘Enlist in the Sportsmen’s Thousand’ and ‘Show the enemy what Australian sporting men can do’. It is interesting to see that the word ‘thousand’ has replaced the number ‘1000’ from the earlier poster.

In another AIF enlistment poster (below), probably from 1917, the number ‘1000’ is back on the poster; in the upper right hand corner are attributes of sportsmen, among them also an oar.

It may be stretching poetic licence to suggest that the following poem by Australian C. J. Dennis is using the word ‘rowing’ as we on HTBS are wont to do, but it sums up the spirit that the recruitment posters tried to convey.

From The Moods of Ginger Mick – IV. “The Push” (1916):
But they took ‘im an’ they drilled ‘im an’ they shipped ‘im overseas
Wiv a crowd uv blokes ‘e never met before.
‘E rowed wiv ‘em, an’ scrapped wiv ‘em, an’ done some tall C.B.’s,
An’ ‘e lobbed wiv ‘em on Egyp’s sandy shore.
Then Pride o’ Race lay ‘olt on ‘im, an’  Mick shoves out ‘is chest
To find ‘imself Australian an’ blood brothers wiv the rest.

Back in Blighty, the Sportsmen’s Battalions continued to advertise for recruits but their enlistment posters continued to be dull and uninspiring.

This could not be said about the battalions formed primarily with the aim of recruiting professional footballers in both Scotland and England. In Scotland in November 1914, the full football team from Heart of Midlothian, players from Hibernian, Raith Rovers and Dunfermline, together with golfers, rugby players and their fans joined what became known as MacRae's Battalion, officially the 16th Royal Scots. They were also known as ‘The Sporting Battalion’.

1914 Scottish recruitment poster aimed at footballers and other sportsmen.

December 1914 saw the formation of The Football Battalion (The 17th Service Battalion, Middlesex Regiment). There is a fine example of their recruitment poster in a previous HTBS post called 'Lions not Donkeys'. Players from Clapton Orient (now Leyton Orient) were the first English Football League club to enlist together. Following the example of club captain, Fred Parker, around 40 players and staff volunteered and it soon went on to attract players from other clubs.

Recruitment poster for The Football Battalion, similar to the one above with the words ‘on the Field of Honour’ replaced with ‘and Join the Football Battalion’.

‘This is not the time to play games’ was the theme of a speech by Lord Roberts seeking to persuade sportsmen to enlist. This poster depicts a Rugby Union player with a cheering crowd behind him, mirrored by a soldier holding a rifle instead of a rugby ball.

1919 ‘Sportsmen and Smart Men’ wanted for the RMF.

When the First World War finally ended in 1918, the world had changed forever. What hadn’t changed was the use of images of sportsmen to entice young men to ‘join up’. This is a nice example of a recruitment poster from 1919 for the Royal Munster Fusiliers, one of eight Irish infantry regiments in the British Army. It uses images of soccer and hockey, boxers and athletes, a tug-of-war team and a cricketer; hardly traditional Irish sports – there was no room for sports like hurling, Gaelic football or handball. The tag line A Good Clean Sporting Life is offered with an Assured Future was also to prove short-sighted as in 1922 five of the eight were disbanded on the establishment of the Irish Free State. It wasn’t only the world at large that was changing.

Rudern Film: Buster Keaton – Der Student

Greg Denieffe writes:

In 2010, the film College (1927) was featured in a HTBS post called ‘Ready all!’ It was released in Germany as Der Musterschüler / Buster Keaton – Der Student and was promoted with a poster depicting an animated Buster Keaton playing Ronald, a hapless athlete, in his coxing singlet and holding an oar. Behind him is the silhouette of a racing eight.

On The Rabbit’s guide to Rowing Films you will find a plot summary and information on the film’s location. The final minutes show Keaton’s true athletic prowess as he goes to the rescue of his girlfriend, performing all the athletic feats he has tried and failed at throughout the film. However, he did have a limit to his physical ability. For a scene where Ronald pole-vaults through a window, Keaton had to use a stunt double for the first time in his career.

You can watch the whole film on YouTube or skip to 43.40 and follow the action from his ‘selection’ as coxswain by the Dean of Clayton College.

Keaton died on 1 February 1966, aged 70. Today, HTBS would just like to say, thanks for being such a good ‘coaxer’!

Spoils of victory! – A poster for College showing the victorious Clayton crew on the pontoon.

Leaders & Laggards

The above ‘motivational poster’ from 1932 was forward to HTBS by rowing historian Bill Lanouette. It was sent to Bill by one of his old rowing buddies from Fordham College, James Sciales. ‘I think it captures the use rowing as a metaphor for leadership, which we see a lot in advertisements featuring rowing’, writes James. And I have to agree. I found the word ‘laggard’ interesting and looked it up in a dictionary. ‘Laggard’ is a person or thing that does not go or move as quickly as others; and means opposite a leader. First known use was in 1702.

The leading boat in the poster is in mid-stroke, which gives the two-seat and three-seat in the crew an odd look, I think. It almost looks like the shell is Italian rigged, but your eyes are playing you a trick.

Today, reprints of the poster are being sold by the Art of Rowing, take a look here.

Happy Arthur’s Day & the Discovery of Guinness’s lost Ad Campaigns

HTBS’s own Irishman, Greg Denieffe, writes,

It is not all going according to plan for this year’s Arthur's Day which falls on 26 September. This is the fifth occasion that the day has been celebrated since been first organised in 2009 to promote the 250th anniversary of the Dublin brewing company. However, leaving aside the controversy which you can read about here, there is always something for us rowing-heads to like about the advertising campaigns run by the company over the years.

HTBS posted a few examples on 22 March, 2010, and of course Rupert Guinness crops up in articles on a regular basis.

Above is an example from the 1973 programme for Dublin Metropolitan Regatta (my first Metro). The strange thing about this is that the coxswain is not drinking a manly pint but is enjoying what in Ireland is called a ‘glass’ and in England ‘a half’ and even that appears to be in a lady’s glass.

A far rarer advertisement comes from 1950 for a campaign that was never used.

This from David Hughes, who has written a book called Gilroy was good for Guinness:

This small poster is intended as a flyer for my new book Gilroy was good for Guinness which contains hundreds of never seen before original artwork images of Guinness adverts.

Since the early 20th century, Guinness advertising has been famous around the world for its distinctive imagery, humour and impact.

For over 30 years the creative force behind many of the most iconic and beloved campaigns were the artist John Gilroy. Mysteriously, in 1971 much of his work disappeared from the archive of S H Benson’s advertising agency. Now, through his investigation on both sides of the Atlantic, former Guinness brewer David Hughes has unearthed a vast portfolio of Gilroy’s previously unseen and unpublished canvases.

Three hundred posters, many featuring classic cars, new zoo animals, American views, Russian and German that were never commercially published – have now come to light.

This book explores the disappearance and reappearance of these extraordinary canvases, presents them in full colour, and tells the story of Gilroy, the man behind the advertising legacy.

Thanks to David HTBS can celebrate Arthur’s Day in style with a poster that Tom Weil might approve of!

Going Underground with the Boat Race and Boat Racing

1911 poster for Saturday 1 April.

HTBS’s Greg Denieffe writes,

In a post called ‘Don’t Miss…’ on the 11 January, 2013, HTBS reported about an exhibition at the River & Rowing Museum, Henley-on-Thames. The exhibition, ‘Stuck Up – Early 20th Century Thames Poster Art’, has now ended, but it did contain a number of London Underground posters depicting The Boat Race.

On 9 January, 2013, London Underground celebrated 150 years since the first underground journey took place between Paddington and Farringdon on the Metropolitan Railway. Through posters by some of the finest artists of their day, the Underground became the people’s gallery and thanks to the London Transport Museum on-line collection we can view most, if not all, the posters produced to promote The Boat Race.

The first Underground Boat Race poster came out in 1911 and was a simple blue on white print by Charles Sharland. The on-line collection gives details of the artists, printers and formats of the posters commissioned and you can even purchase photographic reproductions of all but a few of them.

This year’s Boat Race is on Sunday the 31 March at 4-30 p.m. The only poster matching that date that I could find was for the 1928 race. Reproduction posters and postcards of this print are also available on eBay.

The 1928 race started at 9-45 a.m. – early by today’s demands of live television.

The posters of the 1930s were some of the finest produced and some like the one for 1934 actively encouraged Londoners to take sides, although it could just as easily be blondes verses brunettes!

The 1934 poster – not a boat in sight but a real eye catcher.

Some Boat Race posters also promoted the Head of the River race and in 1938 and 1939 the ‘Head’ had its own posters which you will find here.

Regattas too had Underground posters, among them Twickenham (1910), Richmond (1912), Kingston (1914) and Molesey (1924, 1925, 1927 and 1928) with the latter being particularly colourful.

On 6 July 2005, the IOC awarded London the right to host the Games of the XXX Olympiad. Transport for London, of which London Underground forms a part, supported the London Bid with a poster called Rowing in 2012 by Tube, bus, DLR and river. Although the poster was issued in 2005, in promoting the successful bid for the 2012 Olympics, it in a sense completes a century rowing posters on the London Underground.

One of my favourite posters is in fact quite plain when compared to those produced between the two world wars, but nevertheless it did what it was designed to do: get people using the London Underground. It was for the World’s Professional Sculling Championship race held on the 21 July, 1913, between Ernest Barry and Harry Pearce and was also by Charles Sharland. HTBS reported on this race in an article called A Gentleman on the Towpath. There will be plenty of people on the towpath on Easter Sunday when Oxford take on Cambridge in this year’s Boat Race. Let’s hope they all stay out of the water!