Tim Koch: Der Schönste Ruderpreis

Tim Koch writes,

I recently purchased a delightful Austrian or German engraving on the internet. It is titled ‘Der Schönste Ruderpreis’ and is from a painting of 1899 by C. Tito. A coy young girl is pinning a flower onto the unlikely uniform of a victorious rower. The ruderer is looking both pleased with himself and is perhaps thinking what further prize he may win. As to the title, I guessed that ruderpreis was ‘rowing prize’ and knew that schön alluded to something good. This was confirmed by an online dictionary which defined schönste as ‘shapeliest’ or ‘fairest’ or ‘most beautiful’. I think that I prefer ‘most beautiful’ as it could refer to the girl or the flower as the prize. The other two words could have only have one meaning - though I suppose the ambiguity adds to the joke.

Rowing On Lake Sävelången

Above is an unusual ‘rowing’ postcard. The picture is showing pupils of the handcrafts school at Nääs Castle in Floda in the province of Västergötland, Sweden. From 1872 to 1960, the school was renown for its education in different crafts. It was an old tradition in Sweden to educate children from poor families to keep them ‘off the streets’ and to give them an education in traditional woodworks (for boys) and textile and cooking (for girls). The education at Nääs Castle became so famous that, from 1880 to the outbreak of the First World War, people from forty countries around the world would come to the school to take part in special seminars about woodwork, textile, cooking, but also to take part in tending gardens, games and athletics, song and dance. Today, Nääs Castle is a museum.

The postcard shows a boat, probably on lake Sävelången, which is located by the castle, with students from the school, seven boys and one girl, all dressed-up for a particular occasion. If we count the oars, it’s a six-oared gig with a coxswain or boatsteerer. It is the boys, in their ties and berets, who are in charge of the oars and the rudder, and the girl is acting as the passenger of the boat, at least when the photographer is taking the picture. I can well imagine that the girl would demand her turn at the oar, just like other girls and women have taken their turn at the oars if they were living by a lake, a river, or along the Swedish coastline. In the Swedish maritime history, there are many stories about powerful women fishing or trading, plying the oars in a boat going between islands and the mainland.

At the bottom of the card, someone has written ‘Lycka på resan’ [‘Have a good trip’]. The postcard is to a Fröken [Miss] Bernhardina Andersson in Hisingsholm, which is close to Gothenburg. There is no stamp, or date, so it’s impossible to know when the card was sent (if it was sent…). It’s an interesting picture of a time long gone.

The Idol Of The Hour

Above is a beautiful image of an oarsman, which was on the front cover of the London magazine The Sphere on Saturday, 30 March, 1912. Below the drawing it states: “One of the Idols of the Hour – A Boat-Race Study by F. Matania”. We do not know if it is an Oxford or a Cambridge man – perhaps he is more the ideal of an oarsman with his noble face and his eyes dreamily gazing into the distance. Two oars are being carried out to the water in the background; it seems the crew is getting ready to embark. The oarsman is unaffected by the hullabaloo going on among the spectators, who in the picture are just a blurry mob beneath him. Instead, he is showing great confidence. Maybe he would not be so collected if he knew what was waiting for him, his crew, and their opponents on this very blustery day on the River Thames.

As we all know, the 1912 Boat Race should turn out to be a historic race as both crews sank due to bad weather conditions (it was re-rowed on the following Monday; Oxford won). Read a race report here. But who was the artist, who so wonderfully depicted this dignified creature of a man?

‘F. Matania’ stood for Chevalier Fortunino Matania, who was born in 1881 in Naples, Italy. Matania met success early in life. At 14, he helped his father, an artist, to illustrate books and magazines. Between 1895 and 1902, young Matania created works for the magazine L’Illustrazione Italiania. In 1902, he left for Paris, but was shortly thereafter invited by The Graphic to London for the Coronation of Edward VII, and so began the Italian’s ‘cooperation’ with the British Crown; he would cover royal events, marriage, christening, funeral and coronations – the last one being the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth in 1953.

In 1904, Matania joined The Sphere, where some of his most famous illustrations would show up, among them the illustration of the handsome ‘Blue’ on top. One of his most famous illustrations before the First World War, actually appeared a few weeks after the one of the oarsman. On the late evening of 14 April, 1912, the ‘unsinkable’ ocean liner Titanic hit an iceberg and sank a couple of hours later, on 15 April, which Matania later illustrated in The Sphere. See his illustration on the right.

Some of his most celebrated and emotional works were produced during the First World War, when Matania became a war artist drawing realistic images from the trenches. His most acclaimed painting was entitled ‘Goodbye, Old Man’. It shows a British soldier saying farewell to his horse, which is laying dying on the road. To see that painting, please click here.

After the war, Matania started working for British and American magazines, and when, in 1929, the British woman's magazine, Britannia and Eve, was launched he became their artist for the next 19 years. He filled his studio with ‘stuff’ that would help him create realistic images for the magazines. Many of his illustrations were of half-nude women, because the readers demanded it, he would say.

Fortunino Matania died in 1963.

Here is a news reel from 1932, showing Matania working in his studio – click on the b/w image to start:

(FORTUNINO MATANIA)

Glowing Sculler

You will constantly find old cigarette and tobacco cards for sale on eBay. The one above (which, however, is rare on eBay) was issued by Bocnal Tobacco Co in the U.K. in 1938 and comes from a set entitled Luminous Silhouettes of Beauty + Charm and measures 2.7 by 1.4 inches. It is No. 6 in a set of 25 other sport 'glowing cards'. Below you can read on the back of the card that if you hold the card under a light it will glow in the dark, which it still does although it is more than 70 years old.

Sporting Illustrations By Booth

Frontispiece by artist J.L.C. Booth in R.C. Lehmann's Sportsmen and Others.

Bryan Kitch of the eminent blog Rowing Related made a comment regarding the image I used for Wednesday's entry about R.C. Lehmann's Sportsmen and Others (1912). Bryan is asking if there are others like it in Lehmann's book. Yes, there is, but I believe I picked the nicest one to illustrate the entry. The illustrator of Lehmann's book was J.L.C. Booth, who, in 1898, came out with his own book Sporting Rhymes & Pictures.

Lehmann and Booth probably knew each other from the magazine Punch, where Booth now and then had illustrations published. Although, it is not easy to find information about Booth, he seems to have been a well-respected illustrator. In a review of Sportsmen and Others, the Evening Post of New Zealand writes on 11 May 1912 about the book: "Mr. Booth's fourteen or fifteen sporting and character sketches suggest (and correctly) a lively book of shrewd observations and wholesome humour."

In the story "A Putney Waterman" a lady "had a difference with her 'old man'", so she flung herself over the railing. "She'd mistook the tide, for the ebb was three-parts run out, and there warn't more than a foot or two of water where she jumped. [... She said:] 'Don't save me, sailor,' she sez when she see me comin', 'I've sworn to die.' 'So you shall, ma'am,' I sez, 'some other day."

"[...] it may be said of coxswains that they are not so much individual men as members of a tribe or secret society formed entirely of male human beings weighing on an average 8 stone. They have meeting-places where they come together to devise the torments which later on they inflict on their fellow-mortals. The have signs and passwords." In "Coxswains".

Which Rowing Race?

As I mentioned in an entry yesterday, the issue of June 1932 of Boys' Life not only has a short story published, "The Kings Navy", but it also has a 'rowing cover'. At first, one would believe that the illustration on the cover relates to the short story inside the magazine, but that is not the case. If you look closely, you might find that the cover illustration, which is made by artist Sidney Riesenberg, is not from a fictional race and geographical place. We can see only two crews racing, so the question we might ask ourselves is: which is the most famous rowing race in America? Well, the one between Yale and Harvard, of course. The young men on the left, and one of them is reporting the race 'over the wire', are sitting and leaning out from (I would never dare to to that!) the Gold Star Memorial Bridge, which goes over the Thames River, which is the boarder line between the cities of Groton (on the east side) and New London (on the west side) in Connecticut.

Nowadays, most of the races between Yale and Harvard go upstream, but in Riesenberg's illustration the boats go downstream, having the finish line just under the bridge. In 1932, the race was rowed on 24 June downstream and Harvard won, at 21:29, against Yale's 21:42. The previous time the race when downstream was in 1930.

How can I be so sure of the location? Well, look closely in the upper right-hand corner of the illustration - there is the silhouette of the most famous building along the Thames River: Harvard's boat house Red Top!

This year, the race is going to be early, already on Saturday 28 May.

Three Inrigger Fours On An Outing

The post card above is from the inner habour in the town of Helsingborg, on the Swedish South-West coast. Already in 1868, a large rowing and sailing regatta was held in town between Danish and Swedish crews, and more than 15,000 people showed up to watch the races. It then took almost fifteen years before a rowing club was founded in town, Helsingborgs Roddklubb, in 1883.

I do not know when the picture was taken, or when the post card was sent (the stamp has been removed), but it was sent from Helsingborg to the Smart Family in Ballogie, Aberdeenshire, Scotland. As we can see, there are three coxed inrigger fours out in the habour. It is known that the club bought a new four in 1895, and ten years later a couple of new inriggers – by 1911, the club had three inrigger fours, two inrigger pairs, two single sculls, and a four-oared gig. It is very likely that the picture is from around that time. The vessel docked on the left is probably a ferry going over to the Danish town of Helsingör.

I would like to thank “Greg”, who on 2 January, 2011, pointed me in the direction of this nice post card on eBay. As you can all see, I won the card!

Who Was The Model In 'The Young Rower'?

Earlier today one of HTBS’s popular entries, The Female Rower, 1930 Style! (posted on 3 October 2009) got an anonymous comment about the young lady in the painting. The comment reads: “I was looking for an image of this picture and came across your blog (through Google search) and analysis of the painting. The woman in the picture was my grandmother and her name was indeed Freda. She passed away in 2005 at the age of 95. She had a copy of this painting hanging in her flat in Twickenham (UK) for as long as I can remember. She worked as an artist’s model for much of her early life, sitting for people such as Captain Glasson, as well as Sir James Gunn. In fact, Sir James Gunn did two portraits of my grandmother, one complete, the other unfinished. My family still retains the originals (oil on canvas). She was 23 in this painting and yes, unmarried. She didn’t marry until 1941. Thank you for posting!”

This was a very nice surprise, and a nice little foot note both for the art world and the world of rowing history. Many thanks to Anonymous. If you happened to have more information to share about your grandmother I would be very happy to post it on HTBS!

See also entry on 20 December, 2010.

A Question About "The Young Rower"

Yesterday, a lady by the name of Annie left a comment about the print "The Young Rower", which I posted an entry about on 3 October last year. Annie writes, “I have 2 original pages from The Tatler ("The Young Rower") and "The Young Swimmer" from the Sketch. Anyone know where I can find more? I did hear that they are part of a series. Thanks.”

I am afraid I don’t know the answer to her question. Is there anyone out there who is able to help Annie with her question? I think it might interest the rest of the readers of HTBS, too.

A Long, Cold Winter Ahead...

The snow came early this winter in many parts of Europe. E-mails and phone calls from Sweden are saying the same thing: the snow came way too early. I still remember the cold, long winter of 1993/1994 in Sweden. My friend Per Ekström and I were working on the issue of the rowing magazine Svensk Rodd that was due for March. All the articles and images were in place and the printers were more or less waiting at the presses, but we still lacked a picture for the cover. Per and I met at the rowing club in Malmö to try to find something ‘snowy’ that we could take a picture of. In the boat house we found a bow from an old wooden single that had just been cut up. We borrowed the bow and placed it on the frozen canal (yes, the water was frozen stiff so you could actually walk on it). We threw a life saver around it, and took a couple of pictures. The result you see on the right.

I have a feeling this is also going to be a long, cold winter. I don't like it!

Rowing Images From Yale

In a way to serve the sport of rowing (and this rowing history blog, I might add), the good fellow Tim Koch, member of Auriol Kensington RC in London and HTBS special correspondent, is in constant search for rowing images. His latest find is the Yale University Archive, where of course there are plenty of interesting images from ‘the olden days’. Tim writes, “I have recently discovered the Yale University archive picture website. "Naturally, I put ‘crew’ in the search and came up with over one hundred results. Some of my favourites are below. The copyright is mostly ‘public domain’.

Picture 1

1859 crew. The early pictures show much rowing in ‘Sixes’

Picture 2

Adee Boathouse 1910

Picture 3

Annual Crew Coaches Conference, 1934

Picture 4

Freshmen, 1914

Picture 5

Crew of 1879

Picture 6

Harvard c.1883. Know your enemy?

Picture 7

Watercolour of Harvard - Yale Race, 1890

Picture 8

Members of the Six Men's Crew (late nineteenth century?

Picture 9

Crew of 1881

Picture 10

Crew of 1880 with ‘leg-of-mutton oars’. Are these paddles? I suspect not as the picture shows eight athletes and a cox which suggests rowing not canoeing. Were they cut down oars for the photographic studio? (This is the image shown on top!)

Picture 11

Crew of 1884 without jerseys

Picture 12

Crew of 1882 on the dock

Picture 13

Yale Six, 1861

Picture 14

1889 Crew in blazers

Picture 15

Yale’s four-oared crew with the 1876 Centennial Regatta trophy won in Philadelphia

I’m sure everyone will have their favourites.”

Tim, thank you for sharing your discovery with the HTBS readers! I am certain we will find our own ‘favourites’ in this gold mine of rowing images.

Scandinavian Rowing In South America

The winners of the Cadet Fours in a regatta at the Scandinavian Rowing Club in December 1930. From the left: N. Torgersen (stroke), I. Christophersen, B. Blich (owner of the photo album), S. Sjöstedt, and S. Speyer (cox).

Some weeks ago, the good Tim Koch of London pointed me in the direction of an old photo album that was up for sale at eBay (Thank you, Tim!). The album had, among other things, rowing photographs from the Argentinean rowing club Club Remeros Escandinavos, the Scandinavian Rowing Club, which is located in the town of Tigre on the Paraná Delta, 30 km north of Buenos Aries. The club was founded by some Scandinavians in 1912. I immediately put in a bid, and a couple of days later, I won the album, which has some wonderful black & white photographs, which once belonged to, I believe, a Mr. Nordahl B. Blich (or, Blick?).

The first photograph in the album is from December 1924. It is taken from the deck of the Norwegian vessel S.S. Hanna Skogland. She was built in 1903 for Argo Line in Bremen, and was given the name Alabama. The following year she was bought by the German East Africa Line/Woermann Line and renamed Eduard Woermann. In 1919, she was taken to Great Britain as war reparations and was operated by Union-Castle Mail SS Co., which in 1921 sold her to T.H. Skogland in Norway. Again she was renamed, now to S.S. Hanna Skogland. It is onboard this vessel this photo album begins.

On Christmas Eve in December 1924, S.S. Hanna Skogland crossed the equator on her way to South America. In a photograph King Neptune and members of his court have preformed the traditional crossing-the-line ceremony for the ‘pollywogs’, seamen and passenger who cross the equator for the first time. A little ‘x’ indicates where a boyish-looking Blich is standing (above).

There are no photographs from 1925, but from the following year there are photographs from Montevideo, picnics, and images from the river and delta of Paraná from November 1926, where the oarsmen are lying down in their skiff - “we are taking it easy”. In January 1927, a photograph is showing the outside of a house in Buenos Aires where Mr. Blich is now living. He has turned into a handsome looking fellow, a real gentleman, which we can see in the photograph on the right, taken in January 1928.

In Buenos Aires he takes up competitive rowing. In a photograph from December 1930, we learn that he and his coxed four were the “Winners of the Cadet Fours” in a regatta at the Scandinavian Rowing Club at Tigre (the photograph on the top of the page!). On the back of the photograph is glued a small newspaper clipping saying that it was a 600-metre race “in favourable weather, rain threatened, but held off, so the regatta were rowed promptly and with great enthusiasm.” The winners were S. Sjöstedt, H.B. Blich, I. Christophersen, N. Torgersen, stroke, and S. Speyer, cox.


























Three months later, 15 March 1931, B. Blich was back in a winning boat, this time taking the "Cup La Nación" in the Tigre International Regatta. In the photographs above we see the Scandinavian crew: from the left, stroke J.R. Slötebak, F. Johannesen, cox L. Andersen, H.B. Blich, and S. Sjöstedt.

I do not know if this was B. Blich’s last race. Some of the photographs that follow in the album show him and some of his rowing friends going on a rowing tour to Uruguay in March 1932. If the winds allowed they would sail their Thames skiff and camp overnight on the beaches, using the oars as tent poles (see above).

They also visited the rowing club in Colonia, Uruguay (seen above). And then they rowed and sailed home to Tigre (see below).









And there ends my ‘photographic story’ of Nordahl B. Blich. Or, not quite, there are some loose photographs in a pocket of the album showing Blich on a sail boat in the habour of Strömstad on the Swedish east coast in July 1947, and one photograph of an older Blich, wearing a captain’s hat by a sail boat, with the note “Nordahl - 1962”.

I am afraid the photo album does not reveal a lot about Mr. Nordahl B. Blich, or where he came from. He was probably born in the mid-1910s, and maybe he was Norwegian, although all the notes in the photo album and on the back of the photographs are in English. At least he seems to have enjoyed his rowing. And all of us ‘old oarsmen’ know, that if you ever have pulled an oar, you have done something good in life.

Hugh R. Riviere's 'In The Golden Days'

In Thursday’s entry, ‘Oarsmen Who Gave Their Lives’, Tim Koch mentions the magnificent painting, ‘In The Golden Days’ by Hugh R. Riviere (1869-1956). About this painting (see above), The Art Journal, volume 62 (1900) wrote: “If only for the freshness of subject, the freshness of observation, Mr. Hugh Riviere’s ‘In The Golden Days’ […] is welcome. The play of sunlight on the faces of the Magdalen eight, being coached on the Upper Thames, the sense of movement, a further claim to attention.”

It is through Tim that an image of ‘In The Golden Days’ has reached me so I could post it here. The painting belongs to Thames RC and in an e-mail Mr. James Elder, the Honorary Secretary of Thames RC, explains that “that prints of the painting in various sizes should shortly be available via Bridgeman On Demand. Prints of 'The Start at Henley' are already available from the same site [click here to go to the site] They also have a few of our more interesting photos (e.g. Jack Beresford, Rupert Guinness, George Vize, some 1870s Henley crews and interwar Olympic crews). Their naming of these is a bit wrong as yet (they've only just been uploaded) so some are a bit tricky to find but this should improve in the coming weeks.”

In the same e-mail to Tim, Mr. Elder has also attached a photograph (see above) of the War Memorial which Tim mentioned in the Thursday entry. Among other things, Mr. Elder writes, “You can also see the left hand plaque ’Dulce et decorum est’ in place.” He also mentions that the furniture and replaced plaques should be back very shortly due to the renovations made now when Thames RC is celebrating its first 150 years.

’Dulce et decorum est’ is from the Roman poet Horace’s Ode, which begins,

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori:

mors et fugacem persequitur virum

nec parcit inbellis iuventae

poplitibus timidove tergo.

(How sweet and fitting it is to die for one's country:

Death pursues the man who flees,

Spares not the hamstrings or cowardly backs

Of battle-shy youths.)

’Dulce et decorum est’ is also the title of a war poem by the famous Wilfred Owen (1893-1918). He was killed at the Battle of the Sambre, just a week before the war ended. His poem, which shows the horror of war, was published in 1920.

If you are interested in war poetry, please go to Professor Tim Kendall's eminent blog War Poetry.

Tim also sent me a link to a list of the 42 Blues killed during the First World War, in 1914-1918. Click on the link and scroll down the page and there you will find a link to the 270 Henley competitors killed in that war. Last year, I posted a long article - in two entries - about one famous oarsman on these lists, F.S. Kelly, who was killed in 1916. Click here to read these entries.

My warmest thanks to Tim Koch and James Elder for their great contributions to this entry, and a special thank you to Thames RC for allowing me to post ‘In The Golden Days’ on my blog!

'To Charm The Ladies'

On 10 May 1879 there was a boat race between Stockholm’s Nation and Göteborg’s Nation (‘Nations’ here means student organizations at Uppsala University) on the river Fyris in Uppsala, north of Stockholm. Stockholm’s Nation’s Boat Club was founded in the autumn 1877 and the Göteborg’s Nation’s Boat Club was founded the following spring. Both clubs ordered their boats from England, two coxed out-rigged fours, 38 feet long, clinker-built with fixed seats. At the boat race in May 1879, both crews were rowing with white gloves “probably to charm the ladies on the shores,” one newspaper wrote. It is not known which boat won.

Blackie's Rowing Partner Harry Tate

When I wrote about Harry Blackstaffe’s charming little drawing of a sculler after his name on the dinner list of the winners of the Wingfield Sculls in 1930, I could not remember where I had seen it previously. But the other day, when I was going through some old rowing post cards, I came across Blackstaffe’s signature again. Blackstaffe, or ‘Blackie’ as he was called, rowed and sculled for Vesta RC, and in the photograph above, we can see him together with Harry Tate in a pair. Looking in H. B. Wells’s Vesta Rowing Club: A Centenary History (1969), I can only find Blackie’s partner mentioned twice, in the Foreword, written by Thames RC’s Freddy Page, and by Wells, who writes, “The No. 2 in the crew was R. M. Hutchison, later a famous figure on the music hall stage under the name ‘Harry Tate’.” [p.5] But maybe that is not Blackie’s partner in the boat, although the name is the same. Anyone who knows?

A Picture Cavalcade of Boat Race Day

Here is a picture cavalcade of Boat Race Day. Hélène Rémond, who, in an entry yesterday, wrote about the Boat Race between Oxford and Cambridge, has taken all the photographs. Thank you, Hélène, for allowing me to post them here.

The Thames Embankment

Launches for the Boat Race

The Media Centre at Thames RC

Inside the Thames RC is a wall of the results

On Friday, the day before the Boat Race, the light blues, Cambridge, went for an outing

At the start at Putney

Which way to Hammersmith Bridge?

Oxford still in the lead coming out of Hammersmith Bridge

The enterprise is flourishing on Boat Race Day

The Old Boat Race Course

After finishing up selling beer at Auriol Kenisington RC’s bar during Boat Race Day, Tim Koch sent me an e-mail. He writes, “I cannot add much to what has been already said about the 2010 Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race. More often than not the event is just a procession, but this year it was an exciting spectacle. As the race was held over Easter the crowds on the towpath were fewer than usual but this resulted in most people getting a good view. For the first time in many years, people were allowed to stand on Hammersmith Bridge which was only closed to motor traffic. It reminded me of the famous Walter Greaves painting, Hammersmith Bridge On Boat Race Day (1862).” [Seen above]

Tim continues, “The Boat Race always prompts me to revisit a favourite print from the Graphic magazine of April 1875. The 'Champion Course' (Putney to Mortlake or visa versa) is, naturally, little changed but the man made landmarks come and go. In 1875 the start had an aqueduct where Putney Road Bridge now is. Leander still had a Putney boathouse. The Surrey (port side) bank down to Hammersmith is still much the same. The Soap Works became Harrods Depository which is now converted to luxury apartments. The bridge is the old Hammersmith Bridge (1826-1886) which supported 12,000 people during the 1870 race. At Hammersmith (on the Middlesex or starboard side) the distillery, foundry, lead mills and oil mills are (thankfully) gone. At Barnes, the Surrey side is now built up but Middlesex retains more of its open spaces. At the finish there is no Chiswick Bridge (opened 1933) and the end is marked by the ‘Ship’ pub. Indeed, the pubs are the most unchanging landmarks. The aforementioned ‘Ship’, the ‘Bull’ at Barnes and the famous ‘Star and Garter’ at Putney all thrive today. The course is much like the sport of rowing - in some ways unchanging, in some ways always changing.”

Thank you, Tim, for this nice history piece about the Boat Race Course!

The Hierarchy Of Blazers At Henley Royal

To be really honest I expected Tim Koch to come back to me with a reaction to my entry …And A Dress Faux Pas from yesterday, and he did. He writes that he had a busy weekend with coxing the Head of the River (400 boats) on Saturday and the Veterans’ Head of the River (200 boats) on Sunday. Tim writes “It’s the Boat Race next weekend, I will not be coxing(!) but I will be selling lots of beer.”

About my suggestion that he should start a ‘well dressed oarsmen and women blog’, he finds it “an interesting one, but I'm not sure there is enough material. Most of the world seems to want to dress like teenage skateboarders.” How true this is. My son is not there - yet. Last spring, when my family and I were visiting the ‘fancy’ children’s clothing store in Mystic, he got the idea that he wanted a tie. Very happily I agreed and allowed him to pick out one. He picked out a stylish yellow tie with dinosaurs which maybe would not be my first choice, but on the other hand he is only four…

Back to Tim, who, on the topic of my thoughts about the brown-coloured plaid jacket and the brown hat that a fellow is wearing in the ‘Henley picture’ from yesterday, states that, “The now inactive rowing blog, the Tideway Slug, holds that, as in most things in British rowing, there is a hierarchy of blazers at Henley Royal:

Senior International or Olympic

Under 23 and Junior International - only if the date on the pocket is less than 5 or more than 25 years ago

Oxford/Cambridge full rowing Blue

Leander Club

Top rowing club, university or school - usually means a club with recent Henley wins

Navy blue blazer but with tie representing any of the above

Oxford/Cambridge half rowing Blue

Other rowing school or university

Low performance rowing club

Plain navy blue with low performance club tie

Non-rowing related blazer with an embroidered pocket – if it’s not for rowing we’re not impressed

Any navy blue store brand with indiscriminate non-rowing tie.

Garishly coloured ‘fashion’ blazer

Anything in tweed

A Suit

and so far the Tideway Slug.”

Tim does not share my opinion about the plaid jacket at Henley Royal. “However, at the time the picture was produced (1930s?), the gentleman in the plaid jacket would not have stood out,” Tim notes. He quotes, Alan Flusser, who in his book Dressing The Man (Harper Collins, 2002) states: “The post-war obsession with sports and outdoor activities encouraged fashion experimentation.... By the latter part of the twenties, the (tweed shooting jacket), trimmed of its countrified detailing and worn with separate trousers in contrasting fabrics such as flannel or gabardine, became the ideal expression of casual elegance for competitors and spectators alike.”

“On British Pathé,” Tim writes “there is this short film of Henley in 1938 which shows several men in the everyday lounge suits and trilby hats of the time”:

HENLEY REGATTA

Tim finished up today’s entry by saying that “In my last posting [on Friday 26 March] I was very rude about Americans wearing Tuxedos during the day. To be fair to our Transatlantic Cousins, U.S. school and university crews at Henley are usually amongst the smartest people attending. (Apart from their shoes - and baseball caps.) Also it must be admitted that (arguably) incorrect formality is better than not trying at all. Was it Woody Allen who said that, in California, ‘formal’ means long pants?”

Thank you Tim for yet another enjoyable entry!

...And A Dress Faux Pas

I am not really ready to let go of Tim Koch’s theme ‘rowing history and men’s classic clothes’ yet. You see, I happened to find two old images from the magazine Esquire on the web, that both are in a ‘rowing setting’. I do not know how old these pictures are, but I am guessing that they are between 50 and 70 years old. In the picture from the Henley Royal Regatta (at the top), we see some spectators (the course is in the background with some boats) dressed in bright-coloured jackets and the striped jackets that are all over this regatta still to this day. I do not believe, however, that you nowadays would ever see a visitor at Henley Royal wearing a brown-coloured plaid jacket like the fellow off centre to the right, nor, actually, wearing a brown hat of that fashion.

The second image (on the left) shows two well-dressed gentlemen in the foreground of a boathouse from which some oarsmen are getting ready to launch their shell. The man holding an oar is wearing an over-coat that I have not seen anyone wearing ever (is there in fact anyone wearing an over-coat these days?). The man on the right is dressed in a plaid suit that I would not dare to put on, just because I am not that brave. His suede shoes look elegant and do match his suit, though; I do have ‘the courage’ to wear suede shoes. I once bought a pair of brown suede shoes in Paris (together with a blue knitted tie, but that is another story). How I loved these shoes. It was only a couple of years ago I threw them out, although they were over-due long ago. The second image states who the artist is that did the illustration: Stewart Heidgerd. I googled him and saw that Heidgerd did art work for Esquire (which was first published in 1933), during the late 1930s, maybe even later.

I cannot help pointing out one thing in Tim’s eminent article on the well-dressed Wingfields’ winners’ dinner that made my heart skip a beat. For when Tim writes that “only Americans and waiters wear black tie during the day”, I was painfully reminded that a friend of mine showed up in ‘black tie’ to my dear wife’s and my wedding, which was held ten years ago in Sweden, at noon. Of course, I was wearing morning dress (for those of you readers that think that this is a nicer name for a man’s pyjamas, please look at the image on the right). So, Tim, not only Americans and waiters, even some Swedes are wearing black tie during the day, I am sorry to say…

A Gentleman On The Towpath

Have a look at this wonderful photograph. A world champion has arrived on the towpath at Putney and is getting a grand escort by mounted police. The date is 21 July 1913, and the gentleman is none other than Ernest Barry, the reigning world professional sculling champion. The previous year, in October, Barry had defended his title on the Championship course, between Putney and Mortlake on the Thames, when E. Durnan of Toronto had challenged him for the title. This year, 1913, Harry Pearce of Australia is eager to have a go for the title, and for £500 aside. It is the second time Pearce is sculling for the world title. Almost exact two years earlier, on 29 July 1911, he had challenged Richard Arnst of New Zealand. They sculled on the Parramatta River, and Pearce did not have a chance against the stronger New Zealander.

There was a great interest among the Londoners in July 1913 to see if Barry could preserve the title, or if it would go abroad. The big sport paper of that day, The Sportsman, had a preview of the race that took up three whole columns. So how did it go? Well, Ernest Barry beat Harry Pearce on the Champion course, winning at 24 min. 9 sec.

Harry’s son, Bobby Pearce, would, twenty years later in 1933, take the Championship title from Ted Phelps. Bobby Pearce had begun his sculling career as an amateur, taking two Olympic gold medals in the single in 1928 and 1932, and the Diamonds at Henley in 1931.