Honouring The 1912 Olympic Rowing Champions

Last Sunday, 29 July, an anniversary was held to celebrate the Leander eight and their coach who took a gold medal at the 1912 Stockholm Olympic Games. One of the descendants, Victoria Fishburn, granddaughter of Leslie Wormald, wrote a two-part article for HTBS about the Leander oarsmen and how it was to organise the 124-people strong get-together, “Stockholm 1912 – London 2012: An Olympic Centenary”, Part 1 & Part 2. Here Victoria follows up with an article about how the party went. The beautiful photographs showing unique rowing memorabilia are taken by Will Houston, great grandson of Stanley Garton. HTBS would like to thank them both for sharing the event with our readers.

It was a typical English Sunday, a mixture of sunshine and thunderstorms, when 124 people, all connected to each other by having ancestors in the Leander boat who took an Olympic gold medal one hundred years ago in Stockholm, got together to celebrate. An old-fashioned pole marquee, swathed in Leander pink, welcomed the crowd of descendants who ranged from an 88-year-old to a 3-week-old. They brought with them their ‘family gods’ in the form of rowing memorabilia. Four of the Olympic gold medals arranged in cabinets, frames and on silver cups, leather photograph albums of the crews of the early twentieth century, blades of oars, photographs and articles and even one preserved Olympic wreath awarded to Leslie Wormald. The eight oarsmen, the cox and the coach were reunited in this tent with their descendants marvelling at the collective talent on display.

Pots and medals which once belonged to the successful oarsmen who rowed for Leander, representing their country in the eights at the Stockholm Games.

Pimm’s and Elderflower lemonade was followed by a lunch of Coronation Chicken, an English summer favourite, meringues and strawberries at long white trestle tables decorated with flower pots of sweet peas. Then one of each of the rowing families got up to speak movingly about their father, grandfather or great grandfather. They gave poignant accounts of their forebears, telling the stories on which they had all been brought up, of rowing triumphs of a hundred years before. As one guest so eloquently put it: ‘It was a lovely event, quintessentially English, celebrating amateur sport of the highest level in a flower-show tent on an exquisite village green; even the English weather genteelly timed its appearance to cause minimum inconvenience.’ A 1913 model Vauxhall graced the scene and a Tiger Moth biplane, flown by George Woods, great grandson of Stanley Garton, made a flypast.

It was an unlikely occasion, born from an idea, and brought to a conclusion on Sunday when scattered families reunited with each other and became part of the wider family of the Leander eight of 1912.

1911 Grand Challenge Cup won at Henley Royal Regatta by Magdalen College, to which most of the oarsmen in the Leander eight belonged.

Young and old, gathered inside the tent to listen to the Leander oarsmen's children, grandchildren and great grandchildren speaking about the 1912 Olympic Champions.

Young ladies served Pimm’s and Elderflower lemonade - how very English!

A 1913 Vauxhall

One hundred twenty-four descendants of the Leander eight and their coach, 'Tarka' Gold, happily gathered outside the tent for a group photo.

(Copyright © photographs Will Houston)

Stockholm 1912 – London 2012: An Olympic Centenary, Part 2

Leander's eight is getting ready for an outing, in the foreground Ben Wells, cox, and Philip Fleming, stroke.

Here continues Victoria Fishburn’s article Stockholm 1912 – London 2012: An Olympic Centenary from yesterday:

The Leander oarsmen had rowed together many times. The British rowing world of the early twentieth century was refreshingly casual and laidback. Some members of the crew representing Britain were brought together almost by chance. The man who rowed in fifth position, Angus Gillan, was twenty-seven and had been working abroad for the Sudan political service. He had won a gold medal at the 1908 Olympics and four years later, when on leave, he bumped into a fellow rower in London who asked if he was available to join the Olympic crew for 1912. He did so with alacrity. Stanley Garton, rowing at No. 6, received a letter from a friend saying “Now we must get Horsfall” to join the eight. None of the gruelling selection process for the Olympic teams of 2012 was evident in the getting-together of the eight of 1912. But the rowers were talented and dedicated and Harcourt Gold, who had himself been a Henley cup-winning oarsman, put together an eight that could win a medal, just as he had done for the 1908 Olympics when a Leander eight had taken the gold medal.

Although none of them knew it, it was the eve of the First World War in which they all went on to fight. It is remarkable when so many died that only one of the rowers, Alister Kirby, lost his life. He had survived the Battle of Ypres, but died in France of a tumour on his knee in 1917. Others were luckier. Ewart Horsfall, like Kirby, had joined the Rifle Brigade and then transferred to the RAF. Unusually, he won both a Military Cross and a Distinguished Flying Cross. He went on to take a silver medal in the eights at the 1920 Olympic rowing regatta on the Grand Willebroek Canal, outside Brussels, and to be manager of the 1948 Olympic rowing eight, together with Angus Gillan. After working in Sudan, Gillan played a key role at the British Council and at the Royal Overseas League. Leslie Wormald joined the Royal Field Artillery and won a Military Cross in 1918 in France.

Swann (on the left), who also rowed in the 1920 Olympic silver eight, joined the church and went to France as chaplain to the forces. His career led him to Kenya, Egypt and India. Between 1941 and 1952, he was Chaplain to the King and later Chaplain to the Queen, from 1952 to 1965. Philip Fleming went to Europe with the Queen’s Own Oxfordshire Hussars and after the war was a partner of the family bank. Henry Wells became a distinguished barrister. Stanley Garton, coached subsequent Oxford eights but died young in 1948. His daughter, Rosalind, married the son of his friend ‘Don’ Burnell of the famous rowing family. Don’s son, ‘Dickie’, won a gold medal for Britain rowing in the double in the 1948 Olympics.

In rural Berkshire, the granddaughters of Wormald and Garton decided to celebrate their illustrious grandfathers. By chance, they had found another Berkshire descendant: the grandnephew of Edgar Burgess. They planned a party and began a tentative search for descendants of the others in the eight. They made contact with both the River & Rowing Museum and the Leander Club in Henley and the detective work started to pay off. First of all, someone living in Henley had a feeling that her next door neighbour had an Olympic grandfather and passed on contact details. Sure enough, the neighbour was the granddaughter of Ewart Horsfall. Next, Leander put a photograph of the eight in Hippo Happenings, their monthly eShot newsletter. Helpful ex-rowers from around the country wrote in, including the first of the generation of rowers’ children, Allan, the son of Angus Gillan.

A member of Leander handed in some pages from a Swedish book which he had found in a junk shop. It had images of the 1912 crew and of the Stockholm Olympics, which they had never seen before. Contacts with the Fleming family found Robin Fleming, son of Philip. A wonderfully helpful Horsfall connection led us to the family of Henry Wells, the cox. We discovered from his two grandsons that he was always known as Ben. Having found the cox, it emerged quite how famous the coach, Harcourt Gold was. He had, as the first person, been knighted for his services to rowing in 1949, the second being Sir Steve Redgrave in 2001. We found not one, but two of Gold’s grandsons and two granddaughters. There just remained Sydney Swann, or ‘Cygnet’ as he was known to his rowing friends. Research on the internet gave names for his granddaughters and Leander found an address in Scotland for one of them. A friend in their village said, “Yes, they still live there and yes, the house is simply stuffed with oars.” We had found Swann’s granddaughters and, through them, his daughter Celia. Of all the oarsmen Kirby alone, having died, left no descendants.

 1912 Olympic champions - Leander Club

The detective hunt had found descendants of every one of the eight that went to Stockholm. One hundred and twenty-four of them got together yesterday, on Sunday, 29 July, at the start of the 2012 Olympics, to celebrate the centenary. Children of the rowers and their grandchildren, great grandchildren and great-great grandchildren were there. They brought with them the collected memorabilia of their ancestors: Olympic oars and a rudder, two sections of a boat, several of the gold medals, a laurel wreath and many photograph albums. A member of each family made a short speech about their forebear. All then raised a glass to toast the fine achievement of these great rowers, their illustrious ancestors.

Stockholm 1912 – London 2012: An Olympic Centenary, Part 1

1912 Olympic champions in the eights. L to R. Ewart Horsfall, Edgar Burgess, Angus Gillan, Alister Kirby, Stanley Garton, Leslie Wormald, Philip Fleming and Sidney ‘Cygnet’ Swann. Sitting Henry ‘Ben’ Wells.

It is with great pleasure that HTBS is posting a two-piece article by Victoria Fishburn (on the right), who is living in Berkshire, England. She has an MA in Biography and is writing the life of Daisy, the Countess of Warwick (who was mistress to Edward VII and became a reforming socialist). Fishburn’s grandfather was Leslie Wormald, Olympic gold medallist in the eights at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics. As it is one hundred years since Wormald and the other oarsmen of Leander Club became Olympic champions in the eights, Fishburn and her friend, Georgie Woods, whose grandfather was Stanley Garton and rowed in the same boat as Wormald, decided to celebrate their grandfathers’ triumph. This is the story about the Leander eight, and how two ladies worked together to assemble one hundred and twenty-four descendants of the oarsmen in that eight. The celebration of their rowing ancestors was held yesterday, Sunday, 29 July.

When London won the competition to host the 2012 Olympics, two Berkshire women realised that it would be a fitting time to celebrate a family Olympic centenary. They had long known that their grandfathers had rowed together in 1912. It was now one hundred years ago Leslie Wormald and Stanley Garton won a gold medal for Great Britain rowing in an eight in the Stockholm Olympics. And the Olympic excitement of 2012 made some kind of centenary celebration a must. Their grandfathers, like the rest of the rowers who made up the eight, were amateurs: gilded young men of the Edwardian era who had gone to the best public schools: Eton, Winchester, Rugby and Edinburgh Academy. Similar types of British sportsmen were to run for their country in the 1924 Olympics, as famously portrayed in the re-released film Chariots of Fire.

The 1912 rowers had spent the preceding years gaining reputations as talented oarsmen rowing first for their schools and then their universities. One of them had rowed in the 1908 Olympics which were held in London, with the rowing taking place at Henley. Most of the 1912 eight had won both the University Boat Race and the Grand Challenge Cup at Henley in 1911. Apart from the Metropolitan rowing clubs, the university eights were the best around, so it was to Oxford and Cambridge that the Olympic committee went to choose the British eight for the Stockholm Olympics.

Harcourt ‘Tarka’ Gold (on the right) was the rowing coach for Magdalen College, Oxford, and had himself been a respected oarsman in his day, stroking the Oxford boat at four Boat Races in 1896-1899. He chose most of his eight from his own college, though he included one Cambridge man, Sydney Swann from Trinity Hall. Leather photograph albums are still in the collections of all the rowers’ families today. From these album pages good-looking young men look steadily back at you. Their public schools had taught them team spirit and the importance of doing your best whether you won or lost. In the eight of 1912 rowed Edgar Burgess in the bow and next to him Sydney Swann. Rowing at positions in the middle of the boat were Leslie Wormald, Ewart Horsfall, Angus Gillan, Stanley Garton and Alister Kirby. Philip Fleming, rowed stroke and another Magdalen man, Henry ‘Ben’ Wells, was the cox. They rowed under the name of the Leander Club. Its iconic status in the rowing world was reconfirmed in July 2012 as the five-time Olympic gold medallist Steve Redgrave rowed the 2012 Olympic torch up the Thames to land at Leander’s dock.

The British Leander eight was joined in Stockholm by a second eight from New College, Oxford, led by one of Oxford’s best strokes, R.C. Bourne (on the left). The other countries that sent eights were Australia, Canada, Sweden, Norway, Germany and Hungary. Germany and Sweden, like Britain, each fielded two eights but, even though the Australian eight had beaten Magdalen in the Grand final at Henley two weeks earlier, it was the British crews that proved to be the strongest. After exciting heats rowed over three days it was an all-British final on Friday 19 July between two old rivals: Magdalen/ Leander and New College. Henley’s traditions travelled with them: the banks of the bay Djurgårdsbrunnsviken in the central parts of Stockholm were named ‘Berks’ and ‘Bucks’. Magdalen chose the Berks bank and, in a fine race, won by about a length. The eight itself remains at the Riksidrottsmuseet, the national sport museum in Stockholm. The Leander Club of 1912 could not afford to bring it back to England.

The Olympic final in the eights: Leander has a comfortable lead over New College BC when there is only a couple of hundred metres to go to the finish.

New College felt aggrieved by what they saw as bad sportsmanship by Magdalen/Leander. Sportsmen have always tried to behave like gentlemen and, in 1912, New College argued that Magdalen did not. The saga is chronicled in the New College archives. The New College captain in Stockholm had won the toss to choose banks but, in a gentlemanly fashion, had offered the choice to Magdalen/Leander. Then, according to the archives, the decidedly ungentlemanly Magdalen/Leander crew went against convention and chose to row on the best bank. The bank they rejected had the disadvantage of a protruding bathhouse which had to be rowed around. New College were not able to pick up speed after this ‘blockage’. Archives at Magdalen that might have given another side to the story were destroyed in the 1940s and the controversy has lasted to this day. On 11 June, 2012, New College held a 100th Anniversary Match Race with two races against Magdalen. They each won one and lost one. Although, in a spirit of friendship, they invited Magdalen to celebrate afterwards. ‘God Damn Bloody Magdalen’ is still the toast at meetings of the New College Boat Club.

Victoria Fishburn’s article continues tomorrow!