The Rowing Lauries

One of the most popular TV-series in America right now is House, where the British actor, Hugh Laurie, plays the very rude but brilliant-minded Dr. Gregory House. I have been a fan of Laurie for a long time, and although I enjoy watching him in House, as a P. G. Wodehouse reader, my favourite TV-series, with Laurie in the lead role, is Jeeves and Wooster. In an interview with the magazine Parade in April 2009, Laurie says that his father was a respected doctor, but that he, Laurie the younger, has “made a lot more money as a fake doctor than my father ever did for all his hard work.”

Like his father, William George Ranald Mundell Laurie - “Ran” Laurie, for short – Hugh Laurie rowed for Cambridge getting his Blue in 1980, where his boat lost to Oxford with a trifle of 1,5 metres. Click below to see a couple of seconds of that race:




Hugh Laurie also competed at the Junior World Championships in 1977, and at the Henley Royal Regatta in the coxless pairs in 1980. About the last race, and his “fascination with Henley”, he wrote a very funny article in, I think, The Sunday Telegraph on 2 July 1990:

“The last time I raced at Henley was in 1980, in the final of the Silver Goblets. It was a very bad year to pick. The regatta had been overrun by the American Olympian squad who were looking to kick some sand into English faces after their boycott of the Moscow Games.
With my partner, James Palmer, I squared up to two brothers by the name of Borscheldt, [sic M. & F. Borchelt] who were 19 feet tall and made entirely of Kevlar. Or maybe they were called Kevlar and made of Borscheldt, I can’t remember. Anyway, they were munching canapés on the flight back to Boston by the time we finished.”

If Hugh Laurie is now a famous actor, his father will still be the more famous oarsman of the two. Ran Laurie, born in 1915, rowed in three victorious Cambridge boats, 1934, 1935, and 1936. Laurie stroked the two last ones to easy wins. Jack Wilson, who would become a great friend of Laurie’s, was in the same three crews. When Laurie stroked the British eight to a fourth place at the Olympic Games in Berlin in 1936, with Wilson not in the boat, Laurie “attributed the difference between first and fourth place at the Olympics to Wilson’s absence from the crew,” Christopher Dodd writes in his obituary of Ran Laurie (The Independent, 10 October 1998).

Both Laurie and Wilson joined the Sudan Political Service in 1936. Two years later, in 1938, when both men were on leave, they entered the Silver Goblets at Henley for fun, and won the final easily. Laurie had earlier won the Grand Challenge Cup for eights at Henley in 1934. Laurie and Wilson both stayed in Sudan during the Second World War, but when they both came back to England with their families, they returned to Henley in 1948 for a second go at the Silver Goblets – and won easily again! As Henley was a qualification regatta for the Olympic rowing events in Henley later that year, the “Desert Rats”, as they came to be known, suddenly found themselves representing their country at one of the prime rowing races in the world. They trained at Cambridge for four weeks – and drew extra food rations – and in the Olympic race they managed, according to Laurie, to have “the best row we ever had” winning the Olympic title with a length.

Their shell is now on display at the River and Rowing Museum in Henley-on-Thames. It would take 40 years before another British boat would take an Olympic gold medal in the coxless pairs, this time the winners were Steve Redgrave and Andy Holmes in Seoul in 1988.

Jack Wilson, born in 1914, died a year before Ran Laurie, in 1997. As a matter of fact, Wilson was born in Bristol, Rhode Island of British parents. Next time my family and I drive through Bristol, I will take off my hat in respect.

A Nice Rowing Evening

Maybe not a large group, but a very strong one, gathered at Bank Square Books in Downtown of Mystic on Tuesday, May 26 for “A Rowers Evening”. Dana Avery of Mystic River Boathouse in Noank and representatives from almost all the organizations that are involved with rowing in the Mystic area were there. Dana had brought a single scull and a rowing machine, and while the movie True Blue (for some unknown reason in the U.S. called Miracle at Oxford) was running on a computer in the background, rowers, coaches, customers – especially a very nice couple from England – and bookstore owners and staff were chatting about the wonderful sport of rowing.

I was very happy to see that the bookstore had managed to get some copies of Frank Cunningham’s book The Sculler at Ease, first published in 1992, and re-published in paperback in 1999. If you would like to get hold of a copy of Cunningham's wonderful book, please call the bookstore at 860-536-3795. In stock right now are also hard-to-find books like Tom Weil’s Beauty and the Boats and Ed Monahan’s Rowing Retrospections.

A Rowing Room With A View

One of Sweden's most famous authors, Frans G. Bengtsson, wrote in one of his essays: "... for if a man is to live happily he must have water to look at..."

My study has only one window, facing east towards the Mystic River. It is not a grand view; if you would like to see the water, you have to stand by the window and peer above the rooftops and through the branches of the trees belonging to the neighbours. And if there are few or no leaves on the branches you can catch a glimpse of the river. Again, maybe not a great view, but knowing that the river is there, makes all the difference...

It is in this study - by the rest of the family called "The Rowing Room" - I write my entries to this blog and other pieces on rowing. It is not strange that my family has given the room that name as I am surrounded by "rowing stuff" there: rowing posters, rowing books, rowing magazines, and some few pieces of rowing memorabilia, etc. It is also here on the bookshelves that I keep my books by Frans G. Bengtsson.

Bengtsson was born in 1894 and was a poet, essayist, critic, and novelist - a true man of letters. Nowadays, Bengtsson is best remembered for his Viking novel about Röde Orm (Röde Orm, two volumes 1941 and 1945), which was given the title The Long Ships when it came out in an English edition in 1954, the same year Bengtsson died. And let it be said at once, the translation by Michael Meyer is brilliant. Michael Meyer (1921-2000), an Oxford poet and one-title novelist (The End of the Corridor; 1951), was asked to translate Bengtsson's Viking novel. Many other English translators had refused to translate it, as, Meyer writes in his witty essay "Frans G. Bengtsson to his translator", the "money offered was so pitifully low, ten shillings [...] a page." But Meyer decided to have a go at it, and the Swedish author, who had a degree in English, promised to check Meyer's translation. The result is luminous. If you decide to only read one Swedish novel in your lifetime, The Long Ships has to be it!

I had the great pleasure to meet Michael Meyer at a lecture and dinner given by the "Frans G. Bengtsson Society" in Lund, Sweden in September 1995. It was the most funny and enjoyable lecture and dinner party I have ever attended. Two years later, in a small pamphlet printed by the society, Michael Meyer had his essay "Frans G. Bengtsson to his translator" published, together with a piece about Bengtsson and the Scottish author Eric Linklater written by - I am honoured to say - yours truly. After translating Bengtsson's book, Meyer would later translate plays by Strindberg and Ibsen, and also write highly praised biographies about these two Scandinavian playwrights. Meyer would also write a couple of plays himself. If you are interested in Meyer and the London theatre life in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, do read his very entertaining autobiography Not Prince Hamlet - Literary and Theatrical Memoirs (1989).

It is not a coincidence that Chris Dodd mentions The Long Ships in his The Story of World Rowing (1992) as the Vikings were known to both sail and row their mighty ships. In The Long Ships Röde Orm and his friends are taken as slaves to row one of the Caliph's ships. At this hard time at the oar, Bengtsson writes,

"In his old age, Orm used to say that this period in his life was lengthy to endure, but brief to tell of, for one day resembled another, so that, in a sense, it was as though time was standing still for them. But there were signs to remind him that time was, in fact, passing; and one of these was his beard. When he first became a slave, he was the only one among them so young as to be beardless; but before long, his beard began to grow, becoming redder even than his hair, and in time it grew so long that it swept the handle of his oar as he bowed himself over his stroke. Longer than that it could not grow, for the sweep of his oar curtailed its length; and of all the methods of trimming one's beard, he would say, that was the last that he would choose."

After Orm and his men have managed to escape and are back home on the Nordic waters, they are invited to celebrate Yule at King Harald Bluetooth's court. Here King Harald calls them to drink ale, but asks Orm and his friend Toke to compose a poem each about their drink. Toke, who has not tasted better ale for many years, empties his vessel with delight and thereafter declares with strong voice:

"Thirsting I rowed for many a year,
And thirsting I did good slaughter.
All praise to thee, Gorm's gracious heir!
Thou knowest my favourite water!"

I have earlier written an article about Frans G. Bengtsson, Vikings and how my old rowing coach, Tore Persson, at my rowing club in Malmö, Sweden, ended up in a Hollywood movie by Kirk Douglas, The Vikings. If you would like to read the article, please click here.

Rowing Evening May 26

Rowers! Mark your calendars.

On Tuesday, May 26 at 6:30 p.m., Bank Square Books on 53 West Main Street in historical downtown of Mystic is holding "A Rowers Evening".

Dana Avery of Mystic River Boathouse in Noank and yours truly, together with representatives from different rowing organizations in the Mystic area: the National Rowing Foundation; the National Rowing Hall of Fame at Mystic Seaport Museum; the Battle Between the Bridges and Coastweeks Regatta; Mystic River Rowers at the Y; Groton Community BC; Fitch High School Crew Club; and Stonington High School's rowing team, are going to introduce and inform about the rowing possibilities in and around Mystic.

Get ready to talk, chat, and breath rowing and sculling for a couple of hours. Of course there will be rowing books to buy, and refreshments will be served.

Do you have questions? Please call the bookstore at 860-536-3795.

Hope to see you there!

Celebrating 30 Years

Here is a little post script to the previous entry, “Time of Glory”, posted on April 21.

One of the first articles I ever wrote about rowing was about Jack Farrell as a coach. (In this old picture from 1917, Farrell is sitting at the head of the table.) Yesterday, when I was flipping through some old Swedish rowing magazines, I happened to come across my article on Farrell, published in 1980 in the Swedish Rowing Association’s RODD. The way I remember it was that prior to that article, I had only written and published one article, about The Boat Race. I managed to find that article too, and I saw that it was actually published already in March 1979, in a local newspaper (and later reprinted in RODD).

This in fact means that I, this spring 2009, celebrate thirty years as a rowing scribe of some sort. Three decades - how is this possible?

Time of Glory

On May the 14th 1911, James Farrell of the London Rowing Club arrived in Malmö, Sweden. He was invited by the Swedish Olympic Rowing Committee, which had been formed for the forthcoming 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm. In the previous Games, Sweden had not taken part in the rowing events, but it would look bad if the host nation did not have any oarsmen competing at their own Games. Farrell’s task was to visit some of the Swedish rowing clubs to select rowers and train them for the Olympic regatta on the waters of Djurgårdsbrunnsviken.

At an Olympic conference in Budapest earlier that year, Sweden’s suggestions of boat types at the regatta had been approved: single scull, coxed outrigger four, eight, and, for the Olympics, the very odd coxed inrigger, a boat type that was used in the Nordic countries on the sometimes rough waters along their coastlines. The inrigger, the origin of which was a gig, was a wide boat with the oarlocks attached directly on the gunwale, and the four rowers sitting in a zigzag way. Germany and Great Britain had protested as they also wanted double sculls, coxless pair, and coxless four to be represented at the Games. The congress said no. The British sport magazine The Field wrote sourly that an inrigger had no business in an Olympic regatta. This boat type would never again appear at an Olympic rowing event, and has to be regarded as an Olympic curiosity.

It was not a coincidence that Farrell’s first stop was Malmö in the south of Sweden. It was some distinguished members of the local rowing club in town, Malmö Roddklubb, that had suggested to the Swedish Rowing Committee to contact Farrell. The club had asked Farrell to stay for three weeks in Malmö, to train some of their oarsmen, before he was to travel to other rowing clubs in the country. The club paid him three pounds a week and gave him free board and lodging, probably something that violated ARA’s amateur rules back home in England.


When James Farrell - Jack to his friends - came to Sweden that spring, he was 54 years old. He had joined the London RC in 1873 and had rowed in the bow seat in fours and eights at the Henley Royal Regatta on six occasions. In 1880, he was in the eight that won Thames Challenge Cup. He had also raced three times in the Diamond Challenge Sculls, and made it to the final in 1884. In 1892, at the age of 35, he rowed his last single race at Henley. On August the 5th, Farrell started his first rowing camp in Malmö. The Rowing Committee had decided that Farrell and his oarsmen were to concentrate on the eight and the inrigger, the latter being crewed with the four best rowers, C. Brunkman, W. Bruhn-Möller, T. Rosvall, stroke H. Dahlbäck, and coxswain W. Wilkens. Lack of funding, forced them also to row in the eight.

James Farrell went back to England later that autumn, only to return to Malmö in April the next year for a pre-Olympic training camp. On the first day, Farrell gathered the rowers around him, and said: ”Well, gentlemen, from now on, no boozing, smoking or dancing!” It did not come as a surprise to the rowers that their coach put a ban on liquor and cigarettes, but dancing? Farrell explained: when you dance you are using muscles that you do not use in rowing, and this will disturb your rowing muscles - so no dancing!

The Olympic rowing event of 1912 was to that point the world’s largest regatta, 45 boats from 14 countries. All the major rowing nations, except USA, had come to Stockholm. The first Olympic race on July the 17th was the inrigger four. As the 2,000-metre course only had room for two boats, several heats were needed. Farrell’s crew easily defeated a crew from Norway. In the semifinal they had to work harder for the victory beating a second team from Norway. In the final the next day, they were to meet last year’s Nordic champions from Denmark. But a couple of hours before this race, the Swedes had to row in the eight. Their opponents were New College. The Oxford boat had the lead from start to finish, not allowing the Swedish eight to come closer then half a boat length. Slightly more than three hours after the Swedes were beaten by New College, the Swedish inrigger four sat at the start again. The Danish boat got a brilliant start leaving the young Swedes behind. The Swedish crew fought bravely but it was extra hard with the eight race still in their bodies. At the end of the race, the Swedes put on a spurt, but the masterful Danes held the lead and took the first Danish Olympic rowing gold, leaving Sweden with a silver.

The day after the Olympic Rowing, the Swedes got their revenge. At the Nordic Championships, which were held on the Olympic course, the Swedish eight won without trouble. During 1914, 1915, and 1916, Jack Farrell was coaching Sweden’s eight (a club crew from Malmö RK), helping them becoming Nordic champions all three years. This was the time of glory for Swedish rowing.

One of the Great Professional Scullers

Today it is exactly one month since I started this blog on rowing history. To celebrate this I am posting a rare photograph of the English professional sculler Ernest Barry, with his autograph. Ernest Barry (1882-1968) was a professional waterman who won the Doggett’s Coat and Badge Race in 1903 and took the British Championship title in 1908 by beating George Towns of Australia.

Two years later, Barry raced Dick Arnst of New Zealand for the World Professional Championships on the Zambezi River in South Africa. Arnst won the race, but two years later, on 29 July 1912, he lost the World title to Barry on the River Thames. Barry successfully defended the title three times before he lost it to Alf Felton of Sydney in 1919. A year later Barry regained the title from Felton and retired from professional sculling. In 1913, he had been appointed a Royal Waterman and in 1950 the Royal Barge Master to King George VI and later to Queen Elizabeth II. During several years, Ernest Barry was also coaching crews in Ireland, Germany, and Denmark.

How much did you say?

When I began collecting rowing books years ago, no antiquarian book dealers posted their books on sites on the internet, mainly because the was no internet to post them on. Instead, I had to call or visit the dealers to see if I could find anything “new”. Of course, it was when I visited England that I was able to make the best finds, especially in London, Oxford, and Henley-on-Thames. Richard Way Bookseller on Friday Street in Henley had shelves after shelves with new and out-of-print books on rowing, and for certain, I would find several books there that I did not already have.

Here I found, for example, Alison Gill’s hard to come by The Yanks at Oxford (1991), Steve Fairbairn’s autobiography Fairbairn of Jesus (1931), and Edmond Warre’s On the Grammar of Rowing (1st edition published in 1909, and the 2nd published in 1990 by Richard Way Bookseller). Even today, Richard Way Bookseller is the bookshop to first contact if you are looking for new or out-of-print books on rowing. To contact the bookshop, send an e-mail to: waybooks@btconnect.com

Nowadays, the internet has made it easier to find copies of rowing books that are carried by book dealers around the world. Although, be ware, there are traps and pitfalls to look out for. Some, so called “booksellers”, forget to state the condition of a book, or even which year it was printed, or which edition/printing the book is. Sometimes the reason for this is that they physically do not have the book on their own shelves – if they have any bookshelves at all. Instead, these “megalisters,” as they are called, have employees who scan other booksellers’ sites, and list their books on their own site. This way they can stock millions of books that they do not have. If they would get an order, they order it from the other dealer, making a little money on each copy by charging more for shipping. Mike Sussman wrote a good article, "Attack of the Megalisters," about the “megalisters” in the New York Times Book Review on 14 September 2008.

In my hunt for rowing books, I visit online marketplaces for books several times a week, especially AbeBooks.com – which claims to have thousands of booksellers around the world linked to their site. These booksellers offer “110 million new, used, rare, and out-of-print books”. AbeBooks, with headquarters in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, was acquired by Amazon.com on 1 December 2008.

What I like about AbeBooks is that it is easy to find what is out there. I can search for books by author, title, subject, or ISBN. I can also choose to have the list show only first editions, hard cover copies, or convert the prices into Swedish kronor, Pound Sterling, or Japanese yen.

More than a year ago, when I was searching for some special books, I happened to click on the wrong button on AbeBooks. Instead of getting the newly posted rowing books, I got the most expensive ones. To my astonishment I found that a bookseller in Portland, Oregon – this beautiful town of books – was offering C.V.P. Young’s The Cornell Navy: 1871-1906 – A Review for US$50,000 (yes – a 5 followed by four zeros: US$50,000!). Young’s book, from 1907, in red cloth with two crossed oars as decorations on the cover, has 71 pages and many nice photographs as illustrations. Young, professor of “Physical Culture at Cornell University and Director of the Gymnasium,” had dedicated the book to Cornell’s head coach at the time, Charles Courtney, to all rowing Cornellians known as, the “Old Man”. Courtney was a very successful amateur sculler and rower, and, later, is also to be regarded as one of America’s most prominent professional scullers, who, after his career as a professional rower, became a famous coach for Cornell Navy.

Although the bookseller in Portland claims that The Cornell Navy: 1871-1906 – A Review is “an extremely rare, exceedingly difficult to find title”, and the book is in a “very good plus” condition, it is hard to justify the US$50,000 he wants for it. Can it really be worth that much money? The answer, of course, is that it is – as with all books - worth as much as a buyer is willing to pay for it. And that is probably not US$50,000. About three years ago, I saw this book posted by another seller on AbeBooks for a little over US$2,000, and already then, I thought it was an absurd price.

These days there is actually a new phenomenon that has risen on the horizon, print-on-demand. Hang on you say, that is not new, it has been around for more than a decade, which is true. However, the “new” thing is that “publishers” have started to re-publish old books, also rowing books, which have “lost” their copyright, and therefore can be reprinted without paying a royalty to the long-since passed author. And that is done the print-on-demand way, meaning you print a few copies after you have received the orders. Copies of The Cornell Navy: 1871-1906 – A Review are now being offered this way on AbeBooks.com for as low as US$22 - of course making the US$50,000 even more ridiculous.

Whether you are willing to pay US$2,000 or US$50,000 for Young’s book, I got my copy – an original one from 1907 - for much less at a bookseller in Rhode Island. The copy I found was in a much poorer condition than the one out in Portland. Maybe a bookseller would have called it “fair”, with a faded cover, some wrinkled pages, some pages being water damaged, a hole in one page, and a tear in another. So, how much did I pay? The book had no price, so I asked the bookseller, he said US$75. I said that I did not have US$75, nor was I willing to pay that much. I said he could have the US$25 I had in my wallet. The bookseller smiled and said: “Okay”.

Merry Rowing Christmas 1913

In December 1913, Ernest Hellström, a Swede who had immigrated to the United States and lived in the town East Orange, New Jersey, received a card from his friend Wilhelm in Stockholm. The card, which has Christmas greetings, has two green, old 5-öres stamps with the portrait of King Oscar II, and carries the postmark, 15/12 1913. The date, 15 December 1913, reveals that Wilhelm had sent this Christmas card a little late if he wanted Ernest to receive it before Christmas Eve. Wilhelm’s message is short: “I hope to soon receive some lines from you. Have a Merry Christmas, Best Wishes, Your Friend Wilhelm.”

Nowadays, slightly 96 years later, we know nothing of Ernest and Wilhelm. Maybe they once rowed together in one of the rowing clubs in the Swedish capital? The motif on the front of the card is very much a rowing scene. In the front is an oarsman, with a red cap and socks, wearing a blue blazer, which has something red pinned on the lapel. The rower is holding an oar with a red painted blade with white stripes. In the background, we can see a coxed four getting ready for the first stroke. The coxswain and the oarsmen in the four are all wearing the same red cap as the oarsman in the foreground. For certain the colour red is to be found on the club’s flag.

Further off from the shell, are some steamboats and a habour and a silouette of a shoreline. It is impossible to know if the motif and its details are from a real place, but for sure it is not a site in Sweden, nor are the oarsmen members of a Swedish rowing club. The reverse side, where Ernest’s name and his USA address are written, discloses German spelling, as does the printed “Hipp, hipp, hurrah” on the front of the card.

But German, or not, the essence is there, and that is probably what Wilhelm was thinking about when he sent his Christmas card to his friend Ernest across the Atlantic Ocean: the battle between crews, the camaraderie, the spirit of friendship, and the pure joy of pulling an oar in a boat with fellow oarsmen.

And as we all know, as Ratty so accurately put it: “there is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.”

"New" boat type to be launched

Nowadays, as you know, almost every builder of racing shells around the world can offer a customized boat for a buyer’s special needs. It does not matter whether it is a club, a college, or a national federation, a buyer can, for example, choose if the coxswain should be steering on a seat in the stern (stern-coxed) or lying down in the bow (bow-coxed) of an eight. To easier transport the shell on a trailer, one can order a boat that can be divided in the middle, or even in three or more sections. It is even possible to order one-seat sections and that way put together a four, six, or eight. Around ten years ago, the Swiss boat maker Stämpfli built a boat for 24 rowers or scullers. The boat, which still exists, is known as the Stämpfli Express, or Stämpfli 24.

The well-reputed French rowing magazine Le Bateau d'Aviron pour les Fous revealed just the other day, that the new French boat builder Puan T. Fromage, outside the town of Lyon, has developed a “flexible” shell for 50 rowers, called “Quinquaginta”. With this new boat it will be easier for those clubs that are operating on narrow rivers with plenty of sharp bends to allow their oarsmen to get the training they need.

However, as always when it comes to rowing, nothing is new under the sun. This “new” invention is more than one hundred years old! Already in July 1888, the British magazine Punch published a picture of “a new flexible, patent-jointed, vertebral outrigger” – “The Centipede”.


Anyone who is interested in Mr. Fromage’s “Quinquaginta” should contact him immediately as he only takes orders for the boat today – 1 April.

Oxford wins the 155th Boat Race

Although Cambridge, who had a superb crew this year, had a slight lead in the beginning of the 155th Boat Race, which was held on the River Thames yesterday, Sunday 29 March, Oxford put in an extra gear at Hammersmith Bridge, and had soon thereafter passed the light blues to go for their fourth win in five years. Oxford's winning time was 17 min. 0 sec.; they crossed the finish line 3.5 boat lengths ahead of Cambridge. The total score is now Oxford 75, Cambridge 79, and 1 dead heat (in 1877).

As always, the major British newspapers had in today’s papers some good stories to tell. To read what The Independent’s Christopher Dodd writes, please click here; the former Blue and Olympic champion, James Cracknell of The Daily Telegraph, please click here; Rachel Quarrell, also The Daily Telegraph, please click here; Patrick Kidd of The Times, please click here; and, finally, Martin Cross, former Olympic champion, writing for The Guardian, please click here.

The Boat Race

On Sunday, 29 March 2009, it is time again for the Oxford & Cambridge Boat Race, commonly known as just The Boat Race. It is the 155th race since it first started in 1829, and Oxford, who has the heaviest crew ever, are favourites. Not that the Cambridge crew are any lightweights - this year the race is called “The Battle of the Giants”. Everything you need to know about the race course, crews, the race’s history, etc is available on the official Boat Race site, www.theboatrace.org


Page from the magazine Punch, April 9, 1881. The headline reads "Mr. Punch's Guide To The University Boat-Race".

Have you read any good rowing poetry lately?

On getting the question what poetry is, an editor once replied: “It’s that which can’t be edited.” This being true or not, honestly there is some bad poetry out there, which some editing could have improved, or some influential good editor might even have saved us from entirely.

Now, are there any good poems on rowing? Yes, however, it is as Chris Dodd writes in his Boating, “A volume of good rowing poetry would be a slim one, indeed” (in the Small Oxford Books series, 1983).

There is of course the famous rowing coach Steve Fairbairn’s marvellous “The Oarsman’s Song”, which begins

The willowy sway of the hands away
And the water boiling aft,
The elastic spring and the steely fling
That drives the flying craft.

It is in this poem the oarsman

All through the swing he hears the boat sing

which is where this blog got its name. Steve Fairbairn (1862-1938) is purely remembered as a coach and a writer of rowing books that taught his rowing methods, Fairbairnism, and not as a poet. Nevertheless, I have to say that he had a poet’s mind. How else would he come up with a maxim as “The dreamier a crew looks, the nearer it approaches to the poetry of motion”?

Another rower, coach, and writer who formed wonderful rowing poetry was R.C. Lehmann (1856-1929). When he was not on the river rowing or coaching, he was contributing articles and poems for The Granta, the Cambridge undergraduates’ magazine that he founded, or for the satire magazine Punch. Lehmann showed as much skill at the pen as at the oar. Perhaps his most renowned rowing poem is “The Perfect Oar” in which a stanza goes:

His hands are ever light to catch;
Their swiftness is astounding:
No billiard ball could pass or match
The pace of their rebounding.
Then, joyfully released and gay,
And graceful as Apollo’s,
With what a fine columnar sway
His balanced body follows!

Some years back, when I was writing an essay on rowing poetry in Swedish, I was surprised to find that one of Sweden’s most loved poets during the twentieth century, Anders Österling (1884-1981), a long-time member of the Swedish Academy, had written a rowing poem. It was published in his collection of poetry called Livets värde [Value of Life], which was published in 1940.

The poem is called “Kapproddbåten” [The Racing Shell] and the first stanza reads:

Kapproddbåten bäres ut i kvällav smärta ynglingar i blåa ställ,
som lyfta den med årtakt i sitt blodpå raka armar som en festklenod.

An off the cuff translation would go something like this:

The racing shell is brought out this evening
by slender young men, dressed in blue
who lift it with strokes of the oar in their blood
on straight arms as it was a celebrated treasure piece.

But these poems are from yesterday you might say. Is there not something newer? As a matter of fact there is. Last Christmas, Santa was kind enough to give me the American poet Billy Collins’s latest collection of poems, Ballistics (2008) in which you will find a rowing poem, “Brightly Colored Boats Upturned on the Banks of the Charles”. I normally like Collins’s poems, but I have to confess that this one left me discontented and discouraged. The problem, of course, is that the poet knows nothing about the sport of rowing, and therefore gets some major things wrong that, I might add, non-rowers almost always get incorrect.

Let us have a look:

Brightly colored boats upturned
on the banks of the Charles,
the sleek racing sculls of a college crew team.

[- - -]

I pictured a lighter version of myself
calling time through a little megaphone
first to the months of the year,
then to the twelve apostles, all grimacing
as they leaned and pulled on the long wooden oars.
Collins managed to make two (rowing) mistakes on line three: as he – or the person in the poem - is probably looking at some fours and/or eights, and not some sculling boats (sculling: the rower or sculler has two oars or sculls each), the correct term would be shells or boats. The second mistake is “crew team”. On Bill Miller’s great rowing site Friends of Rowing History (http://www.rowinghistory.net/) you will find the following under Proper Rowing Terminology & Helpful Notes: “When you use the term crew you shouldn't use the term team. Traditionally, crew means a team of rowers. To say crew team is redundant. You may say rowing team.” (For more terms on rowing, please click here.)

I like the humour in “I pictured a lighter version of myself”. I mean who would not like to be lighter? However, nowadays there are no twelve-oared shells around, not even for apostles. The last twelve-oared shells that I know of belonged to the London Rowing Club in the 1870s. Another questionable thing occurs on the last line as it is said that the oarsmen “pulled on the long wooden oars”. The only wooden oars these days are the painted so called trophy oars that hang in the club rooms, or, if in Britain, in the bars of the rowing clubs.

It is not easy to write a poem whether it is dealing with rowing or not, I know. A couple of months ago, I actually had a go myself. One of my Swedish rowing friends had a special birthday coming up and I wanted to send him a rowing book and an English sonnet. After having struggled for three days with the fourteen lines, the special rhyme scheme, and counting syllables, etc, I felt like the poet in William Hogarth’s “The Distrest Poet”. And I do not even know if I could call the finished result a “rowing poem,” although I managed to drop in the word “oar”.

To not embarrass my friend or myself – nor would I like to jeopardize our friendship - I am not going to post my sonnet here. Just trust me, I am not a poet…

Collecting Rowing Books

In the early spring of 1990, my good friend Per Ekström and I were appointed editors for the Swedish Rowing Association’s magazine Rodd [Rowing]. A couple of weeks earlier we had carelessly written a letter to the Swedish Rowing Association to offer our services, maybe helping out now and then to write some articles and take a couple of photographs for the magazine. I do not really remember, but we also might have expressed our concerns about the magazine’s decline. Not that we had a lot of experience in this field. Certainly, I had written a few small articles and book reviews for the local newspapers’ culture pages, and even one or two articles on rowing, and Ekström had, on a regular basis, contributions published in an underground, left-wing monthly magazine that in the mid-1980s had gone down the drain.

We received a letter from the Secretary of the Rowing Association where he very politely informed us that as we were so eager to “save” the rowing magazine, we were now in charge of it, and would we be so kind as to inform him where he could send the magazine’s archives with old photographs, unpublished material, etc. At first, of course, we were taken aback by the responsibility of publishing a magazine, especially with our lack of experience, but nevertheless we found the challenge thrilling and plunged head-first into the project as only dim people do who have no idea what they are getting themselves into.

Werner Schmidt, a colleague of mine at the small publishing company where I was an editor, helped us to do a lay-out for our magazine. Thanks to Schmidt’s brilliant eye for book and magazine design, already in the beginning Ekström and I came off with a good, clean, and uncomplicated lay-out. One of the first things we did was to re-name the magazine Svensk Rodd [Swedish Rowing] to show that we started with a clean slate. The title was in a way contradicting the contents, since half of the articles through the years have been about the Boat Race, the Henley Royal Regatta, the Harvard-Yale race, the World Championships, rowing at the Olympic Games, Atlantic rowing, and other international rowing events and news.

The Swedish Rowing Association installed one of their old board members as head of the magazine. This was indeed only an honorary position and as he barely wrote anything for the magazine, Ekström and I decided after a couple of issues to draw straws for which of us was going to be the “Editor-in-Chief” and the “contributing editor”. Ekström lost the draw and was made Editor-in-Chief.

Being interested in history, also rowing history, in the first issue of Svensk Rodd I had an article about the Swedish inrigger-four with coxswain who took a silver medal at the Olympic Games in Stockholm in 1912 and a book review about David Clasper’s Hero of the North (1990), a nowadays very difficult to find soft-cover book about the legendary professional Tyneside rower and boat builder, Harry Clasper.

To keep on writing articles and to fill the space in the forthcoming issues of the magazine, I began buying rowing books, hoping to find good stories to re-tell. I already had a couple of old rowing books in Swedish and a few in English – and, this being before the internet boom - I had to go to different antiquarian book dealers and browse their shelves. One of the first ones I found was W.B. Woodgate’s Boating (1888) in the Badminton Library series, second edition from 1889.

My mother and I had visited my sister in Göteborg, and when it was time to drive back home south, I took the way down town in Göteborg to be able to go by an antiquarian bookshop. I popped in and asked for books on rowing. The owner mumbled something that he might have a copy somewhere and climbed up a tall ladder. He brought down the brown standard trade edition of Woodgate’s Boating from the top shelf, dusted it off and handed it to me. It was in a very nice condition - “very good plus” in antiquarian book dealers’ lingo. Carefully I looked at the price. Based on my measly salary as an editor, it was way above my budget. I thanked the dealer, handed the book back and said sorry it was not within my range. When I came out to my car, my mother asked if I had found anything. I told her about the Woodgate book, and the price. Being my mother, and knowing me, she took out her purse from her handbag, opened it up, found a large bill, gave it to me and said to go back to the shop and buy the book. It is a loan I yelled when I ran back to the book shop. The owner was surprised to see me again, although I was probably not the first one to come back to his shop after hesitating over a price of one of his books. While he neatly wrapped the book, I told him that I was an editor for the Swedish rowing magazine and collected material for articles on rowing history. “Very good,” he said, but added, “oarsmen, do they actually read?”

Walter Bradford Woodgate’s Boating was the ninth volume of twenty-eight volumes of sporting books instituted by Henry Somerset, 8th Duke of Beaufort, who was the head editor which more or less was a titular editorship. The series were called The Badminton Library, or in full The Badminton Library of Sports and Pastime, and the “Badminton Library” was borrowed from the Duke of Beaufort’s grand country home Badminton House in Gloucestershire. In England the books were published by Longmans, Green & Co in London, and in the USA by Little, Brown & Co in Boston between 1885 and 1896.

Boating belongs to the genre of rowing books known as “how-to”. However, it is not only a textbook that teaches the skills of rowing and sculling, it also tells the story of the rich and vigorous history of rowing, starting with oar-powered vessels of the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans. Woodgate, who had previously published Oars and Sculls – and How to Use Them (1875) (and later would publish Rowing and Sculling, 1896), had rowed at Brasenose College and was an Oxford winning blue in 1862 and 1863. He had won the Wingfield Sculls, the Amateur Championships of the Thames, in 1862, 1864, and 1867, and between 1861 and 1868 he had won eleven “pots” at the Henley Royal Regatta. One of his most memorable races at Henley was not a win, however. In 1868, in the Stewards’ Cup, Woodgate had his Brasenose four’s coxswain jump overboard at the start to lighten the shell. The four was racing down the course with Woodgate steering the boat from the third seat with a home-made device. It took the Henley Stewards by surprise, but when the Brasnose four crossed the finish line 100 yards ahead of the London Rowing Club, the Henley Stewards had collected themselves and disqualified Woodgate’s coxless four.

This was not the only hoax that Woodgate played on the Henley Regatta’s officials. Two years earlier, in 1866, he had entered the Silver Goblets twice, once as W. B. Woodgate with E. L. Corrie (Kingston Rowing Club), and once as Wat Bradford with M. M. Brown. Woodgate and Corrie came out as victors in this event, but after the regatta the Henley Stewards changed the rules so that no one could row under an assumed name.

Although Woodgate seems to have been a real rowing rogue, the sport of rowing was probably the only thing he took seriously in life. He was called to the bar in 1872, coached Oxford crews and was the president of Kingston RC, and it is as a rowing authority that he is best remembered. In his well-versed and entertaining memories Reminiscences of an Old Sportsman (1906), he writes how very disappointed he was with the publisher of Boating and the book itself:

“I found myself saddled with responsibility of writing to order – in conformity with some dictated scheme; and had but little free hand in compilation and selection of subject germane to the title. I had a silly chapter, by a fourth-class oarsman (whose style and management had been the bane and wreck of Third Trinity and Cantab style generally in ’62 and ’63), foisted upon me. [Woodgate is referring to the chapter on rowing at Eton by R. Harvey Mason.] Likewise, various illustrations which to my mind were quite irrelevant and in some instances erroneous, but which sub-editorial autocracy of a scribe who had no aquatic science insisted on inserting; while illustrations suggested by myself as more appropriate were shelved on the pleas of space and economy.” [p. 241]

Nevertheless, Woodgate’s Boating came out in two more editions, 1889 and 1891, before it was superseded by Rowing & Punting by R. P. P. Rowe and C. M. Pitman (1898; 2nd ed. 1901; 3rd ed. 1903), which became volume 30 in the Badminton Library series.

In a special Note in Rowing & Punting the authors state that “the present work – with the exception of a few illustrations which are reproduced from the former book on ‘Boating’ – is entirely new. Not a line of the original ‘Boating’ volume, published ten years ago, is retained.”

And so began my collecting of rowing books.....

Rowing History Forum 2009

Since 2003 the Friends of Rowing History, Mystic Seaport Museum, and the National Rowing Foundation have organized four Rowing History Forums in Mystic, Connecticut. At each Forum – in 2003, 2004, 2006, and 2008 - between 60 and 100 people from around the country have gathered to hear rowers, coaches, rowing writers, historians, and scholars speak about what they love most: Rowing! Very distinguished members of the rowing society have this way entertained devotees of the sport of rowing. To mention a few of the speakers: Ernestine Bayer, Frank Cunningham, Harry Parker, Daniel Boyne, and, of course, the rowing historians Tom E. Weil, Bill Miller, and Chris Dodd, the latter famous for books on the Boat Race between Oxford and Cambridge, the Henley Royal Regatta, and World Rowing, among many, many other fine rowing publications and articles.

At the latest Rowing History Forum in Mystic, in 2008, it was also the grand opening of the National Rowing Hall of Fame with the beautiful exhibit “Let Her Run,” which is now open year round at Mystic Seaport Museum. To read more about "The Hall" and "Let Her Run" click here - from Mystic Seaport Magazine, summer/autumn 2008.

In 2007, when there was no Forum in Connecticut, Chris Dodd and the River and Rowing Museum sent out an invitation to a Rowing History Forum in Henley-on-Thames instead. And this year, on Saturday, 31 October, it is time again for a new Forum on the other side of the pond, at the River and Rowing Museum in Henley-on-Thames.

In an e-mail, Chris Dodd writes that the speakers so far are:

a) The renowned collector Thomas E. Weil asks “Who is the Mother of Invention?”

b) Builder of wooden working boats, Gail McGarva, explores the Cornish pilot gig, the Eela Shetland boat, and the Lerret of Lyme Bay – and their interaction with their waters and communities.

c) John Beresford on voyages around his father Jack and his grandfather Julius.

Dodd continues, “Plus discussion and questions, short presentations, lunch and tea, and pub supper for those who can’t tear themselves away. There will be an optional dinner with Thomas E. Weil at Leander Club on Friday 30 October. Accommodation available at Leander at members’ reduced rates.”

Further details are to follow. Send your reservations/ questions/ suggestions for the Forum to chris.dodd@rrm.co.uk

Inquiries for Leander dinner and accommodation to Sheila Harrington 01491 636760.