Caricatures from a 1931 report on a Christmas / New Year Dinner for some of the most popular sportsmen of the day. In those days, top scullers were well known public figures and references to 'The Diamonds' needed no explanation!
Yesterday, the Maidenhead Advertiser website wrote that Marlow Rowing Club, which was badly damaged by fire on 3 August, 2011, has received an insurance settlement of nearly £500,000. The website states, “the fire was caused by bungling burglars who twisted a powerful floodlight so that it was facing the wooden clubhouse while they broke into a shed to steal power tools. It is thought the heat from the powerful lamp ignited the wood.”
If you need a rowing calendar for 2012, HTBS has gathered some different ones below:
So let's see one of R.E. Swartwout's light poems that HTBS wrote about the other day. Swartwout, who was a constant contributor to The Granta, the Cambridge undergraduate's magazine, published his Rhymes of the River in 1927. Here is one of his poems,
Just before Christmas, on 22 December, Sir Steve Redgrave, Britain’s greatest Olympian, was honoured with a lifetime achievement award at the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Ceremony. Read more here.
Alan Campbell when he is not sawing... Photo: Tim Koch.
1887 Doggett’s Coat and Badge winner Bill East in 1906. Photo: National Maritime Museum, London.
Courtesy The National Rowing Foundation
The King’s Bargemaster Bill East shows the 1930 Cambridge cox R.E. Swartwout the tides on the Thames.
Doing some more research, I discovered that David Winser was, however, not the only Blue who was a published poet and mystery writer. Among the Light Blues, we will find Robert Egerton (known as ‘R.E.’) Swartwout, who was coxing the winning Cambridge crew in 1930. Swartwout rowed and coxed at his American school Middlesex School in Concord, New Hampshire, before he was admitted to First Trinity, Cambridge. I am not sure when he came to First Trinity, but it was probably in the mid-1920s. When he published his Rhymes of the River in spring 1927, he writes that “These verses have all appeared during the past few years in the Granta […]”. This collection of light verse is not easy to come by, but it is not impossible. (You will find one bookseller having a copy for sale here.)
Swartwout only coxed Cambridge against Oxford on the Thames once. Nevertheless, he did use his knowledge about the Boat Race in his novel The Boat Race Murder (1933); yes, the same title David Winser used for his short-story seven years later. While it is impossible to find a first edition of this mystery novel by Swartwout, there are plenty of so called print on demand copies available.
The 2010 Wingfield Sculls Dinner menu.
Seated, left to right: Alan Campbell (Winner 2006, 09, 10), Doug Melvin (1955, 58), Anna Watkins (2010, [11]). Standing, left to right: Mahé Drysdale (2007, 08), Rory Henderson (1990), Guy Pooley ((1991, 92), Greg Searle (1998, 99, 2000), Matt Wells (2004, 05), Elise Laverick (2007), Sophie Hosking (2008, 09), John Russell (1959), Bill Barry (1963, 64, 65, 66), Nick Cooper (1967), Tim Crooks (1977, 78), Malcolm Carmichael (1979), Chris Baillieu (1981, 82, 83, 84), and Wade Hall-Craggs (1993). - (Click on the photograph to enlarge it.)
Let’s have a little rowing quiz about the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City, where the rowing events took place at Lake Xochimilco. We’ll begin with an easy question: Who won the gold in the eights? Easy, wasn’t it? Of course, the right answer is West Germany! And who took the silver in that event? Did you say, Australia? Good, you’re right, again! Let’s move down to the smaller boats. Which nation took the gold in the coxed fours?... New Zealand? Yes, you are correct again, you’re really on a roll. And which country took the bronze in the class? Yes, that’s a little trickier…. If you said Switzerland you’re absolutely right, again. As matter of fact, Denis Oswald, who now is President of the International Rowing Federation, FISA, was rowing in the bow seat in that crew. He also competed in the Olympic rowing regattas in 1972 and 1976 without taking any more medals.
Now, here is the trickiest question of them all: which country took the bronze medal in the ‘fictional coxless fours’ at the 1968 Olympic Games??? You don’t know? It was actually Australia - at least according to David Williamson in his play Amigos, which had its debut in 2004 at the Sydney Theatre Company. Williamson has written several plays since the 1970s and is a well-known playwright in his home country.
Thirty-five years later only Dick and Jim are still in contact. Career wise they have been very successful; Dick is a heart surgeon, who soon will have a hospital wing named after him, and Jim is a wealthy banker, who is happy spending money on things that he thinks are important. Jim invites Dick and his wife, Hilary, to his beach house for some relaxing time. How can it be relaxing when Hilary despises Jim’s new, young, beautiful wife, Sophie? Of course, there is a special reason why Jim has invited Dick to stay in the beach house as Dick has something that Jim has not, but is dying to get (and Dick maybe is able to get for him): an AC (Companion of the Order of Australia). Jim tries to do everything in the book to get those letters after his name; gone is the camaraderie they felt when they were rowing with Roger, who died several years ago, and Stephen, who turned to writing and has been living as a beach bum ever since his son died in his early twenties. To be honest, Stephen has not written that much, but when he suddenly turns up at Jim’s beach house to tell his former comrades and their wives that he is going to write a book about what really happened when the four were rowing, both Jim and Dick can see how their careers and lives are going down the pipes.
Last week, when my dear wife had done some grocery shopping, she brought home a beer I had never tasted, Saratoga Lager, which is brewed by Olde Saratoga Brewing Company in Saratoga Springs, in upstate New York. 'Springs' of course comes from the mineral springs in the area which made the city famous once upon a time. Otherwise the city is probably best known for the Saratoga Race Course, which was opened in 1863. There are still many springs in the city and many of them are covered by small pavilions, so for example Columbian Springs.
Tim Koch writes,
Water boiling aft for Cambridge’s Cloak.
Cambridge: Dagger leads Cloak near the finish.
Unexpectedly, the Oxford race was on better water as the wind had dropped. There was some aggressive coxing from Oskar Zorrilla in Hell and Zoe De Toledo in High Water and they were fairly level until a small clash before the Mile Post when Hell went a third of a length up. The increased this to 1 ½ lengths at Hammersmith. High Water pushed repeatedly, but could not get back and Hell won by 1 ¾ lengths. Although it was a closer race than Cambridge’s, it was far less challenging with less back and forth. Cambridge will feel that they got more from their race but both squads showed that they had strength and depth. In some years you see trail eights that have decent oarsmen in the stern and some not so good in the bow but these were much more evenly matched. It’s debatable if this is a good thing - sixteen strong men do not necessarily produce eight strong men.
Oxford at Hammersmith Bridge, Hell leads High Water.
Do you happen to have $25,000/£15,960 that you would like to spend on a combination of ‘rowing’ item and an American president artefact? If so, HTBS has found a thing for you! A bookseller in Mertztown, Pennsylvania, has a letter of May 1927 for sale written by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, FDR, to his oldest son, James Roosevelt (1907-1991), who rowed at Groton School just like his father, FDR, had done. In his letter, FDR discuss his son’s return to rowing at Harvard and to see his son in action. James did row for Harvard, according to Wikipedia, in the freshman and junior varsity boats. James’s younger brother, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jnr (1914-1988) also rowed at Harvard, in the 1935 junior varsity crew.
It is with great pleasure that I write that HTB's own Tim Koch, whom the loyal readers of this blog by now recognise as a knowledgeable and witty fellow of the rich history of our beloved sport, and who always puts an extra twist on a good story, was appointed Director of the Friends of Rowing History yesterday. This group of rowing historians works closely together with the organisers of events like the Rowing History Forum, held in Henley-on-Thames, England, and Mystic, Connecticut, USA. The group's major mission is to create awareness and provide knowledge of the sport of rowing among rowers and non-rowers. Since Hart Perry's passing in February earlier this year, the other Directors of the 'Friends' are: Bill Miller, Tom Weil, Chris Dodd, Peter Mallory, and Göran R Buckhorn.
In yesterday’s entry, Tim Koch sort of had reply to Sunday’s entry about rowing Nobel Prize winners, writing “Taking a random sample of great rowing universities we can see that Cambridge has produced 85 Nobel Prize winners, Columbia 72, Oxford 48, Harvard 43, Cornell 40, Princeton 32, and Yale 18. Someone with a lot of time on their hands could undoubtedly find a few rowers in this lot but it’s not going to be me.”
Johan kindly pointed out that his rowing club, USR ‘Triton’, in Utrecht, Netherlands, has had not only one member getting a Nobel Prize, but three (3!). Johan goes on to say that one of the founding fathers of ‘Triton’, which was established in 1880, Willem Einthoven, received the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1924 for inventing the ECG (or EKG). Einthoven is seen in the 1883 photograph above in the 2nd seat in the coxed four. In the 1990s, he was also depicted on a stamp in the Netherlands.
Regarding last Sunday’s HTBS entry, Tim Koch writes,
Dark Blue oarsman, David Winser, prize-winning poet and a great sportsman, is seen in the above photograph at the bottom right carrying Oxford’s eight after the crew’s victory in 1937.
David was born in Plymouth, Devon, in 1915. He was educated at Winchester College where David proved to be a good marksman and oarsman, and while he studied at Winchester he was also awarded the prestige King’s Gold Medal for English verse, today called the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry. David earned a scholarship to Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he rowed in the Blue boat in 1935, 1936, and 1937; the later year, the Dark Blues won. At Oxford, David continued to write poetry and in 1936, he won the Newdigate Prize for his “Rain”. After Oxford, he was awarded a Commonwealth Scholarship to study medicine at Yale University (I have not found out if he rowed there!).
Yesterday, 10 December, Row2k.com posted the photograph above by Chris Kingston, and as a Swede I can not help stealing it as it was the Nobel Prize festivity on Saturday. Kingston writes about the blade: “I found this at the Nobel Museum in Stockholm, Sweden. It’s a decorative oar for a crew made up entirely of Cambridge University Nobel Prize winners.” This made me think if there has ever been a Nobel Prize winner who early in his, or her, life had been a rower. I can only come up with one name - Teddy Roosevelt. Do you know any others? Send an e-mail to gbuckhorn-at-gmail.com if you do!
For the fourth part of the series “50 Stunning Olympic Moments” in the Guardian, the newspaper looks back at Sir Steve Redgrave maybe greatest Olympic triumph, his fifth Olympic gold in Sydney. View the article and photographs here.
HTBS’s Tim Koch writes from London,
Con Cherry was educated at Westminster School, where he rowed in the first eight, and Brasenose College, Oxford. He went up to Oxford in 1933 but did not get into the Blue Boat until 1936. His Times obituary continues:
t its best [...] His easy style of rowing, so deceptive of its power, was seen to even greater advantage in a four than an eight, and in 1937 he rowed No. 3 in the fine Leander four that won the Stewards’ Cup at Henley.
Photograph from John Lewes's book Jock Lewes: The Biography of Jock Lewes, Co-founder of the SAS (2001) published by Pen & Sword Books.
about him which gives me a good excuse to bring him up here at HTBS. Of course, for non-rowers, he is mostly famous for being the one who helped David Stirling to found the legendary elite force Special Air Service, SAS, where he invented the so called Lewes bomb. Lewes was killed when a German Messerschmitt fired on the truck in which he was travelling, behind enemy lines in the North African desert in December 1941. Lewes was buried in the desert by his comrades without his grave being marked. With the Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s downfall, Lewes’s nephew, John Lewes, now hopes to search for his uncle’s grave to be able to give him a proper burial. It is believed that his grave is outside the town of Benghazi. Read the article in the Daily Telegraph here.
On 30 October, HTBS had a post about an article and film which was posted on Oxford Today, “A Year in the Life of the Boat Race”. Oxford Today has now made a second film available about the Dark Blues and their training, a film as grand as the first one with interesting clips and interviews. Watch it by clicking here.
HTBS's Tim Koch reports from London:
Those who followed my recent report on the Wingfield Sculls will notice that first place in both events went to Adam Freeman-Pask of Imperial College. He beat Wingfields opponent Henry Pelly by just over a second, even after he received an unspecified time penalty for ‘unsportsmanlike behaviour’.
(Click on photo to enlarge)
In his political life, McKenna served in two of the three highest offices of state. He was Home Secretary (Attorney General) from 1911 to 1915 and Chancellor of the Exchequer (Secretary of the Treasury) from 1915 to 1916. After the 1914-1918 War, McKenna left politics and became the Chairman of Midland Bank. In this role he made the following observation:
On 15 March, 2011, HTBS’s Tim Koch wrote about the British actor/film maker Kenneth Branagh, who might have a new rowing film in the making, The Boys in the Boat, about the University of Washington crew which went to the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. I am afraid, I do not have any more information about how that project is going, but I did read an interesting interview with Branagh in the Daily Telegraph the other day. He starts the interview with mentioning Sir Steve Redgrave and ends it with the Swedish police inspector Kurt Wallander. If you are interested in Branagh and/or Wallander, there is some great stuff in the middle of the article, too. Read it here.
After the two last days' posts about rowing machines, rowing barges, rowing tanks, and 'dry' tank rowing, I would like to wrap up the subject for this time with some images of old rowing machines. The two machines above are from the same 1887 Swedish sport book as featured in the Thursday post. The very simple machine on the very top has no 'oars' just rubber straps to pull on. According to the text in the book that machine was constructed 'a couple of decades ago by an American oarsman' [my translation]. The other image is showing an improved version of the older one by attaching the rubber straps to two sculls, much like the ones shown in Tim Koch's Thursday post. A funny note regrading rowing on rowing machines, in the Swedish book, this is called 'Kammarrodd', that is, 'Chamber Rowing'.
At the NRF's National Rowing Hall of Fame in Mystic there are some old rowing machines, all but one stored away. The picture above shows a machine that earlier was on display in the lobby of the 'Hall' but as visitors tended to try it out, it constantly broke. It is now in storage, where I took these photographs. As you can see, it lacks the rubber or elastic straps, instead the resistance is in the 'rowlocks' - see also the picture just below. (Yes, if you are wondering, the sliding seat in the picture above is the wrong way...)
In the close-up picture above, one can clearly see that the patent for this machine by Philip S Medart is 22 September 1914. Rowing historian Bill Miller has information about this patent in his article "Rowing Equipment Patents (U.S.)" mentioned in yesterday's post. If you like more details about this particular patent, please click here (it will give you a pdf file).
The apparatus in the picture above is now on display in the 'Hall' in Mystic. It would be bolted in the floor of a gym, and beside it would be a sliding seat on tracks that would almost go as far as the length of the gym, having almost an endless row of oarsmen rowing back and forth while the coach could easily give each and everyone instruction. The picture below shows a close-up of the 'rowlock'.
