I have to apologise to HTBS's readers: all of you who can count - and obviously, I am not among you - figured out that I missed to put up all of the 12-set cards that Nestle came out with in 1938 in my entry from yesterday (and the previous day). I am sorry! Well, here it is, the missing card, showing a coxless four, or a four without coxswains, as it was called at this time.
As I wrote in yesterday's entry, I won a set of Nestle's Rowing Cards of 1938 on eBay two weeks ago. Above you will see the rest of the cards in the set. While the one's from yesterday showed the difference between the Fairbairn 'style' and the 'old' English orthodox style, these cards show the different boat types: single scull; coxed pair; eight; coxed four; and double scull. It might actually be 'orthodox v. Fairbairn' that is shown in the two cards on top. Steve Fairbairn, who was the coach who more or less came up with 'Fairbairnism', never regarded his method of rowing as a 'style'.
I have come to understand that blogs on rowing history are a rare thing. If you google ‘blogs’ and ‘rowing history’, you will come up with only a few, and some of them are old and had their last entries in 2008 or 2009. Therefore, I was very pleased to find an active blog, Remo Historia [Rowing History], which is run by Carlos Henriques in Lisbon, Portugal. It has some very nice old photographs of oarsmen, crews, and prizes, etc. From now on, you will find a link on the right to Remo Historia. If your Portuguese is a little rusty, like mine, Google has a translation ‘box’ that would give you a rough translation of what Carlos is writing.
A new and different rowing competition was held in Switzerland during the past weekend (I think), The Red Bull X-Row, where crews are rowing from Zug to Lucerne, and running with the boats between the lakes! I have not found any results as of yet, but this is what The Red Bull web site writes about the race:
#1 National Rowing Hall of Fame & rowing exhibit ‘Let Her Run’ – a thrilling place.
#5 Rowboat Rentals – get out on the Mystic River.
March has been an interesting month. Looking back, I realise that I have managed to post at least one entry a day, or, including this one, forty-three entries for the whole entire month. Phew, a little exhausting, if I may say so myself. However, I have had some great help from some readers of the blog, to mention this month’s ‘assistants’: Malcolm Cook, John Eade, Philip Kuepper, Chris Partridge, and, of course, Hélène Rémond and Tim Koch. Thank you very much for your valuable input, comments and contributions. Keep them coming! I already know that April is going to be a busy month for me; I have to wrap up some articles for Rowing & Regatta and the Swedish rowing magazine Svensk Rodd, and some other small pieces here and there. A trip to Sweden will also make it impossible to keep on posting an entry a day. Please be patient…
Let us pretend that you know nothing about rowing, but would like to get information about the sport as you are thinking of taking it up for recreational purposes, or even having a go at racing in regattas. Naturally, of course, you would go to your country’s rowing federation’s website to see what kind of information you can obtain.
Both websites have valuable information about (sweep) rowing and sculling. Though it might be that you will find the same information under different links, and some 'rowing lingo' might be a little different between American English and British English ('two countries divided by the same language' as it was wisely said...). The main difference is that in Great Britain, and other European countries as well, there are different types of rowing which you will not find in the US. I find it odd that Coastal and Surf rowing have not caught on in the US yet.
