‘The Song Of The Stroke’

There are many testimonies about Harcourt ‘Tarka’ Gold’s accomplishments as an oarsman, coach, Henley Steward, Chairman of the ARA, and sportsman in general. This little piece will celebrate him as a pamphleteer as it is 92 years ago this month his 20-page pamphlet The Common Sense of Coaching was published.

However, Gold was not the sole author of this short publication. He did not write part one, only part two. The first part was actually written by the members of the Oxford University Service Crew which Gold coached for the King’s Cup in the Royal Henley Peace Regatta in 1919. During the crew’s last week of practise before the regatta, Gold writes in the preface, he requested the crew record their attempt “to resuscitate the style and traditions of Oxford rowing after the lapse of five years.”

The only person exempted from taking part in this experiment was the crew’s president, the “pre-war oarsman” Ewart Horsfall, who had rowed for Oxford’s winning boats in 1912 and 1913, and the losing one in 1914. Horsfall also won an Olympic gold medal in the eights at Stockholm (and would take a silver in the eights at the 1920 Amsterdam Games).

The second part, Gold wrote primarily for the coaches of the College Boat Clubs at Oxford as they were believed to have little previous coaching experience. Gold states that it is hard to explain “rhythm” to novice rowers, but writes that “Dr. Warre once gave me the delightful description of rhythm as ‘the song of the stroke’”. Coming from Warre’s Eton and rowing at Oxford meant that Gold’s teaching was based on the orthodox style.

A couple of interesting anecdotal notes are that the Australian crew, which beat Oxford in the King’s Cup final, in an initial stage of their training on the Thames, had their countryman Steve Fairbairn, coach at Thames RC and a renown pamphleteer, to help out. A Cambridge eight, which was also competing for the King’s Cup, had another Australian to assist them, Stanley Bruce of Trinity Hall. (He would later be elected Prime Minister of Australia, and be granted an hereditary peerage, Viscount Bruce of Melbourne.)

After Bruce had coached Cambridge for the Peace Regatta, he dictated some notes which was published first in 1936 as a 24-page pamphlet, Rowing – Notes on Coaching. Both Gold’s and Bruce’s pamphlets are impossible to get hold of today. Time to re-publish them?

Archie Nisbet: Oarsman, Coach, Rowing Patron

Some weeks ago, I found a copy of the pamphlet London Rowing Club 1856-1956 (n.d., probably 1956) online. While I have Chris Dodd’s eminent book on the history of the London RC, Water Boiling Aft (2006), I did not have this 36-page pamphlet. As it was only a few pounds, including shipping, I quickly ordered the little booklet. The other day it arrived; a slightly faded cover in blue with crossed oars and the London emblem and the title in silver.

The pamphlet has a short history of the club, lists of Henley winners from the club, lists of Officers and Members of the club, and some interesting advertisements from the time of the printing of the publication. However, what really caught my eye was an ex-libris, or bookplate, which was attached to the inside front cover, showing a former owner’s crest with a motto: Vis Fortibus Arma – ‘Vigour is arms to brave men’. Beneath the motto is the owner’s name, Anthony Nisbet. The crest showed the three boar heads of the family of Nisbet. (An ancestor, Alexander Nisbet (1657-1725), was a famous author of Scottish heraldry, also on the Nisbet Clan.)

I do not know how Anthony was related to Robert Archibald ‘Archie’ Nisbet (1900-1986), who was a famous oarsman and member and one of the vice-presidents of the London RC. Archie began his rowing career at Pembroke College, Cambridge. Although he never got a ‘Blue’, Archie was a good oar and rowed bow in the 1923 Pembroke eight in the Grand which lost to Thames RC in the final. For a stint thereafter, he was a member of Thames RC, but left to take on the Captainship of London RC in 1924.

In 1927, Archie joined forces with Terence ‘Terry’ O’Brien to win the Silver Goblets at Henley. They were picked to represent their country in the pair at the 1928 Olympic rowing on the Sloten Canal in Amsterdam, even though some weeks earlier they were beaten in an early race in the Silver Goblet by Jack Beresford and Gordon Killick of Thames RC. Both Beresford and Killick were also members of their club’s eight that took the Grand that year. In the Olympic rowing in August, Archie and O’Brien rowed a good race in the final, but they were overpowered by the German duo, Bruno Müller and Kurt Moeschter, who were trained by the English professional, ex-champion, Ernest Barry. The Henley winners in the pair, Beresford and Killick, also took a silver medal at the Olympics, in Thames’ club eight.

During this time at London RC, Archie Nisbet was still in contact with his Alma Mater, and helped to coach their eight. When Pembroke’s bow man suddenly could not row in the first heat of the Grand in 1931, his seat was taken by Coach Nisbet. There is a photograph of November 1934 of Archie with his back towards the camera talking to a crew in the Cambridge trail eights on the Cam. His bicycle indicates that he has followed the eight along the towpath. It states that Archie was an ‘old blue’, which he was not. See photograph here. The following year, in 1935, Archie was one of the ‘official’ Cambridge coaches. This year the light blues had Ran Laurie at stroke and behind him his good friend Jack Wilson. Cambridge won with four and a half boat lengths.

Here is a short film clip of the 1935 Cambridge eight training on the Thames. On race day Laurie was moved from sixth-seat to stroke. You will see a quick glimpse of Coach Nisbet, too.



Archie was still coaching after the Second World War and was elected vice-president of London RC in 1951. According to Dodd, in his Water Boiling Aft, Archie retired from the London RC’s seat on the ARA council in 1975, only to become the Chairman of the Head of the River Race two years later.

Despite Archie’s success as an oarsman and as a coach, there is maybe one accomplishment that rises above the rest, at least in the eyes of rowing historians; Archie was the one who got Steve Fairbairn to begin coaching at London RC after Steve had left Thames RC due to an argument with Jack Beresford’s father, Julius. Steve started to coach London RC crews in April 1926 and the club would thereafter have a long run of success, also many years after Steve had died, in 1938.

HTBS Quiz: Stanley Bruce!

So, dear reader of HTBS, did you come up with the answer to rowing historian Tom Weil’s question which was posed on HTBS yesterday: “Which Prime Minister wrote a pamphlet on rowing technique?”


How many of you said: Viscount Stanley Melbourne Bruce, Prime Minister of Australia between 1923 and 1929? Yes, Bruce was the one! Anyone interested in Stanley Bruce (1883-1967) political career please click here.

The good Tom sends the following information about Bruce’s pamphlet: Rt. Hon. S.M. Bruce: Rowing – Notes On Coaching, London: Printed by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ltd., 1936. 24 pp. 8.75” Printed ivory paper wraps.

Tom has also compiled some more information from different sources about the content of the pamphlet: Bruce’s writes, “These notes were dictated in 1919 [...] immediately after I had coached the Cambridge Crew for the King’s Cup at the Henley Peace Regatta.”

It seems that the pamphleteer, Tom’s message says, also dwells largely on elements of the stroke cycle, but includes thoughts on various challenges (“An Ordinary College Crew for Henley with about three weeks to practise”) and types of rowers (“The job with [a good stroke who is a bad oar] is to prevent [him] from rowing himself stupid instead of stroking his boat”).

Stanley Bruce was admitted to Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and won the “Clinker Fours” in 1903 and did so well in the “Hall” boats that year, that he rowed in the winning Light Blue crew in 1904. The following year, he was captain for the boat club, and in 1906, Bruce coached the “Hall” eight that went for the Grand at Henley. He came back to coach in 1911 and, in the words of a contemporary paper, “improved the Trinity Hall crew out of recognition” [quote from A History of the Trinity Hall Boat Club (1930) by Henry Bond].

Tom writes that Bruce wrote Rowing – Notes On Coaching while serving as Her Majesty’s Australian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom. Bruce said the three things which pleased him most were his Cambridge Blue, his captaincy of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews, and his fellowship of the Royal Society (1944).

The HTBS readers might wonder if I knew the answer to Tom’s question. The honest answer to that is: sort of… The only oarsman that I knew had become a Prime Minister was the “Hall’s” Stanley Bruce, which proved to be a good guess. However, I did not know that Bruce has written a rowing pamphlet. So, now the hunt is on to get hold of a copy of his Rowing – Notes On Coaching...

HTBS Quiz: Which PM?

Rowing historian Tom Weil sent me a question the other day.

Let’s turn this into a HTBS quiz! Here is Tom's question:

“Which Prime Minister wrote a pamphlet on rowing technique?”

(Sorry, you can not really win anything, but if you guessed right, you will at least walk away with your head high and feel the satisfaction of having been right. Tomorrow, you will find the right answer here on HTBS!)

A Swedish Offprint On Rowing

On 20 July, I wrote about Ducker McLean's pamphlet Oarsmanship, which thanks to good detective work by HTBS reader Malcolm Cook could be nailed down to The Encyclopaedia of Sport which was published in 1898. The following day, 21 July, HTBS's Tim Koch posted an interesting piece about rowing pamphlets.

Technically, I believe that McLean's Oarsmanship is not a pamphlet per se, but instead a so called offprint, which is 'a separately printed article that originally appeared in a larger publication'. Nowadays, printed offprints are rare in the publishing business, instead you can probably read them on the web!

In my little collection of rowing books I have an offprint in Swedish about the sport of rowing. A famous encyclopedia in Sweden is Nordisk Familjebok, which first edition was published in 1876-1899, which was followed by a couple of more editions. During 1937 and 1949, a beautiful 7-volume (4,000 pages) sports encyclopedia was published by Nordisk Familjebok. The section about rowing, which was written by head editor of the encylopedia, Åke Svahn, and published in 1943. The offprint, Roddsport, is 40-page long article with very nice illustrations in black/white (remember this is during the 1940; and I am also a little surprised that the publishing company managed to get hold of that much paper to print this during World War II!).

Not surprisingly, Åke Svahn was deeply involved with rowing in Sweden. A year later, in 1944, when the Swedish Rowing Association celebrated the Association's first 40 years - it took the Swedish oarsmen a long time to get organised - Svahn together with Sten Thunvik published a brilliant work on rowing in Sweden, which actually goes beyond the history of rowing in Sweden. It is a pity that En Bok Om Rodd [A Book On Rowing] is written in a minor language, otherwise it would be regarded as a major work in the literature on rowing. The easiest way to try to explain its greatness is to call the book a Swedish version of Chris Dodd's The Story of World Rowing.

More entries on rowing pamphlets will follow.

Tim Koch On Rowing Pamphlets

Tim Koch writes about rowing pamphlets,

The recent HTBS item on the mystery rowing pamphlet which started here and finished here reminded me of the fact that, in the pre-internet age (remember then?), the pamphlet was a relatively cheap and easy way to get political, social and technical ideas circulated. As it is often held that everything that you need to know about rowing can be written on the back of a postage stamp, the sport lends itself to the production of such publications.

Steve Fairbairn (1860 - 1938) probably the most influential rowing coach of the twentieth century, produced several pamphlets. I have a reprint of the fourteen-page Rowing in a Nutshell: The Endless Chain Movement and I have a feeling that his book, Chats on Rowing started as a series of booklets. I am sure that HTBS readers will let me know if I am correct and also what other pamphlets 'Steve' produced.

I recently had access to the archive of W.D. Kinnear (1880-1974), the 1912 Olympic Sculling Champion (I will write more about this another time) and one of the things it contained was a 1925 pamphlet by 'J. Beresford'. I assume this is Julius, Beresford Senior (1868-1959), not Jack, Beresford Junior (1899-1977), his son and five times Olympic medalist. It contained everything that 'Old Berry' thought important about rowing - on one side of something smaller than A4. (See also HTBS 28 February, 2010 for the 1954 edition, seen on the right.)

The most recent such publication that I know of is the 32-page Rowing Technique: A Manual for Rowers and Coaches first published in 2001 by Peter Holmes and the late Andy Holmes (1959-2010).

In my opinion it is a splendid little book which should be issued to everyone starting rowing (and to many who have been doing it for a long time). The publisher is Springback Books. Their website no longer works but I would imagine that the Richard Way Bookshop in Henley has copies.

If I may deviate slightly, from an historical point of view, I particularly like the one page chapter in Rowing Technique entitled 'Old Masters'. It says of Edmond Warre: 'We no longer accept the 'body-beginning' of orthodox, fixed seat style but Warre defined most of the other elements of good technique'.

On F.S. Kelly: '(Kelly) applies Warre's ideas to sculling, insisting that the action is the same.

R.S de Havilland: '(de Havilland) bought Warre's ideas up to date for longer slides. Fixed seat coaches argued that the slide just extended the swing. Havvy changed the emphasis by insisting that legwork is still the foundation of rowing. But... he still stresses the need to swing and get on your feet'.

On Gilbert Bourne: '(Bourne) accepted all of Warre's ideas (Göran Buckhorn disagrees) .... he analyses the stroke in a scientific way that modern coaches still find useful'.

On Steve Fairbairn: '(Fairbairn) remains the most influential coach in rowing history. His ideas on 'natural action' and the 'springing hit' are fundamental to good technique. We even still use his coaching calls. No one has written better about what it feels like to row a blade'.

The best thing about pamphlets is that lack of space forces the author(s) to follow the KISS principle - Keep It Simple Stupid. This alone is an argument for bringing them back.

'Ducker' McLean Wrote "Oarsmanship"

Thank God for HTBS’s readers! Through posting comments and sending us e-mails we here at HTBS know that there are actually readers out there who not only silently read the entries that we post, but also give us information when we might fail in our attempts to find the background to a story. Of course, this is what HTBS is all about, to entertain and educate as many people as possible in the noble history of boat-racing, rowing, and sculling.

Malcolm Cook, who has chipped in important information before, sent an e-mail yesterday saying that he had solved the mystery with the pamphlet Oarsmanship. The good Malcolm writes,

“I’ve managed to track down the author of your pamphlet on Oarsmanship. In your blog you quote the pamphlet’s opening paragraph. Thanks to Google, I’ve found that it’s also the opening of a section entitled “Oarsmanship” in the rowing article in The Encyclopaedia of Sport (published 1898). The author of that section is given as D.H. McLean. Wikipedia has a biography of him here.

The relevant volume of the Encyclopaedia can be downloaded or read online here.

The section on Oarsmanship starts on page 271.”

Brilliant information, Malcolm. Thank you!

About the author of Oarsmanship, we borrow from Wikipedia:

Douglas Hamilton McLean (18 March 1863 - 5 February 1901) was born in Sydney, Australia and was educated at Eton and rowed in the school’s eight that took the Ladies’ Plate at Henley in 1882. At Oxford, he rowed in the Blue boat between 1883 and 1887 (winning in 1883 and 1885). The 1887 Boat Race was a memorable one, McLean’s fellow crew member Guy Nickalls wrote in his memoirs Life’s a Pudding:

“Then, ‘Ducker’ McLean broke his oar off short at the button. With the station in our favour and him out of the boat we could have won even then, but ‘Ducker’ funked the oncoming penny steamers and, instead of jumping overboard as he should have done, we had to lug his now useless body along, to lose the finish.”

‘Ducker’ and his brother Hector won the University Pairs for New College in 1885 and the Silver Goblets at Henley. In 1886, they were overpowered in the Silver Goblets final by Stanley Muttlebury and Fraser Churchill. In 1898, ‘Ducker’ collaborated with William Grenfell, (1st Baron of Desborough) writing Rowing and Punting.

‘Ducker’ was also a keen cricket-player and a “fair shot”.

Oarsmanship By An Eton House Master?

In an attempted to solve the mystery with the pamphlet Oarsmanship, (see Friday's & Saturday's entries) I send an e-mail to rowing historian, Tom Weil, who quickly sent back a reply. Tom writes:

"Regarding your pamphlet Oarsmanship: I was, at first, given my confidence that my bibliography lists almost everything at this point, and my recollection of a couple of pamphlets with rather simple titles, fairly optimistic about being able to answer your question. No such luck.

Of course, the limitation “For private circulation only” offers two consolations: first, that it was not made commercially available, and, second, that the number of copies may have been extremely limited. Nevertheless, it is humbling, as always, to stumble upon another unknown printing.

My best guess is that this little pamphlet was written by one of the house masters at Eton sometime 1900-1930, and distributed to the boys of his house. The principal clue is the Spottiswoode et al. publisher - they are particularly linked to Eton publications."

Thank you, Tom! It is of course thrilling to think that I might have a rare publication piece in my collection. At one point, I thought it might have been a small thing written by R.S. de Havilland, ‘Harrvy’ (on the right), who in 1913 came out with his famous little pamphlet Elements of Rowing, which was published by Spottiswoode, but the writing style (and rowing style, for that matter…) is not Harrvy’s.

Is there any more takers out there?

The Great Bourne Family

On Wednesday 13 July, in an HTBS entry, I asked for help to identify a small pamphlet called Oarsmanship, which I have in my rowing library. This 15-page brochure has not a cover, no printing year, and no name of the author. So far an 'anonymous' reader has suggested that it might be G.C. Bourne, who went up to Oxford in 1881. It is not a bad suggestion, but I am not sure if it really matches Bourne, who published his famous book A Text-Book of Oarsmanship in 1925. I have taken a good look in my copy of that book, but the writing style differs from the one in Oarsmanship. It is true that both authors mention old master Dr. Warre, but that would have been common practise during this time as Warre had such a major impact on the rowing style at Eton and Oxford for many years. I guess my question still is unanswered.

However, by coincident I just received an old article from 30 March 1946 (published in the Picture Post) about the the Bournes, "The Greatest Rowing Family": Dr. Gilbert C. Bourne, his son Robert 'Bob' C. Bourne, who stroked four winning Oxford crews in the Boat Race 1909-1912, and his son, Robert 'Bobbie' M.A. Bourne, who was awarded his Blue in 1939, but had to give it up ten days before the Race due to hurting his hand. When World War II broke out he joined the 4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantary but was captured before Dunkirk. He spent five years as a P.O.W. After the war, he went up to Oxford again and earned his second Blue. At first his stroked but was moved to No. 4. The 1946 Boat Race was won by Oxford. (In the 1947 Boat Race, Bobbie Bourne was also rowing at No. 4, but that year the Race was won by Cambridge.)

On top is a sketch from 1882 when Gilbert C Bourne rowed bow in the winning Oxford crew in the Boat Race. The following year, still at bow, Bourne took his second victory in the Race.

Who Wrote "Oarsmanship"?

In my little collection of rowing books and pamphlets is a 15-page brochure called Oarsmanship printed by Spottiswoode, Ballantyne and Co. Ltd - Eton, Colchester and London. It is missing its cover and has no author or printing year. On the top of the page it states "For private circulation only". The texts begins,

"If it were not for the fact that oarsmen of the very first class are extremely rave, it would appear that the art of rowing ought not to be a difficult one to acquire. There is only the one stroke to learn, and, when that is learned, it only has o be repeated, now at a faster, and now at a slowe rate; there are not the same difficulties as there are for instance in cricket, where the beginner has to learn a number of different strokes and where he has to deal with circumstances which are constantly changing."

The author goes through the rowing stroke: the swing forward; the beginning; the swing back; the finish; the recovery; the swing forward. The unknown author mentions Dr. Warre and quotes from his "Notes on the Stroke" (published it seems in 1875, 1880, 1898 and in On the Grammar of Rowing in 1909), and the Oxford University eight of 1878, "one of the most famous eights". He also writes, "When I went up to Oxford in the early eighties... ". Some Cambridge victories in 1886, 1887, 1888, and 1889 are also mentioned in the text.

This little publication is not listed in Freddy Brittain's Oar, Scull and Rudder (1930).

Help to identify the author and printing year would be very much appreciated!

Drinking & Rowing

In the entry on 14 April, R.C. Lehmann On-line, Tim Koch writes about Lehmann's Rowing from 1898 and some entertaining text parts in this book. Under 'Training and Diet' we can read about what and what not to drink if you are in training at the turn of the century. Lehmann writes,

Note—Once or twice during training there is a "champagne night," when champagne is substituted for beer or claret and water; but this only occurs when the crew have been doing very hard work, or when they show evident signs of being over-fatigued, and require a fillip.

And Tim rightly comment this, "The inclusion of alcohol at all is very strange by modern standards." However, to my big surprise, I found that 50 years later, the Cambridge coach, Raymond Owen, gives the same advise in his little book or pamphlet, Training for Rowing (38 pp.), which was published in 1952. Owen writes under the title 'Food; Alcohol':

"This should be limited completely to beer, claret, port and champagne. Beer - half a pint with lunch and one pint with dinner [...]; Claret - Not more than two glasses of claret can be allowed with dinner occasionally [...]; Port - Not more than two glasses of port should be allowed at dinner occasionally, and must be limited to certain occasions, such as the end of a hard week's rowing [...]; Champagne - This should be used even more occasionally than port, but is definitely helpful if given at certain times. It can be allowed at dinner following some particularly big effort, and especially if there is any sign of 'staleness.' "

Owen also adds, "It must be remembered that the only real value of alcohol to the body in training is a psychological one [...]"

In the Acknowledgments, Owen thanks the Cambridge crew of 1951, "who acted as guinea pigs." The 1951 Cambridge crew beat Oxford in The Boat Race with 12 boat lengths!

'Tarka' - The First Sir Of Rowing

Sir Steven Redgrave was not the first person to be knighted for services to rowing. He was actually the second oarsman. The first one was one of my ‘rowing heroes’: Sir Harcourt Gilbey Gold (1876-1952). Harcourt Gold, known by the English rowing world as ‘Tarka’ (it seems at an early age he had a problem pronouncing his first name, which came out as ‘Tarka’- a name that stuck), was a master of whatever he decided to accomplish in rowing.

Tarka, who was called by R.C Lehmann, “one […] of really great strokes” in his Rowing (1897), stroked three Eton eights to victory in the Ladies Plate in 1893-1895, and Leander in the Grand 1896, 1898-1899. He won the Stewards twice (for Leander in 1898 and Magdalen in 1899), and stroked Oxford in The Boat Race at four occasions, in 1896-1899, only losing the last year. In his first Boat Race, in very rough water, Oxford was behind almost at the first stroke. With 200 yards to go, the dark blues managed to squeeze past Cambridge, winning with a 2/5 length. A contemporary source wrote about Tarka, among other things, “He has wonderful knees; and his legs are always loudly appreciated by the crowd at Putney.” You can study his legs in the drawing by SPY, published on 23 March 1899, in Vanity Fair up on the right.

After his active rowing career was over, Tarka began a successful coaching career. He coached Magdalen and Oxford for many years, and he coached two Leander eights to Olympic gold in 1908 and 1912. During the First World War he served in the Royal Flying Corps. In 1909, he had become a Steward at Henley, and after the war, in 1919, he was elected to the regatta’s management where he oversaw the making of the Stewards’ Enclosure. The next year, Tarka published his little pamphlet The Common Sense of Coaching* (1920).

After the Second World War, in 1945, he was elected Chairman of the Henley Royal Regatta, and three years later Chairman of the Amateur Rowing Association, ARA. In 1949, he received the first knighthood for services to rowing. At the first Henley regatta after the war, in 1946, Tarka had the great pleasure to welcome and escort princesses Elizabeth and Margaret. In the following newsreel, he can be seen with the princesses at this occasion, when the coming Elizabeth II, was handing out the prizes to the winning crews.

(HENLEY REGATTA)

What is maybe even more interesting is the following newsreel that is showing the unused, cut material that did not make it into the newsreel above. Here, for example, you will see a few seconds of the Diamonds final when Jean Sepheriades beat Jack 'Kell' Kelly.

HENLEY REGATTA

Tim Koch has sent me an old Rowing article from the beginning of the 1950s by Hylton Cleaver. In the article, Cleaver wrote about Tarka’s family history where his mother, Charlotte, came from the famous Gilbey gin dynasty. He married Helen Maclagan, sister of the 1899 Oxford cox, G.S. Maclagan. Tarka’s elder sister, Ellen, married legendary ‘oar’ Guy Nickalls and their rowing son ‘Gully’ had Tarka as his godfather and married his daughter Rachel. Gully succeeded his uncle, Tarka, as Chairman of the ARA. (I think I got that all right…) – My thanks to Tim!

* If anyone has The Common Sense of Coaching for sale, I would be very happy to buy it!

'Tunny' - A Great Coach

I am not sure when this little pamphlet was published, but it states that it was ‘revised Michaelmas, 1956’. The pamphlet, Introductory Notes on the Art of Rowing, 12 pages, was written by signature ‘B.T.’, which stands for Brian Tunstall. I have by now read quite a lot of different books and pamphlets on how to row, and, being short and concise, I think this is an excellent little work on how to become a good oarsman or oarswoman. To give you an idea how Tunstall has done it in his booklet, here are the sub-titles: ‘The Idea of Rowing’, ‘The Idea of Racing’, ‘On Keeping Time’, ‘The Beginning’, ‘The Finish’, ‘The Recovery’, ‘Coming Forward’, ‘Light Hands’, and ‘Getting the Feel of it’. Tunstall gives easy instructions to follow, in an easy language for the novice to understand. Again, a wonderful little pamphlet, which now is hard to come by.

Who then was Tunstall? William Cuthbert Brian Tunstall (1900-1970) was one of the leading naval historians starting in the 1920s and to his death, and wrote ground-breaking works on naval tactics and other books on naval subjects. Before the war, Tunstall was a lecturer in History and English at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich, and the Secretary of the Navy Record Society. During the war, he was the naval correspondent for the BBC European Services. Later, he lectured at the London School of Economics and at the Royal Military College of Canada. Rowing historian Bill Lanouette (seen on the left) in Washington DC, who has just handed in his book manuscript about the professional oarsmen, the Biglin Brothers, to his literary agent, has told me that when he was studying at the London School of Economics in 1964-1965, he had Tunstall – or “‘Tunny’ as we used to call him” – as rowing coach at the school’s boat club. “We rowed from the University of London boathouse at Chiswick, just upstream from the ‘Boat Race’ course,” Bill writes in an e-mail. He continues, “during breaks in his coaching [‘Tunny’] would regale us with stories about the signal flags used at the Battle of Trafalgar. A great coach, and a grand character.”

Many thanks to Bill Lanouette for the information about Brian Tunstall. Good luck with your book on the Biglins.

Fremantle's Notes For A First Class Oarsman

Notes on First Class Rowing by John Walgrave Halford Fremantle is a 21-page pamphlet published in 1921. (It was actually a reprint from The Cambridge Review of 21 and 28 October and 4 and 11 November 1921.) The titles of the different chapters are ‘Of the Beginning’, ‘Of Length and the Finish’, ‘Of Rhythm and the Swing Forward’, ‘Of the Racing Spirit’, ‘Of the Outside Hand, and more about the Finish’, ‘Of the Moving Slide’, ‘Of Bursting Yourself and Pinching the Boat’, ‘Of Swivel Rowlocks’, and, maybe a little odd, ‘Apology’ (apologising that there is actually not much new in these notes, “nor are they in any way complete”). Fremantle, later in 1956 to become the 4th Baron Cottesloe, 5th Baron Fremantle, was educated at Eton and Trinity College, and rowed for two victorious Cambridge crews in the Boat Race in 1921 and 1922.

Interesting with this pamphlet is also that Fremantle’s fellow crew member, Humphrey Blake Playford (Jesus College), wrote the Foreword, honestly writing that “I do not pretend that I heartily endorse every statement in these pages”, but adding “there is no doubt that he, who can perform in a boat what is contained in these notes, will be a first class-oar.” Playford rowed for Cambridge in 1920, 1921, and 1922; and he and his fellow ‘Jesus oar’ John Alan Campbell (Cambridge 1920 and 1921, and an Olympic silver medalist in the eights in 1920) won the Silver Goblets at Henley in 1921.

Humphrey Playford and Freddy Brittain would publish the book The Jesus College Boat Club in 1928, which would be reprinted in 1962 and then extended to cover the years 1827-1962.

Foot note: It was after I had bought this little pamphlet that I found Stanley Garton’s letter to ‘Gladder’ stuck in between two pages!

Berry's Rowing Instructions

Julius Beresford, born in 1868 with the surname Wiszniewski which he later dropped, was a fine sculler who began his rowing career at Kensington RC. He failed to win the amateur title at the Wingfield Sculls and would never win the Diamond Challenge Sculls at Henley Royal Regatta. However, after moving to Thames RC, he did win the Stewards’ Challenge Cup for coxless fours twice, in 1909 and 1911 at Henley; the latter year, Beresford also won the Silver Goblet’s & Nickalls Challenge Cup together with Arthur Cloutte.

At the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm, Great Britain sent a Thames RC coxed four with the 44-year old Beresford in the bow seat. They lost the final and got the silver medal. Julius Beresford, by his fellow crew and club members called ‘Berry‘ or ‘Old Berry’, would for the rest of his life be involved in the sport of rowing. He would serve as Captain and a Vice President of Thames RC, and for decades be a devoted and strong-willed coach.

In the mid-1920s, Beresford had the infamous quarrel with the club's legendary coach Steve Fairbairn, which made Fairbairn leave the club to instead coach the London RC. Decades later, this would still be remembered at Thames RC as ‘The Row’. In 1954, Thames RC published a small, 4-pages pamphlet, Rowing Instructions by J. Beresford. One might guess that this was written by Beresford’s son, the celebrated oarsman, Jack Beresford, Jr., but it was not. The two last sentences go: “But if a crew is physically fit it need never lose its form or Rhythm. This is true and so says BERRY.” Julius Beresford died in 1959.

Nowadays, Berry’s little pamphlet is almost impossible to find in second-hand bookshops.

The First Rowing Bibliography & Elements Of Rowing

Anyone who has the intention to write either a light or a serious study on rowing literature should consult Frederick Brittain’s Oar, Scull and Rudder, a masterly rowing bibliography published in 1930. Although the first work on rowing – according to Brittain, A Treatise on the Art of Rowing as Practised at Cambridge by “A Boating Man” – was published already in 1842, it took ninety years for the first bibliography to be published, making Freddy Brittain a pioneer as the first rowing bibliographer. In his introduction, Brittain, a don of Jesus College at Cambridge University, describes the deep research behind his work, which contains around 240 books and pamphlets, and 700 articles on rowing in periodicals and encyclopedias. Most of the items on the list came from his own collection of rowing literature, but he also gainfully included entries of works that he had never seen, but read about or heard of.

Thomas E. Weil, one of the world’s leading rowing historians and collectors, shows the impressive range of rowing literature in Oar, Scull and Rudder in his excellent essay "The Don’s List – Extracts from and notes on Frederick Brittain’s Oar, Scull and Rudder (the first rowing bibliography)", published on the Friends of Rowing History’s web site Rowinghistory.net. However, Weil does point out some weaknesses in the book. While Frederick Brittain “happily listed volumes of verse with rowing content, the don did not include rowing-related prose fiction, passing up a host of juveniles, including the important American favorite by ‘Oliver Optic,’ The Boat Club, and such classics as Hughes’ Tom Brown at Oxford, Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat, Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows (“simply messing about in boats”), and Beerbohm’s Zuleika Dobson.”

Brittain also left out popular works by American authors like Ralph Paine, Ralph Barbour, and Albertus Dudley, to mention a few, who had written juvenile sport books – including rowing – since the turn of the century and onward.

Nowadays, eighty years after it was published, Oar, Scull and Rudder is hard to come by in the antiquarian book trade. So are almost all of the publications that Brittain mentions in his book. One example is Reginald S. de Havilland’s Elements of Rowing, a little pamphlet published in 1913 by Eton College where de Havilland, or “Harvvy” as he was known, was the rowing coach. The pamphlet is only 11 pages [Brittain states 77 pp, but that must be a misprint] and it has “suggestions […] to helping those boys who are engaged in coaching junior fours at Eton” as stated in the foreword. It has short chapters on: “body”, “feet”, “hands”, “swing”, “forward like a spring bent down”, “finish”, “straps”, “the oar”, and “summary”.

Elements of Rowing was reprinted in The English Style of Rowing by P. Haig-Thomas & M. A. Nicholson (1958), a book that pays homage to the old English orthodox style taught by de Havilland and his predecessor, Dr. Edmond Warre, head-master and rowing coach at Eton. In Haig-Thomas’s and Nicholson’s book, de Havilland’s text has two “extra” headings, “slide” and “in the water” following “summary”.