More on Singapore RC & Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club Rowing

Photo: Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club's website.

A week ago, on 15 July, we posted a question about Singapore Rowing Club. Matt Jennings, England, had read The Escape from Singapore (1987) by Richard Gough, a book describing the fall of Singapore in February 1942. It seems one of the last boats out from Singapore was a four-oared shell from Singapore RC and Matt was wondering if anyone had information about this club and what happened to it after the war.

In that blog post, I mentioned some information from Christopher Dodd’s book The Story of World Rowing from 1992. Just a couple of days after the blog entry was posted HTBS received an e-mail from Simon Boyde of Hong Kong. He writes:

I think that Mr. Dodd has made a small error in his note on post war Singapore.

I believe the Singapore Rowing Club duplicated the situation in Hong Kong – where the Victoria Regatta Club merged with the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club – and merged with the Royal Singapore Yacht Club in the immediate post WWI colonial period – this is backed up by the small potted history on the RSYC website.

I rowed (for the RHKYC) in 1979 in Singapore against crews from what is now known as the Republic of Singapore Yacht Club, having changed its name from the Royal Singapore Yacht Club in the 1960s.

The regatta in 1979 was the annual Far East Amateur Rowing Association Championships (regattas had been hosted in the 1970s and 1980s in Manila, Karachi, Madras, Colombo, Saigon, Hong Kong and Singapore) which was very strong through the post WWII period up till the early 1980s. FEARA, as an organization, effectively an association of the old expatriate rowing clubs around Asia – albeit with the crews being largely local apart from Singapore and HK – is now largely defunct outside of India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

The rowing movement in Asia has been replaced by national teams in squad crews now so FEARA is a bit of an anachronism.

In terms of the RSYC itself, it seems that rowing has now stopped (though someone told me they still have boats in storage a few years ago). Rowing seems to be controlled and run only by the Singapore Rowing Association.

I am glad to report, however, that the RHKYC still has a very strong rowing section; it has in fact expanded a lot over the last thirty years and is back to sending crews overseas.

Many thanks to Simon Boyde in Hong Kong for this interesting information. If there is anyone else among the readers of HTBS who has more information about Singapore RC, please post a comment to this entry, or send HTBS editor, Göran R Buckhorn, an e-mail, at gbuckhorn – at – gmail – dot – com

How About Singapore Rowing Club?

Now and then, HTBS receives correspondence from readers of the blog. The other day, we got an interesting e-mail from Matt Jennings in England. Matt has a question about an old rowing club in Asia, Singapore Rowing Club. Matt writes:

I came across the following quote the other week in the book The Escape from Singapore (1987) by Richard Gough, describing the fall of Singapore in February 1942 and refugees arriving in Sumatra:

They came in all manner of crafts [sic], junks, sampans, launches, boats of all shapes and sizes, including canoes and baulks of timber. Finally... one party of four in a hull from the Singapore Rowing Club brought the first definite news that the fighting had stopped. (page 98)

Matt now wonders if anyone knows more about Singapore Rowing Club and the event described in Gough’s book?

Googling around on the web, it seems that no rowing club in Singapore of today has much to do with the old ‘Singapore Rowing Club’ mentioned in The Escape from Singapore. According to Christopher Dodd in his The Story of World Rowing (1992), Singapore Rowing Club was founded in 1879. Dodd writes: ‘One of the founders was an employee of the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Co. and he arranged for a ship to bring the first boat from Hong Kong’.

Some anient newspaper clippings reveal that the club, like most of the sporting clubs in Singapore in those days had members from the ruling class from the old country. In the newspaper Colonies and India (published in London), on Friday 6 February 1885, it states:

The New Year celebrations have been observed in Singapore in the usual manner by athletic sports on the Esplanade, and a regatta in the harbour. The Singapore Rowing Club sent a crew with one of their four-oared boats to Penang to compete with a crew of the Penang Rowing Club. This resulted in an easy victory for the Singaporians.

Maybe this was an annual regatta held between the Singapore Rowing Club and the Penang Rowing Club during the winter? Six years later, 21 November 1891, the London and China Telegraph published the following little note:

Arrangements have been made for Christmastide matches between the Singapore Cricket Club and teams from Selangor and Singapore Rowing Club has challenged the Penang Rowing Club to a match at the Straits.

Read another rowing article from 25 July 1901, in The Straits Times, a newspaper still printed today, about a race between two coxed fours, here.

Dodd again: ‘Pollution of the Singapore River forced the club to amalgamate with Singapore's new yacht club in 1921’. Then he writes: ‘The club lost most of its property during the Japanese occupation in the Second World War.’ It is very likely that the ‘hull from Singapore Rowing Club’ that Richard Gough mentions in his book is the last boat from the old Singapore RC! After the war, the club came to life again and several regattas are known where the club, now called Royal Singapore Rowing Club raced against crews from the British forces.

The British Army, the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force all had crews, though, it was the latter which rowed best. During the 1960s, RAF had twenty-five clubs attached to bases in Britain, not counting the ones connected to their bases around the world (and close to a waterway). RAF Seletar and RAF Changi, for example, practiced in the Strait of Johor.

This is more or less what I could find. Is there anyone among the HTBS readers who has more information about Singapore RC? Please post a comment to this entry, or send HTBS editor, Göran R Buckhorn, an e-mail, at gbuckhorn – at – gmail – dot – com

~ Thank you!

Also, take a look at entry on 22 July 2014,