Magical Boats

Later this month, in the autumn issue of the Swedish rowing magazine Svensk Rodd, No. 3, 2009, I will have a review published about Darryl J. Strickler’s book Rowable Classics: Wooden Single Sculling Boats and Oars. Here is the article just slightly revised in English.

There is something special with wooden boats.

Before I moved to the U.S. in 2000, I was out sculling almost daily on the canals in my old hometown of Malmö, in the south of Sweden. If the canals were not frozen or the weather was not too bad, I would scull both in the morning and in the evening in one of Malmö Rowing Club’s wooden singles. It was magical to make the boat glide and to feel the connection between the wooden hull and the water. The boat, built by Karlisch in Germany, came to the club in 1980, and was one of many wooden shells that the club owned.

When I began to row at Malmö RC in the 1970s, most of the shells in the boathouse were built out of wood. The boats were built by, to mention a few, Karlisch and Pirsch in Germany, Henry Larsen in Denmark, Sims in England, and by Holger Eklund, who owned and operated the boat building company Ramsövarvet, located outside of Stockholm. The Sims coxed four was a small sensation at her first regatta in Copenhagen, I was told. The regatta was held during the Second World War, and it was amazing that she had made it from England through blockades and other trade barriers. I do not know how she was smuggled to Sweden.

I came to think about the beautiful wooden boats at Malmö RC when I read Darryl J. Strickler’s book Rowable Classics: Wooden Single Sculling Boats and Oars, which was published by Wooden Boat Publications in 2008. Strickler, who is a sculling addict and a collector of wooden singles, has written a unique book about wooden racing shells. While other so called coffee table books with beautiful illustrations about the sport of rowing have seen the light of day, there has never been a book that entirely tells the story about the boat builders, the wooden singles they built, their design, and about some of the current owners of these shells. The closest I can think of is G.C. Bourne’s Textbook of Oarsmanship (1925), which mentions some of the most important English boat builders who built the eights for Oxford and Cambridge.

Strickler is, of course, concentrating his book on builders in England and the U.S. In different chapters the author is writing about English boat builders like, Edwin H. Phelps, Carl Douglas, and the big boat building family, the Sims, who had at least eight men building boats, if I count them correctly. It seems, however, most of them could not agree on anything, so four of them started their own boat building businesses. In the U.S., George and his son, Stanley Pocock in Seattle, are the most well-known builders, while Joe Garofalo and his Worchester Oar & Paddle Co. is the best known on the American east coast. Garofalo became known among his customers as the man who could build everything. He told his customers that he could build them a ‘Pocock’ or a ‘Stämpfli’ if they wanted one – of course for less money than the originals. Graeme King, who originates from Australia, is now running a boat building company in Putney, Vermont, and he is one of the very few that still builds wooden boats. In Canada there is Kaschper, Levator, and Hudson, and in Australia there is Sargeant & Burton and Jeff Sykes.

When it comes to boat builders in Europe, only the most renown have got their story told by Strickler. Therefore, you can read about Empacher, Pirsch, Stämpfli, and Filippi, but that is it. No Scandinavian boat builders are mentioned. Karlisch in Möln is in the book, but only as an oarmaker, not as a boat builder (although, it is mentioned in the text that they also built larger boats). In the special chapters on wooden oars, their makers are mentioned, aside from the above mentioned boat builders, also Aylings, Collar, Sutton, and Crocker, to mention some.

The publisher has done a great job when it comes to the book’s design; it is a fine book with beautiful illustrations in colour. For the most part, the author has done a terrific job too, although there are some flaws and mishaps here and there. To mention some: the famous boat builder Harry Clasper did not move from Newcastle to London in the 1850s to build boats at Putney, that was his son, John Hawks Clasper, who did that in the 1860s. The Henley Royal Regatta was established in 1839, but the Diamond Challenge Sculls was instituted first in 1844. The students at Cambridge began sculling for the Colquhoun in 1837, not in 1835. The public’s interest for sculling got a real boost in 1830 with the Wingfields Sculls for amateurs, which Strickler correctly writes, but he fails to mention the equally important Championships of the Thames for the professionals, which started the year after, in 1831. It is true that the Americans were first to found a rowing federation for amateurs, the National Association of Amateur Oarsmen (N.A.A.O.) in 1872, and ten years later the British Amateur Rowing Association (ARA) was founded. The ARA was, however, not a newly founded association, it was merely a name change from the Metropolitan Rowing Association, which existed already in 1879.

I also find it unnecessary to repeat some information in both the sections about the boat builders and the boat owners, so that the owners’ accounts mirror the author’s text about the builders, which feels redundant. The editor for the book should have rewritten, removed or done some editorial changes of these parts. I also think that the chapters dealing with the boat owners’ stories of how they acquired their shells, often raving about how wonderful their boats are, are at times too long and too similar to each other. Darryl Strickler does point out in his preface that his book is dealing with wooden singles built after 1946, and that it is not a ‘history’ book on rowing, although historic flashbacks are given. Personally, I believe it is a pity that it is not a rowing history book with facts and stories about the old boat builders from the 1800s, the Claspers, Matthew Taylor, Swaddle & Winship, etc, who came up with amazing innovations and famous racing shells.

But, I guess, then it had been another book, and it is wonderful and magical as it is. So, well done, Mr. Strickler!

Darryl J. Strickler: Rowable Classics: Wooden Single Sculling Boats and Oars (2008), $29.95. Order your copy on the Wooden Boat Publications’ site by clicking here.

Birthday Girl!

Today’s entry is another very personal one: our daughter, Ingrid, is turning 8 years old. Earlier today, my dear wife snapped a photo of Ingrid, standing below a poster of the professional oarsman John Biglin. This is, indeed, very appropriate, as this image, painted by Thomas Eakins in 1873, probably is the first ‘image’ that Ingrid recognized as a young child.

At the two previous houses we lived in, from the time Ingrid was a baby to a 5-year-old girl, we had this poster hanging above the staircase between the first and second floor. Each morning, when I took her down to the kitchen for breakfast, we would pass the Eakins print. It became a ritual to say to Ingrid every morning: ‘Ingrid. Say good morning, John Biglin!’ And sometimes, she did.

Then in 2005, when I was sitting on the sofa in the living room, admiring an article that I just had managed to get published in a magazine – an article about the American sculler Charles Courtney and the decline of professional sculling in the U.S. – Ingrid came climbing up on the sofa and onto my lap, asking: ‘What are you doing, Papa?’ I answered as off-handedly as I could: ‘Oh, it is just a little article I got published, and…’ when Ingrid suddenly interrupted me, screaming for joy, ‘Look, look, Papa, there is a picture of John Biglin!’ And right she was, that cute girl. There was an illustration of John Biglin, not the one in oil, but one of the water-coloured ones Eakins painted of his friend. She made her father very proud.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY - sweet girl!

Tom Sullivan – The ‘Old Devil’

The other week, I received an e-mail from Michael Grace, who is writing the story of his club, the Wellington Rowing Club in New Zealand. One of the great characters at the club was Tom Sullivan (1869-1947). Michael asked me for some help with a couple of pictures I have of Sullivan, who, of course, is getting his own chapter in the book.

Tom Sullivan was born in Auckland, and won his first rowing race at the age of 13. As an amateur sculler, Sullivan met with huge success, which made him join the professionals’ ranks in late 1890. Already in 1892, Sullivan raced the reigning world champion, Jim Stanbury of Australia, for the title. Sullivan lost, and the following year he challenged George Bubear of Chelsea for the Championship of England on the Championship course on the Thames in London. The New Zealander won, but was later challenged by his own professional coach, Charles ‘Wag’ Hardy, for the title. In a race on the ‘northern river’, the Tyne in Newcastle, in February 1895, Harding beat Sullivan, and again in September that year.

Later, Tom Sullivan turned to coaching, and being very successful, he moved to Berlin where he trained crews at the Berliner Ruder-Klub. Sullivan was interned during the Great War, where he organized the physical training for the Allied prisoners in the concentration camp where he was held. After the war, the ‘Old Devil’, as he called himself, spent some time at De Amstel in the Netherlands before returning to the Berliner RK in 1925. The ‘Old Devil’ – he ruled his oarsmen with severity – coached the German coxed four to an Olympic gold in Los Angeles in 1932, the same year his adepts Herbert Buhtz and Gerhard Boetzelen took an Olympic silver medal in the double sculls. Buhtz also won the Diamonds that year, and also in 1934.

There are some great stories about Tom Sullivan in Hylton Cleaver’s Sporting Rhapsody (1951) and A History of Rowing (1957), and also in Chris Dodd’s eminent The Story of World Rowing (1992).

I am eagerly waiting for Michael Grace’s book about Wellington RC, which is coming out next year to celebrate the club's 125th anniversary.

Well-Dressed Oarsmen

After I posted my entry about being a ‘tie snob’ on 4 August, I received an e-mail from a friend of mine, suggesting that I might like a blog about good, classic dressing, ‘A Suitable Wardrobe’. I had a look and I was immediately hooked. ‘A Suitable Wardrobe’ by Will Boehlke, who is based in San Francisco, is a great site if you are interested in style and have questions about how to ‘dress up’ or ‘dress down’ in a stylish way. Reading a little entry here and a little entry there the other day, I suddenly found two entries that were related to rowing.

On 9 June, Mr. Boehlke posted Henley Royal, and on 19 June Trinity Boat Club Attire which both are entertaining rowing oddities.

Mystic Weekend Of Rowing

The month of September is soon upon us, which means that it is time for the Mystic Weekend of Rowing (MWOR) again. As usual it is a two-day event on the Mystic River in Mystic, Connecticut, with The Battle Between the Bridges on Saturday 19 September and the Coastweeks Regatta on Sunday 20 September. Both events have been established to promote the sport of rowing in a community environment, and they are supported by the National Rowing Foundation (NRF), Mystic Seaport Museum, and the Mystic Arts Center.

In August every year there is a fundraising event, a cocktail reception for MWOR. This is always a nice evening at the Mystic Arts Center where you can mingle and rub shoulders with the organizers of the regattas and other rowing dignitaries. This year it was yesterday, and unfortunately, I was not able to attend, which was a real pity.

But now to go back to the rowing events: the Saturday races between the Amtrak railroad bridge upriver to the famous historic bascule drawbridge in downtown Mystic are for invited top-notch scullers. Every year some scullers, who have competed at the World Championships and Olympic Games, find their way to Mystic to sprint on the almost 500-metre long course.

These races can be best viewed from the Mystic River Park, the drawbridge, or the Mystic Art Center’s lawn. As always, Andy Card, Yale University lightweight men’s crew coach, will be the witty commentator and introduce the rowers and call their races. This is a brilliant opportunity to watch the country’s, if not the world’s, best scullers in action – and it is free!!

On Sunday the rowing will move upriver to Mystic Seaport Museum for the Coastweeks Regatta, which is an event for local and regional rowers and scullers. Hundreds of athletes, men and women of all generations, will race on the 2,000-metre course from north of the I-95 overpass to the north end of Mystic Seaport.

To read more about this event (and to find more information how to sign up to compete on the Sunday event), please click here.

Last year, the organizers of Coastweeks Regatta had a real treat to offer the rowers, their family and friends, and the spectators at the regatta. Two of the 2008 Olympic rowing medalists, Anna Cummins (gold, women’s eight; to the left) and Michelle Guerette (silver, women’s single scull; to the right), were present to give a talk on how it felt to compete at the Olympic Games and therefore be a part of the history of rowing. It was indeed a very pleasant and enjoyable event with two very humble ladies.

Michael Palin: A Decent Rowing Chap

Reading the Daily Telegraph this morning, I saw an interesting article about the actor, writer, etc. Michael Palin, one of the Monty Python fellows. He was interviewed by Marc Lee. I have always thought Palin seemed such a nice and decent chap, and, according to the article, he is.

One of the reasons for the article in the Telegraph, it seems, was that two films that Palin has been involved in were released on DVD today, East of Ipswich, which he wrote for the BBC, and Three Men in a Boat from 1975 (only PAL, for now). In Three Men in a Boat - of course based on Jerome K. Jerome’s famous novel - Palin plays one of the main characters, Harris. In the Telegraph article Palin reveals that Harris resembles his own father, Edward Moreton Palin.

What is not said in the article is that Palin Senior was an oarsman once upon a time, and probably could teach Palin Junior a trick or two in the noble art of rowing on the Thames. In Palin’s travelogue Michael Palin Around the World in 80 Days, which first aired on BBC in 1989 (which was followed by a book with the same title), Palin is travelling on the train “Southern Express” in India, and he writes in his book (Day 28: on 22 October [1988]):

“As the engine works harder and the air swirling into the cab becomes fresher and cooler I think of my father taking this train sixty years ago, for he visited the regatta at Poona when he worked in India as an engineer. A silver mug celebrating his part in a coxless fours' victory and inscribed 'Royal Connaught Boat Club, Poona 1929' stood on our mantelpiece throughout my childhood, and, now as daylight fades, I find myself crossing the river where it was won. But Poona is now spelt Pune and it's an awful anti-climax, grey and industrial and no sign of flanelled fools.”

And this is the reason, this entry is posted on my rowing blog! If you would like to read the entire article in the Telegraph, please click here. If you would like to watch Three Men in a Boat have a look at Youtube: search 'Three men in a boat, 1975'.

A Rowing Treasure Chest

Earlier today, when I was looking around on the web for information about some professional sculling races, I stumbled over a real gem, or maybe I should call it a treasure chest filled with rowing jewels. On the web site British Pathé – britishpathe.com – which is said to be the “world’s first digital news archive” with 3,500 hours of video and 12 million stills, you will find tons of black & white, but also colour, videos of rowing and sculling from the early 1900s to the 1970s.

Among other things you will find the Thomas Doggett’s Coat and Badge Race, Henley Royal Regatta, the Boat Race between Oxford and Cambridge (and each crew in training), early films of women rowing and racing, the European Championships, World [Professional] Championships and how some of the World Champions are training and their different rowing styles. (Search for ‘Ernest Barry’ [see picture above], ‘Bert Barry’, ‘Ted Phelps’, E.A. Phelps’, ‘R. Phelps’, and a real favourite ‘Phelps Family’, which shows the 1960 Doggett’s Race in colour, etc.)

What you will see are ‘previews’, which means that you can not download these videos, or link them, but I guess by contacting British Pathé you can get some kind of rights to download or buy the videos.

Now, if you are ready to spend hours in front of your computer screen, watching rowing, click here.

About Three Distinguished Oarsmen

Ernest Barry, Wally Kinnear, and Harry 'Blackie' Blackstaffe

Slightly more than five months ago, I started the blog “Hear The Boat Sing” (after a phrase in Steve Fairbairn’s poem “The Oarsman’s Song”). In my first entry, on 12 March, I wrote that as there are not a lot of rowing magazines around, it is hard to get anything published, especially if it is related to the history of rowing.

Of course, that never stops me from trying! Some months back, I sent an article to Ms. Wendy Kewley, the editor of ARA’s fine magazine Rowing & Regatta, thinking that I should start by contacting the nicest rowing magazine there is, and then work my way down, so to say… It had worked well earlier once upon a time when I had written a couple of reviews of some rowing books. I then contacted the eminent British/American magazine Maritime Life and Traditions - nowadays sadly deceased - and the editor, Jenny Bennett, took the articles right away.

Well, the result of my latest attempt arrived in the mail yesterday, when the good mail man, in his stylish pith helmet, dropped off the latest issue of Rowing & Regatta, No. 37, August / September, 2009, in my mail box. There it was, my article “Three men in a boat” about Harry Blackstaffe, William D. Kinnear, and Ernest Barry in a triple scull, or as it is also called, a treble scull.

In the article, I wrote that the Olympic champions ‘Blackie’ Blackstaffe and ‘Wally’ Kinnear, and their friend, the professional champion Ernest Barry, were the most distinguished oarsmen of their time, during the 1900s and 1910s, and they were... Well, you can read it yourself in the magazine. If you are not subscribing to Rowing & Regatta, you can read more about the magazine, and maybe even subscribe to it, by clicking here.

With one article published, who knows what this can be the beginning of?

Birthday Boy!

Today’s entry is a very personal one: our son, Anders, is turning 4 years old. As the photograph is showing him rowing (well, sort of) in a dory, I thought it would be appropriate to post it on my blog. I can reveal that he is not getting a single scull as a birthday present. I would like to buy one for me before getting one for him…

HAPPY BIRTHDAY – Dear Boy!

Rowing Books For Youths 3

Following is a list of youth fiction containing rowing as a major or minor theme. Rowing historian Bill Miller combined the majority of these titles. I have corrected some minor mistakes and added some titles to the list. However, there might still be some errors, especially when it comes to when a book was published. Some stories were published first in a magazine before making it into a published book. Please remember that many of the author names you see are pseudonyms, and that the author used his real name for some books and his pseudonym/s for others.

Please feel free to contact me if you would like to add titles, but please keep in mind that this is a list for youth fiction books!

Austin, S.: Freda’s Rowing Ambition at Riverside (1956)
Barbour, R.H.: Captain of the Crew (1901)
Barbour, R.H.: Flashing Oars (1930)
Barbour, R.H.: Tod Hale with the Crew (1926)
Barbour, R.H.: Coxswain of the Eight (1922)
Barton, G.: The Bell Haven Eight (1914)
Bonehill, R.: The Young Oarsmen of Lakeview (1897)
Bradley, E.: The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green (1853)
Chadwick, A.: The Eight-Oared Victors (1913)
Chapman, A.: Fred Fenton on the Crew (1913)
Coke, D.: The Bending of a Twig (1900)
Dudley, A.T.: The School Four (1909)
Forbes, G.B.: Frank Allen Head of the Crew or The Boys of Columbia High on the River (1911)
Grahame, K.: The Wind in the Willows (1908)
Grant, R.: Jack Hall or The School Days of an American Boy (1888)
Haywood, C.: Robert Rows the River (1965)
Hughes, T.: Tom Brown at Oxford (1861)
Hughes, T.: Tom Brown’s School Days (1854)
Jerome, J.K.: Three Men in a Boat (1889)
Johnson, O.: Stover at Yale (1912)
Kingman, L.: The Luck of Miss L. (1986)
Knudson, R.R.: Rinehart Shouts (1987)
MacEwen, C.: Thee Women in One Boat (1891)
Morrison, G.W.: The Girls of Central High on Lake Luna (1914)
Neuman, W.: Horace Higby, Cox of the Crew (1971)
Optic, O.: The Boat Club (1854)
Optic, O.: Work and Win (1865/66?)
Paine, R.D.: Sandy Sawyer Sophomore (1911)
Paine, R.D.: The Stroke Oar (1908)
Paine, R.D.: The Twisted Skein (1915)
Paterson, C.&B.: The Foxwood Regatta (1986)
Patten, G.: Ben Oakman, Stroke (1925)
Patten, G.: Cliff Sterling, Stroke of the Crew (1912)
Quirk, L.W.: The Freshman Eight (1913)
Serverance, M.S.: Hammersmith, His Harvard Days (1878)
Silliman, L.: The Scrapper at Camp Blazing Rock (1946)
Standish, B.L. Frank Merriwell’s Faith (1900)
Wood, J.S.: College Days or Harry’s Career at Yale (1894)

Rowing Books For Youths 2

Looking around on my bookshelves, I only found another “youth book” about rowing girls, The Girls of Central High on Lake Luna, or the Crew that Won (1914) by Gertrude W. Morrison. The frontispiece shows some girls in “correct” rowing dresses for girls and women at the time (image on the right). This is one in a series about the “Girls in Central High” by Morrison.

Another novel with young women is Three Women in One Boat (1891) by Constance MacEwen. The book is a parody of Jerome K. Jerome’s famous novel Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) (1889). Some time back, I had an essay posted on The Friends of Rowing History’s great web site rowinghistory.net. If you would like to read my essay, “Rowing Women as Belles des Bateaux, or To Say Nothing of the Cat”, please click here.

Talking about girls rowing, I have seen book lists with titles similar to MacEwen’s, Three Girls in a Boat (n.d., but was probably published in the first half of the 1920s) by Laura A. Baker-Snow and Three Girls in a Boat (1938) by Madge and C. Fox-Smith. I have not seen copies of either book, so I am unaware if they are for girls or women.

Rowing Books For Youths 1

The Amalgamated Press in England published for many years weekly and bi-weekly magazines for boys and girls. Between 1922 and 1963, the company published the popular The Schoolgirls' Own Library (although during Second World War it was temporarily stopped due to paper shortage). In all 1,143 issues of The Schoolgirls’ Own Library were published.

Some of the stories were written by Sheila Austin, which was a pseudonym of Stanley E. Austin (1890-1958). In the “New Series”, published after the war, in August 1956 (No. 240), Austin came out with Freda’s Rowing Ambition at Riverside. This story (64 pp) is about Freda Royston, a new girl at Riverside School and her crew – her “chums” – who manage, after various adventures, to make rowing an official sport at Riverside.

Although, young women began to row at Wellesley College, Massachusetts, in mid-1870s, and Newnham College, Cambridge in England, organized a “boating society” for women in 1893, stories about rowing girls and women were rare during the first half of the 20th century. While you might think that an important milestone as the first official European rowing championships for women, held in 1954, would create an interest in publishing stories about rowing girls, it did not; nor, for that matter, were there a lot of stories published about boys’ rowing.

And while there are tons of youth stories about football (soccer, that is), baseball, basket ball, and other “popular” sports, we are still waiting for stories about rowing girls and boys.

Notes From A Rowing Tie Snob

Call me a snob, but I like to wear a neck tie. I guess I got it from my father, and, at least in that sense, I am a chip off the old block. I take every opportunity to wear a tie, and if there is no real reason, I wear one anyway. And to be really honest, living in America does not make it easier. Few places or occasions here demand something around your neck, unless you are going to a wedding or a funeral.

On certain occasions, I have being seen wearing a bow tie or even a neck scarf, a day cravat (what some people wrongly call an Ascot). But being a “tie fellow”, I presume that the nice people in my surroundings are indulgent towards my behaviour and shrug their shoulders and explain the whole thing with a “well, he is from Europe, you know…”, or something to that effect. “But, blimey,” you might say, “what does this have to do with rowing? Has the Swede gone bonkers?”

Well, being interested in neck ties, I find it fascinating that some rowing clubs around the world have club ties. This is especially true in Great Britain where every rowing club with self-respect has their own tie in the colours of the club. I am sad to say this is not the case in Sweden. I tried, unsuccessfully, to introduce a club tie for my club in Malmö - actually using my old British school tie, which is in the same colours as my rowing club’s colours, black and yellow – but my idea was turned down by the club committee. In the 1990s, when I was a member for some years of the Upper Thames RC in Henley-on-Thames, England, I received the organization’s club tie as a gift. The tie is dark blue with Isis and Tamesis in white - Isis and Tamesis are sculptures on each side of the Henley Bridge. (See photo of the tie up on the left; and, if you wonder, yes it is tied with a Half-Windsor knot).

During the first decades in the 20th century, many tobacco companies put a premium card with the pack of cigarettes or box of tobacco. In 1934, Churchman's Cigarette Company in England came out with a card set called “Well Known Ties”. Two famous rowing clubs, and their ties, were featured on two cards, Leander Club and Thames RC. In the illustration (see top of this entry) the Leander tie looks more red than pink, or if I may correct myself, cerise. The old Putney waterman, at one time the King’s Bargemaster, ‘Bossie’ Phelps once corrected an Australian oarsman, who happened to call Leander’s colour pink: “Half a moment, Sir, let’s get this straight; it is not pink; it is cerise.” The story is printed in ‘Jumbo’ Edwards’s The Way of a Man with a Blade (1963), and I will not re-tell the whole story here as it is actually rather mean to our Aussie rowing friends.

A colour combination that I personally really like is Auriol Kensington RC’s green and pink (or is that also cerise?). Anyone who is interested in the skill of tying his tie more than one way should immediately get a copy of Thomas Fink’s and Yong Mao’s The 85 Ways to Tie a Tie (2000), which will show the science and aesthetics of tie knots. A book a true gentleman, rowing chap or not, should not be without.

Rowing Films - Not That Hot!

Have you watched any good rowing films lately?

You haven’t? Well, to be honest, I am not surprised as there are very few around. It seems the sport of rowing is hard to make convincing on the big screen. Most of the rowing films come out funny (when they are not suppose to be). One of the first films with rowing in it – and it is made to be funny – is College (1927) with Buster Keaton. Some years later, in 1934, Hollywood made a daring move with Eight Girls in a Boat (to the right), which was a remake of a German film from 1932.

MGM’s first British production was A Yank at Oxford (1938) starring Robert Taylor as an American student at Oxford. Taylor strokes his college’s eight (to the left) at bump races and at the end of the film, Oxford’s boat in the Boat Race against Cambridge. Other famous stars, or stars to be, in this film were Maureen O’Sullivan (leaving Johnny Weissmuller’s Tarzan alone in the jungle) and Vivien Leigh (before her success with Gone With The Wind).

To watch Robert Taylor win the Boat Race, please go to: www.youtube.com search for A Yank at Oxford (part 9).

In 1984, a terrible remake of A Yank at Oxford was done, Oxford Blues, with Rob Lowe. Please do not waste any time watching it.

It seems that making a documentary about rowing is easier to do than a fictional story. Although some of the worst ones are based on rowing “history” books, for example the film Rowing Through is based on the great book The Amateurs and the film True Blue is based on the book with the same title. (For some unknown reason True Blue was called Miracle at Oxford in America.)

If you are interested in a list of documentaries on and films about rowing, please click here.

Good Writing On Rowing 3

Unless you are a rowing historian, rowers and scullers tend to regard rowing in narrow, slender racing shells as the pure “rowing”; then forgetting hundreds and maybe thousands of years of activities in galleys, Viking boats, fishing boats, different types of work boats, and recreational boats, etc. Following here are ten poems and “sayings” that show another side of the rich history of rowing. Enjoy!

21)

And here

father Aeneas hangs a leafy branch
of ilex as a signal for his crews,
the goal at which they are to turn around,
to wheel back on their long way. Then they choose
places by lot; above the sterns, far off,
the captains gleam in purple, gold; the oarsmen
are crowned with poplar leaves, their naked shoulders
are glistening, wet with oil. They man the benches;
their arms are tense upon the oars; they wait,
expectant, for the start as throbbing fear
and eager love of praise drain their high hearts.
At last, with the bright trumpet blast, at once
they all shoot from their starting places; shouts
of sailors beat against the skies, the waters
are turned to foam beneath the stroking arms.
They cleave the furrows with their equal thrusts;
the whole sea gapes, torn by oars, the ships’
three-pointed beaks.
From Book V in The Aeneid of Virgil (translation by Allen Mandelbaum)

22)
Pull babes – pull, sucklings – pull, all. But what the devil are you hurrying about? Softly, softly, and steadily, my men. Only pull, and keep pulling; nothing more. Crack all your backbones, and bite your knives in two – that’s all. Take it easy – why don’t ye take it easy, I say, and burst all your livers and lungs!
From Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

23)
The banked oars fell an hundred strong,
And backed and threshed and ground,
But bitter was the rowers' song
As they brought the war-boat round.

They had no heart for the rally and roar
That makes the whale-bath smoke--
When the great blades cleave and hold and leave
As one on the racing stroke.
From Rudyard Kipling’s “The Rowers”

24)
So they took the oars from where they lay in crotches under the gunwales and began to row. Many of the oars had been broken or lost in the storm, but there were enough left to row twenty a side. The sea grew white under their strokes. The breath of the rowers came from their mouths like a thick mist, and the chop of the oars, the creaking of their straps against the thole-pins, made a noise that seemed pleasant enough after the silence in which they had lain.
From The Men of Ness by Eric Linklater

25)
There's no earthly way of knowing
Which direction we are going
There's no knowing where we're rowing
Or which way the river's flowing
From Roald Dahl’s “The Rowing Song”

26)
Once upon Iceland's solitary strand
A poet wandered with his book and pen,
Seeking some final word, some sweet Amen,
Wherewith to close the volume in his hand.
The billows rolled and plunged upon the sand,
The circling sea-gulls swept beyond his ken,
And from the parting cloud-rack now and then
Flashed the red sunset over sea and land.
Then by the billows at his feet was tossed
A broken oar; and carved thereon he read,
Oft was I weary, when I toiled at thee;
And like a man, who findeth what was lost,
He wrote the words, then lifted up his head,
And flung his useless pen into the sea.
“The Broken Oar” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

27)
The pots were safely sunk; and then
The father gave the word for home:
He took the tiller in his hand,
And, in his heart already home,
He brought her nose round towards the land,
To steer her straight for home.

He never spoke,
Nor stirred again:
A sudden stroke,
And he lay dead,
With staring eyes, and lips off lead.

The son rowed on, and nothing feared:
And sometimes, merrily,
He lifted up his voice, and sang,
Both high and low,
And loud and sweet:
For he was ever gay at sea,
And ever glad to row,
And rowed as only blind men row:
And little did the blind lad know
That death was at his feet:
For still he thought his father steered;
Nor knew that he was all alone
With death upon the open sea.
So merrily, he rowed, and sang:
And, strangely on the silence rang
That lonely melody,
As, through the livid, brooding gloam,
By rock and reef, he rowed for home--
The blind man rowed the dead man home.

/- - -/

His hand has never touched an oar,
Since they came home together--
The blind, who rowed his father home--
The dear, who steered his blind son home.
From Wilfred Wilson Gibson’s “The Blind Rower”

28)
I took the oars: the Pilot's boy,
Who now doth crazy go,
Laughed loud and long, and all the while
His eyes went to and fro.
'Ha! ha!' quoth he, 'full plain I see,
The Devil knows how to row.'
From “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

29)
“You linger to see his back, and the back of his neck and shoulder-side...
The Bending forward and backward of the rowers...”
From Walt Whitman’s "I Sing the Body Electric"

30)
[They talked about other occasions when they have been out on the river, like when George was on his first outing in] “an eight-oared racing outrigger” [when he] “immediately on starting, received a violent blow in the small back from the butt-end of number five’s scull [sic], at the same time that his own seat seemed to disappear from under him by magic, and leave him sitting on the boards. He also noticed, as a curious circumstance, that number two was at the same instant lying on his back at the bottom of the boat, with his legs in the air, apparently in a fit.”
From Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) by Jerome K. Jerome