The Indefatigable Jack Dearlove

Jack Dearlove at Marlow Regatta.

HTBS’s Tim Koch writes about the unknown hero, Jack Dearlove:

The 2012 Paralympic Game will undoubtedly be a great success and will certainly be remembered as a milestone in changing attitudes to disability. The widespread acceptance of Paralympians as ‘real’ athletes has happened so quickly that one does not have to go too far back for examples from a time when things were very different. An article by Neil Tweedie in the Daily Telegraph of 4 July does go far back, sixty four years in fact, but is still well worth reading. It tells the full story of a man who earned a small place in the history of rowing by coxing the British eight that won silver at the 1948 London Olympics. That man was called Jack Dearlove and he had one leg. Today the media and the Olympic public relations machine would be keen to extract maximum publicity from this ‘human interest’ story. Two decades ago things were very different.

Until the age of ten, Jack Dearlove was a gifted, sports mad youngster. However, in 1922 he was involved in an accident with a lorry which resulted in the amputation of his right leg.

Determined not to stay in a wheelchair and unable to get on with an artificial limb, Jack taught himself to walk on crutches. Tweedie quotes Jack’s son, Richard:

His parents were from tough no-nonsense backgrounds who had made their way in the world and Dad had been brought up in a similar way… He became amazingly agile and developed the ability to lead a pretty normal life. He was a good tennis player, brilliant swimmer and could water ski. He could drive too. And if the family went on a five mile walk, he was there…

Jack’s other son, John, says that as a child he never thought of his Father as disabled.

Jack Dearlove and the 1948 Olympic Eight. Won Silver.

Jack coxed for Thames Rowing Club and in 1948, at the age of 37 and with 20 years of rowing behind him, he was chosen to cox the British Olympic eight. His delight with what would undoubtedly be the pinnacle of his sporting career was  considerably reduced when he was informed that it would not be ‘right’ for a disabled man to take part in the parade of athletes at the official opening of the Games by the King at Wembley. He had to watch from the stands with the other 85,000 spectators so as not to cause ‘embarrassment’.

Jack was from a generation that did not expect compensation or pity for injury or stress or hurt feelings. He and his contemporaries accepted what life threw at them and made the best of it. His children did not know of his disgraceful exclusion from his rightful place among his fellow sportsmen until after his death in 1967. Son John says ‘He was utterly devoid of self-pity’.

Jack Dearlove and the 1950 Empire Games Crew. Won Bronze.

I do not suppose that Jack ever thought of himself as a pioneer. Had he ever considered it, he probably regarded himself simply as an athlete who wanted to compete making full use of whatever abilities he had. Today, the Paralympic Games exists precisely so that this may happen. We have come a long way since Jack Dearlove was relegated to the stands.

Pictures © John Dearlove

See also 6 September, 2012

British Empire Games Rowing in 1950

The combination of oarsmen from Leander and Thames RC represented England at the rowing regatta at the 1950 Empire Games: bow A.S.F. Butcher (Thames RC), 2. P.A de Giles (Leander), 3. W.A.D. Windham (Leander), 4. H.W. Rushmere (Thames RC), 5. R.D. Burnell (Leander), 6. P.C. Kirkpatrick (Thames RC), 7. M.C. Lapage (Leander), stroke P. Bradley (Leander) and cox J.P. Dearlove. Photograph by G.F. Louden (in Dickie Burnell's Swing Togther).

On 31 August, Tim Koch wrote on HTBS about Jack Dearlove, ‘The Indefatigable Jack Dearlove’. Jack, who had lost a leg in an accident, showed the same fighting spirit as today’s rowers at the Paralympic Games in London. Jack coxed the Great Britain eight to an Olympic silver medal in 1948 and a bronze medal at the Empire Games in 1950. This is a short story about the 1950 Empire Games’ rowing regatta on Lake Karapiro in New Zealand.

The first British Empire Games (now called the Commonwealth Games) were held in 1930 in Hamilton, Ontario, by, as Hylton Cleaver writes in his A History of Rowing (1957), “a group of keen sportsmen and great believers in the Empire”. That year’s winner of the Grand Challenge Cup at Henley, London RC, beat a strong eight from New Zealand by half a length. Bobby Pearce, then still sculling for Australia, became the first Empire Champion in the single sculls, beating Jack Beresford of Thames RC. There seems to have been an Empire Games in England in 1934, but without rowing! So, at the next Empire Games where rowing was included, in 1938, a combination eight of oarsmen from London, Thames, Oxford and Cambridge overpowered an eight from Australia. And then came the War.

After a successful race in the 1949 Grand Challenge Cup final at Henley Royal Regatta, Leander captain Richard ‘Dickie’ Burnell was asked to gather a crew for the British Empire Games, which were to be held in Auckland, New Zealand, in February 1950. Knowing that not all of the members of the Grand Cup winning Leander crew would be available, Dickie began looking around for other ‘outstanding men elsewhere’, as he writes in “The Empire Games Crew, 1950”, which is a chapter in his book Swing Together: Thoughts on Rowing (1952). He did not have to look very far. In 1949, Thames RC had taken the Grand Cup at Henley, and some oarsmen from that crew were eager to swap out the English winter for a much warmer climate on the other side of the world.

In the beginning there had been 17 oarsmen invited to the practise, including also two each from London RC and Kingston RC, but on 23 October, 1949, the selected eight looked as follows:

Bow A.S.F. Butcher (Thames RC)
2. P.A de Giles (Leander)
3. W.A.D. Windham (Leander)
4. H.W. Rushmere (Thames RC)
5. R.D. Burnell (Leander)
6. P.C. Kirkpatrick (Thames RC)
7. M.C. Lapage (Leander)
Stroke P. Bradley (Leander)
Cox J.P. Dearlove (Thames RC)

Added to these nine men were two spare rowers: A.D. Rowe (Leander; who was also in the single sculls) and M.H.N. Plaisted (London RC). Team Manager during the trip was Jack Beresford.

At first, the crew had been coached by Wing Commander Hellyer – of ‘syncopated rowing’ fame – but his doctor put a stop to him participating in winter coaching, and instead ‘Gully’ Nickalls stepped in to coach the eight. Dickie writes that Nickalls’s approach to coaching a crew was, ‘that a crew should first achieve a true rhythm and length in its paddling, and then translate this into its rowing’. However, Dickie states there was not really the time to work this way. He writes:

‘A certain amount of speed has got to be achieved in order to race, and if a crew is held back in order to perfect its length and rhythm in paddling, there is a distinct danger that it will not be ready in time to race. […] When we left England our paddling was really good, and on numerous occasions we disappointed the critics by paddling beautifully and then becoming rushed and scrappy in our rowing.’

The 1950 Great Britain Empire Game crew. Dickie Burnell, sixth from left in a dark scarf, kept a ‘captain’s log’ during the crew's practise in England and later on Lake Karapiro. Picture © John Dearlove.

Dickie kept a ‘captain’s log’ during the crew’s practise at Henley, the trip to New Zealand and the practise there, and parts of it are published in “The Empire Games Crew, 1950”. The team left England on 23 January, 1950, and when they arrived they heard that their boat had not arrived yet, so they had to borrow an old Sims. The long trip took its toll on the English crew, who also had problems with the diet. Eventually, their own boat arrived and also the riggers. But at the race, on 6 February, it did not really help, ‘the race was naturally a bitter disappointment to us all’ Dickie states. The Aussies won – ‘they were strong and well together, and rowed in something very like our own English Fairbairn style’, Dickie writes.

In the Australian boat rowed: bow R.N. Tinning, 2. P.A. Cayzer, 3. A.P. Holmes, 4. B.H. Goswell, 5. R.L. Selman, 6. E.O. Longley, 7. E.O. Pain, stroke A.W. Brown and cox J.E. Barnes. New Zealand’s crew was young, a little inexperienced, but ‘exceptionally tough’ and had rowed on Lake Karapiro for several weeks. They raced hard and almost overcame the Aussies. New Zealand’s crew: bow E. Smith, 2. B. Culpan, 3. D. Rowlands, 4. G. Jarratt, 5. M. Ashby, 6. W. Tinnock, 7. K. Ashby, stroke T.C. Engel and cox D. Adams. English sculler A.D. Rowe came in second after M. Wood, the reigning Olympic Champion from Australia. The bronze in the single sculls was taken by I.R.G. Steven of South Africa. T. Hegglum of New Zealand came in fourth.

There were some lessons to be learned after the Englishmen’s trip to New Zealand, which Dickie also recognises in a follow-up chapter in his Swing Together.

More about the British Empire Games Rowing tomorrow, 7 September.