We are grateful to Mr Lindsey Reynolds for this article. He is running the Boat Club in 1994 in the absence of JMB who is away from school for the year.
I met Ernest Hemingway during the summer holidays at Henley Town regatta. Or rather I met Ernest and Hemingway and their owner, the President of Upper Thames Rowing Club, on the banks of the Thames at Henley on a glorious summer evening in August after losing in our coxed fours final. In fact Hemingway had recently died so I only had the opportunity to meet the other dog.
The season began with crew selections in September at Minerva Bath Rowing Club. The club picks development crews at this stage of the season in order to bring on the whole squad of oarsmen and I found myself at 3 in a rather good S2 four. We train three times a week on the land during the winter combining aerobics with weights, circuits and ergos. This all takes place at a Percy Community Centre in Bath and there are regularly 50 people there including Phil De Glanville and a few members of the Bath Rugby side. It takes quite a bit of discipline to finish teaching at 6.20 and to start dancing to Queen, Bryan Adams or Tina Turner before 7pm in your aerobics class, especially if you have to be back at school for House duty by 9pm. You learn to be more organised. Outings on the water at Bathampton last for 90 minutes (you have to pay for each outing as well as a club membership fee) and they involve a 20 minute cycle ride in each direction beforehand. I have often had an early outing to get back just in time to teach an A level class. It is a bit of a double life really. I try to keep the school and my own rowing separate though the coaching I have received and the experience I have gained rowing at different events has been vital. You learn how to do things properly. I certainly wouldn't be running the rowing at Monkton without them. The Autumn season is becoming very competitive and I have noticed how seriously clubs and schools take this part of the year. Many schools clearly row in all three terms. My crew raced at SO at Monkton Bluefriars and at Bristol Ariel coming second on both occasions. We had such a good row at Bluefriars that JMB declared us the winners at first when presenting the medals before realising his mistake. Imagine that happening at the Olympics.
In the early part of this year our crews are changed to establish racing fours for the regatta season. We also put fours together to prepare for the Eights Head on the Thames.
Coaches have a fair idea of each oarsman but all are expected to complete a 5 minute ergo test every so often as well to assess general fitness. I have tried everything to improve my score : eating bananas, drinking gallons of water, listening to gentle music, listening to Guns 'N' Roses or even training outside in the cold. I once managed to get my score beyond 1520 metres. My advice to JMB (recent purchaser of his own ergo is to beware of training with disco dancers. One such oarsman put his tape on as we began a long continuous piece and we had rave music minus the ecstatic (I think it was minus the ecstasy). This part of the season included training in Wycliffe College's 1st VIII boat on the Sharpness canal, competing in a IV and an VIII at Bristol Docks and rowing in the Eights Head on the Thames. On the Thursday prior to the latter event the Monkton crew I coach had won their division in the Schools' Head in their octuple scull and I had stood at Putney in the twilight watching them pick up their medals. On the Saturday it was my turn but the row in Neomorph was poor. We didn't come last - it is as hard to come last as it is to come first. Sport is a great leveller though. You have to learn how to cope with the ups and the downs of life itself often in the same week. Perhaps my mind was still on the Thursday or perhaps it was the long Leander blades we were borrowing. It was quite nice to boat at Hammersmith in Leander colours though. I rowed at 5. Steve Redgrave also rowed at 5 in the Leander boat this year. Perhaps he used my blade. Perhaps....
In November this year I rowed at stroke in the Fours Head over the same course and all the memories of that place flooded back. There is something special about the stretch from Mortlake to Putney that no other course has. Perhaps it is the history of the place. The British like history.
We competed at numerous regattas over the summer and it was surprising to meet so many OMs at them. Each regatta has its own particular character and tradition and no one regatta is like another. A bit like English villages really. At Bewdley there are the Desperate Dan pies in the Packhorse whilst everyone camps at Ironbridge, goes to the late disco, and sleeps out under the shadow of the coal-burning power station (which is under threat of closure). At Abingdon plastic sacks full with bread rolls were left on the bank to feed the swans to keep them off the course. At Henley Town each race is followed by men in beautiful launches wearing pink ties, blazers and caps. Jazz music drifted across the water from the noisy paddle steamers passing our tents at night with chimneys that dropped as they went under the bridge. Watching these scenes from Wind in the Willows our cox accidentally dropped all his car keys into the Thames. As English society with all its pomp and grandeur steamed by in the marshalling launch, he dived in (completely naked) and after several attempts managed to retrieve them. I remember having trouble with my tent at Henley too. I had borrowed two school tents but needing only one on this occasion I combined the poles from one bag with the better looking tent from the other but the poles were for a two-man tent whilst the tent was four-man size. Rather than giving me a huge tent this combination gave me no space inside at all but about two metres of canvas firmly fixed flat to the ground around it. Inside it was like being in caught up within somebody's lungs. With every breath I sucked in half the tent canvas and had to get out quick for air. Spectators commented on it, dogs ran away from it and I dismantled it quickly on Sunday morning though Ernest had it in his mouth and I had quite a struggle to free it. Llandaff regatta, near Cardiff, reminds you of the pride of Welsh industry, the coal mines. The River Taff running down from the slag heaps is as black as a coal miner's dirty bath water and the course is cut short by large boulders at one end and a dangerous weir at the other just on the finishing line. One is reminded of the difficult geology of some narrow pits. I met the Llandaff policeman there who, rather worse for wear, had sung to the regatta crowd in the pub on the bridge at Bewdley until the early hours of a Sunday morning. He was rowing in a senior one boat though this time. At Oxford City Royal Regatta I won the S3 fours event but lost narrowly rowing at three in the Corpus Christi VIII. I remember the starter there. A round, short man with a red face and a red flag who screamed "Go" into the microphone and chopped his flag down as if executing the cox in each boat. Several more local regattas followed in the docks or on the canals and rivers of Britain's waterways. I got through to several finals but managed to win nothing more though the Club totalled over thirty regatta wins during the season.
I have met all sorts of people on the river from bus drivers, judges, submarine commanders, tree fellers and beauticians to headmasters. I have competed against shop workers, sewage pipe inspectors, Olympic gold medallists and World Champions. Certainly it must be said that sport breaks down barriers and crosses divides. On the start line waiting for the umpire's familiar words , "Attention , set , go", all oarsmen are equal.
the U.S.A. c=Julian Bewick
Time free of school commitments gave me the chance to visit the USA in October, and naturally I found some rivers and lakes...
I didn't spot any sign of rowing until I had been in the USA for over a week. Until then I had seen only a few joggers and cyclists. If I had watched television, I could no doubt have suffered a continuous diet of professional sport - I did in fact watch a little baseball, but failed to understand it. One of my stopping points on the tour was Washington College, which is about an hour NE of Washington DC, on Chesapeake Island. It was while crossing one of the several bridges leading to the island that I saw two eights in the distance out on the water. They turned out to be the US Naval Academy in training for the Head of the Charles, which was held at Boston a few days later. My contact at Washington College is a recent MCSBC Captain, who is now studying there. I stayed for a few days with his coach who runs the rowing at the college; his wife rows as well, so there was plenty of rowing chat while I was there. Their boathouse was like many others, but there was much to be learned by a lengthy visit before an outing. They have a good indoor rowing tank. The tank oars are specially made (plastic, of course), and have very small blades - they look almost is if a standard blade has been cut off about six or seven inches from the neck of the loom. The work felt light (even to me!), but I was assured that they were good for technique training. They would certainly be more robust than the standard English tank blades which are full size with holes drilled in. Another good idea on the tank was the stretcher fitting. (I wonder how many hours have been wasted adjusting stretchers on tanks with standard fittings?) The shoes were attached to a simple foot board which was adjusted by lifting it out of a pair of grooves on the inwall cut at 45 degrees and moving to a more suitable groove. The grooves were about 3/4" apart, so adjustment was not particularly fine, but who gets their stretchers more accurately adjusted? The heights of the shoes could be changed by blocking up the whole of the stretcher. A workshop time-saver which the coach had inherited from his predecessor was a tray set up on two lengths of timber which could be sat across the boat when adjustments or repairs were being made. A simple idea, but one which must save hours of hunting around in the bottom of boats for screws, drill bits, etc. While I was looking round, the coach was rigging an eight for his second year undergraduate girls to have their first outing after earlier training in small boats. The session lasted about 90 minutes and was very much the same sort of work that we would have done just before a race. The water was quite different. Chesapeake Bay is a quiet inlet of the sea, subject to only a little tide. It was calm when I was there, but it can be unpleasant. It is wide (twice as wide as the Thames at Putney?), has a few gentle bends, so that calm water can be found even on unpleasant days, and it is about 18 miles long.
I missed the next outing, which took place at 0615 the following day in very bad weather conditions. It was one of those days better missed. My second visit to the the boathouse was at about 0630 on the Thursday before the race at Boston. A four (in one piece) and a sculling boat (a none too beautiful French plastic boat) were loaded somewhat precariously on a pickup truck, and we set off on our 400 mile journey. This distance is unusual; apparently most of the regattas attended by the college are within a couple of hours of home base. Just North of New York, we visited the boat building firm Vespoli and I was lucky enough to be taken round by Mr Vespoli himself. The building process looked familiar. The plastic shells are made in moulds which are bolted to the floor so that the baking can be done in situ. Instead of the mould being moved to the oven like it is as Aylings, the oven is moved to the mould, to help to keep everything straight. (There were several moulds lined up close together, and the oven was on a gantry above.) Vacuum forming (rather like at Empacher) was involved in the process. A difference between the Vespoli mould and the Ayling one is that the Vespoli hulls are made the right size; they do not have to be cut down after being lifted from the mould, because the top of the saxboard is defined by the mould. The riggers were very familiar - they looked the same as the old Carbocraft riggers. I think the technology for the whole enterprise started with Carbocraft. In another part of the large workshop, a new plug was being made up. This is for a lightweight eight. Until now most lightweight boats (with a notable exception of those made at MCS I) have been based on full sized hulls, then simply cut down to size. Vespoli explained that the new hull had been tank-tested more than any other had been, and this was done not simply by towing, but by adding in variable driving forces, and simulated moving oarsmen on board. He said the resulting hull shape had been patented.
On to Boston - we arrived at MIT boathouse at about 4 pm, and found it a hive of activity. The Charles River is wide and calm and a bit reminiscent of Macon. MIT boathouse is built on stilts in the river, so there is a good view up and downstream from the balcony. About 20 oarsmen were using Concept II Model C ergos when I arrived. These new machines are smarter than the ones were are used to, but they do the same job, and the read-out still gives the same details of performance. In one of the crew rooms upstairs there was a group of eight cast-iron predecessors of the modem ergo. They should have been in a museum, and I suspect they were not used any more. Entries closed about two months before the race, and I have no doubt that most hotels were booked up at that time as well. It proved very difficult to find a bed for the night, and in the end I had to use three hotels in four days. I spent the Friday away from the river, looking at some of the rest of Boston. (Well worth a visit.)
By Saturday, the river was filling up rapidly with practising crews. I got to the river at about 1030, having got well and truly lost on the way into Boston. MIT boathouse was quiet when I got there, so I parked the car and walked up the course (all three miles!). The start is near MIT, and then the river narrows quite quickly to roughly the same width as the Thames at Reading. About a mile upstream I came across the main boat park area. There was a good selection of rowing suppliers' stands, and I saw the new Concept II ergo at close quarters. It is much quieter than the ones we have at MCS, and is easier to put together. The price is the same as for the old model. Cheaper than in UK, but by the time one has got it home, one would not make a saving. I had a chat with Richard Kellerman of Nelson Kellerman (I did not realise that he was a Welshman), and saw the latest coxbox, which includes an on-board computer to record the progress of outings. The sensor is built into a modified fin. It all looked very neat. I came across various suppliers new to me. One of them had useful stop watches in stock, and another had an excellent boat rack system imported all the way form Australia. MCSBC could do this these sliding racks, but they cost about £1000 per eight!
There were lots of clothing stalls with the inevitable Boat Trailers at the Head of the Charles baseball caps, sweatshirts and so on. The US equivalent of Richard Way bookshop of Henley was there, and I managed to interest them in the History of MCSBC and the print of the Aqueduct. (I had taken a few copies with me.) The atmosphere in the boating area was very much the same as it is elsewhere. People were getting on with their rigging quietly and efficiently and all the participants were friendly and relaxed before their races the following day. The mix of competitors was much the same as at many a Head Race. I saw Redgrave and Pincent on the bank (it turned out that they were rowing in a Vesper crew), and crews of all sorts from excellent eights to slow but happy veteran scullers. The weather was cool but beautifully sunny and the world famous New England Fall colours were at their best. The walk upstream took me past Cambridge Boat Club, Harvard University BC and several other clubs. There is a lively and active rowing community at Boston, and they were excellent hosts for the Head of the Charles. The day of the Head Race dawned cold but sunny. The first race was at 08(X), but my hotel was over an hour away form the course, so I didn't make it until the 0830 race. Conditions were breezy - enough to put up nasty waves on the Tideway - but the sheltered waters of the River Charles were hardly ruffled. Locals had warned me that there might be a quarter of a million people watching, but it was quieter than that in the morning, with plenty of room on the very wide towpath and throughout the wide stretches of grass near the water. The main road next to the course was closed to motor vehicles for the day, and crowds gradually built up, taking advantage of glorious Autumn weather. Food and clothing stalls did a roaring trade all day long, as did the many representatives of rowing equipment manufacturers. The atmosphere on the bank was a mixture of what one would expect at the Head of the River Race and at Henley. The boating area was much like the HORR, with crews bumping into many friends whom they see only occasionally. The spectators mingled freely with competitors as they do at so many other rowing events. Some of them were just curious locals, who did not know one end of a boat from another, while many others were connected with crews who were racing. These supporters set up crew areas, very much like in other regattas, and some of these were staked out with crew flags or balloons. Refreshements were laid on by the mums who are so much part of the sport - even if they would find pulling an oar not to their liking. The boathouses were not open as they would have been in England. Most had security guards on the door, and they were very much for members only. I did get into one or two, and it was interesting to see that all the ones I visited, including MIT, Belmont Hill School, Cambridge RC, had pictures of years that they had been to Henley, whose magic is easily taken across the Atlantic. This is not to say that Boston did not have a special magic of its own on Head Race day, because indeed it did, and it was just a bit different; it was a great privilege to be part of the occasion. What of the racing then/ It took place all day long, and there was constant activity on the river from 0730 until 1630, with no Luncheon Interval. Sixteen events, both for men and women had up to forty of fifty crews each, and the total number of boats was over 1000, with over 4000 competitors, making it the biggest one day rowing event in the world. (I think our own Head of the River Race is the largest single race, with over 400 eights in one procession.) Standards varied from rather bad to excellent. The oldest competitor was 82, and the eight that went off first (Vesper Rowing Club) had at least two Olympic gold medallists on board (and they were British). Westminster School were there, as were a few lone scullers from GB, an eight from Sons of the Thames and a four from Molesey. There were also competitors from France, Peru, Canada, Holland, Russia. The weather was good enough to enable spectators to sit and watch all this acvtivity from the bank in warm sunshine, and by the end of the day there were indeed many thousands taking part in this rowing festival.
After the racing, I was a guest at the Washington College get-together, where parents and supporters of their crews met high up in one of the hotels which overlooks the course. It was a marvellous day, and one not to be missed. I recommend it.
I thought the rowing part of my trip was over after leaving Boston, but I was to stay with an American OM oarsman Geoffrey Wilson who rowed in the 2nd VIII under DCMP in 1969 during his one year at Monkton. He is now a lawyer, and he still sculls occasionally. He is connected with the biggest boarding school in the USA - Northfield Mount Hermon, and I fixed to go and see them to see their way of life and their rowing in particular. Their stretch of water was one of the most beautiful I have come across - imagine a river as big as the Erdre at Nantes in a setting like a grand Wye Valley. There, I came across a couple of Novice Eights and a pair out on the water. These beginners had been rowing for only a few weeks to try the sport before deciding whether to join the serious traning squad, known as the 'Varsity' crews. These novices went out only in what they called P.E. time (we would call it games), but they took it seriously, and were on the water five times a week.
I was also introduced to Graeme Smith of Putney, Vermont, the last surviving traditional racing boat builder in the USA and went to see his workshop; it was big, with three or four boat stocks, a varnishing room and a wood store. There were not many boats in when I was there, but the craftmanship I saw was of the highest standard. They make their own ply wood on site, so that, for instance, in an eight the grain of the central veneer of the ply is glued in at right angles to the outer skin, but at the bow and stem it is rotated to ensure easy and smooth bending. The surface graining of the ply is matched up more accurately than on any other ply I have seen. Graeme Smith will be visiting England in 1994, and I hope he will come and see our workshop to compare notes.