Pembroke Rowing in the 1870's: The development of the “modern boat”.

 

Rowing in the Nineteenth Century

 

Whilst Pembroke has been regarded only latterly as a “rowing college”, the 1870s marked an earlier golden period in its rowing fortunes. Whilst Pembroke went Head of the River in 1872, it is less well known that Pembroke pioneered the technological advance of the sliding seat, well in advance of its general acceptance by the rowing community in Oxford. This was the most important innovation which resulted in what is now regarded as the “modern boat”. For the century which followed this revolutionary change, there was virtually no other major technological modification which contributed to rowing technology. The development of the sliding seat is therefore a definitive moment in the history of rowing, and the Pembroke crew of 1872 were the first among Oxford Colleges to use the sliding seat in the Fours in 1872. Other colleges followed suit only after the advantages were proven at Henley Regatta, by Pembroke and other crews and at other races.

 

How Rowing came to Oxford

 

For those unfamiliar with the sport of rowing, it can most obviously and simply be defined as the art of propelling a boat through water by the use of oars. It was the essential skill of professional watermen who earned their living on the river until the early eighteen hundreds, when the interested amateur began to invade the water. The rising popularity of leisure rowing led to the formation of amateur rowing clubs, and the beginning of serious racing has been traced back to Eton College, whose records show that, by 1811, they had a varied collection of boats in their possession. From there, it is believed to have found its way to Oxford, where the first record of eight-oared racing occurs in 1815, with Brasenose going Head of the River, and the first Oxford v Cambridge Boat Race took place in 1829, when Oxford was victorious. Oxford continued to draw its rowers from the strong rowing schools, and the Henley Regattas of the period featured Oxford Radeian and Oxford Etonian crews as well as individual Oxbridge Colleges and other amateur clubs. Two leading Pembroke oarsmen of the 1870-1873 period were the three times President of the Oxford University Boat Club, Robert Lesley, who came up from Radley and R S Mitchison, an old Etonian.

 

Between 1800 and 1875, there were several radical improvements in the design of boats, the outrigger, carvel instead of clinker construction and sliding seat, together with some minor adjustments which decreased the weight of the boat. However, it was the substitution of the fixed oarsman’s seat for one which could slide and thus make maximum use of the power of an oarsman’s legs which has been regarded as the most significant advance in revolutionising the early sport of rowing, and which contributed to the development of what is commonly known as the “modern boat”. After these major design improvements were established between 1800 and 1875, advances in rowing technology remained virtually static for the following century.

 

There are various theories as to the genuine inventor of the sliding seat, but consensus opinion among rowing historians gravitates towards a certain J C Babcock of the Nassau Boat Club of New York, who is credited with fitting a sliding seat to his sculling boat as early as 1857. Subsequently, he went on to fit slides to a six–oar around 1869 to 1870. He used it to great success in 1870 on the Nassau boat club gig-six at the Hudson Amateur Rowing Association.  His slides consisted of squares of wood covered with leather which were grooved at the edges in order to slide on brass tracks. One account of why Babcock failed to register the patent for the sliding seat is that he allowed his earlier invention to fall into disuse. In the meantime, Walter Brown of Boston took up the idea and worked out a slightly different form, lodging the patent in the U.S. in 1870 for an “adjustable seat”.  Yale University are reputed to have used slides in the Harvard v Yale contest the following year (1871) after the Nassau trials by Babcock.  

 

England too had its rowing innovators and experimenters but they were initially drawn from the ranks of the professional scullers on the Tyne, which had a long history of boat construction, and they raced with the important incentive of prize money, as opposed to the leisured community of “gentleman” rowers. In Newcastle races between the professionals drew crowds in the region of some fifty thousand gathered along the river. There were two famous Tyneside oarsmen, both of whom were dead by 1871, but who became legends in their own lifetimes, as well as remaining current rowing myths in the North of England. These were Harry Clasper, an apprentice carpenter in a boatyard and James Renforth, a publican.

 

As early as 1857, E D Brickwood, the Editor of the “Rowing Almanack”, credits Harry Clasper and his four of Tyneside scullers with using an early form of sliding on a fixed seat, known as “greased sliding” in spurts to gain speed advantage. However, sliding over the whole course left them prematurely exhausted.  This early sliding consisted of polished fixed seats, on which the oarsman slid with the help of grease or black lead and necessitated rowers to wear leather trousers, which became saturated in oil. The Tyneside scullers allowed the whole body to move forwards on the fixed seat some 3 or 4 inches when catching the water at the beginning of a stroke, and backwards at the finish of a stroke. This effectively lengthened the stroke in the water by some eight inches or so and, assuming that the oarsman had sufficient strength, he could send his boat along at a faster speed than his opponent while pulling fewer strokes, thus conserving his energy more efficiently over long courses.

 

This greased sliding eventually came to be replaced by seats which themselves slid back and forth on various forms of runners and wheels and the era of the sliding seat of Babcock and Brown was born. The first sliding seats in 1870 used bone runners and slid on brass strips which soon stuck, especially in wet weather, and they needed so much oiling that trousers which absorbed the oil were ruined. These were soon replaced by glass, but this was apt to break, and then eventually polished gas piping  or steel rods with wheels, which were more widely introduced by 1885, and these wheels ran along vulcanite grooves or runners. There were numerous experiments tried with materials but only those with some general acceptance have been passed down and recorded. Once the slides used less grease, shorts became current and were widely adopted for rowing.

 

However, using greased sliding on fixed seats in short spurts enabled James Renforth’s crew to become professional champions of the world in 1870 but, as with many working men and despite his rowing prowess, Renforth was in poor physical condition and he collapsed and died during a race in 1871. Following his death, other Tynesiders, such as Thomas Winship and James Taylor continued to experiment and perfect the sliding process. Further proof of the continued problems with greased sliding came in the form of the Lancastrian John O’Gaunt crew who raced at Henley Regatta in 1870 in the Stewards’ race against the London Rowing Club. Those who saw the race became convinced that sliding on the greased fixed seat, and which caused such fatigue, could really only ever be of use over short distances, and would never be suitable for continuous use in longer races.

 

The main problem was that it was difficult to get inexperienced rowers to use the right technique in greased sliding. There was great temptation to use the easiest way of sliding, with the result that the seat slid too much at the wrong time, rather than to do it in the correct but much more difficult and tiring way. There were also additional difficulties in managing to co-ordinate with the rest of the crew, as the crew needed to slide together in order to row together.

 

We can but speculate how ideas spread within the relatively small community of dedicated rowers but several examples illustrate how this exchange may have taken place. The champion sculler, Walter Brown visited England in 1869, the year before he patented his sliding seat, and beat James Renforth on the Tyne. Two years later, in 1871, the Tynesiders were in America competing, where it is believed they first saw the sliding seat in operation by the Biglin-Coulter USA crew at the Saratoga Regatta.

Although the Biglin crew appeared to derive no major advantage in their racing, nevertheless it appears to have impressed the Englishmen. Following Renforth’s death in 1871, James Taylor challenged the remainder of Renforth’s crew to a race, and he secretly fitted bone runners on steel grooves to his Winship-led coxless four. Winship’s crew won easily against the Robert Chambers’ crew who had used fixed seats. This was decisive in giving wide publicity to the potential success of a moveable sliding seat on runners, encouraging others to adopt and trial them, and they were to be widely used at Henley Regatta the following summer in 1872

 

Winship’s winning crew included Joseph Sadler, who instructed the famous rower of the 1870s, F S Gulston of the London Rowing Club (LRC) how to use slides in his single and four. As early adopters of the sliding seat, the London Rowing Club raced the visiting Atlanta Rowing Club of New York in 1872 on the Thames. This was reported in the June 6th 1872 edition of the New York Times, where the London correspondent speculated that the LRC were thinking of abandoning their sliding seats much to the dismay of the AtlantaHenley. club, who actually thought the LRC rowed better on fixed seats! The LRC team, which included F S Gulston, were much stronger and could have won easily with or without slides, but the LRC were convinced of the advantage and fitted out all their boats with slides for the 1872 Henley Regatta. The expertise of the North East came into play again as J H Clasper (the son of Harry) built the LRC boat with sliding seats, and which won both the Stewards’ and Grand Challenge Cup that year at

 

Whilst the sliding seat began to gain general acceptance, there was considerable prejudice against it and horror expressed by the “purists” and retired good oarsmen of the fixed seat school, who saw it as “unsporting”. For local clubs, the decision whether or not to adopt the seat depended on the state of local competition and the balance of the advantage to be gained by fitting them, but the general consensus was that they could improve performance

 

And so to Pembroke

 

The years from 1871 to 1873 saw Pembroke experience something of a renaissance in its rowing fortunes. Robert Lesley was President of the Oxford University Boat Club for three consecutive years from 1871, and Pembroke won a series of rowing victories which raised expectations.  If it were possible to identify a time when others outside College might have considered Pembroke a serious rowing college, perhaps for the first time, then the year 1872 marked a significantly improved performance.

 

In 1871, the Pembroke Boat Club had to debate whether or not it was viable to go to Henley that year, depending on the state of funds. Expectations were high, and Lesley and R S Mitchison formed a strong team, which won the Ladies Challenge Cup that year at Henley. Although Cambridge won the Boat Race in 1872, both Lesley and Mitchison were in the Oxford crew. Furthermore, Pembroke went Head of the River in 1872 in “Red Rose” with the involvement of Lesley at stroke and Mitchison as Captain. A silver jug or ewer was presented to the College by Mr Pemberton (1851), an old member of the Rowing Club, bearing the inscription “Rosa Victrix 1872 Coll. Pemb.” and the names of the successful Eight.

 

In 1872, the Pembroke crew were to go to Henley again to defend their title as winners of the Ladies’ Plate, as well as to enter the Grand Challenge and Visitors’ Cup. The Pembroke crew had been using sliding seats regularly in Oxford on the Four, but had not fitted out the Eight. W.B. Woodgate, a champion rower from the 1860s, was their coach, and the Boat Club Minutes for 1872 record that “in accordance with his (Woodgate’s) advice the Four had taken to the new fashioned sliding seats before they had left Oxford, but it was thought unadvisable to adopt them so late in the Eight – but on arriving at Henley and finding that many of the crews were using them, it was determined that they should be tried and accordingly they converted the Eight. The Eight was fitted with them in time to allow the crew to practise on Monday night. With Mr Woodgate’s careful coaching they soon got into the way of using them and there can be no doubt that they contributed greatly to the speed of the boat”. Other teams also had slides fitted to their boats less than a week before the race. In 1872, Jackson’s Oxford Journal records that “many of the crews rowed in boats with sliding seats which may possibly become general”.

 

Rowing historians indicate that sliding seats were first used during the Fours racing at Oxford in 1872 and that “the new system of sliding seats was first used in Oxford by Lesley’s crew and also by the College (Pembroke) Eight at Henley “ (Sherwood). Burnell writes of Pembroke using slides with wheels and Dodd states that London Rowing Club and Pembroke were the first to use the sliding seat at Henley. Whilst historical rowing literature has a tendency to lead from a sole source, it would seem that the Pembroke College Minutes provide reliable original source evidence of the truth of the statement that the Pembroke crew were the pioneers of the sliding seat at Oxford, using it in the Fours before they left for Henley.  

 

At Henley in 1872 there was particular excitement due to the fact that the Ladies’ Challenge Cup would feature the 2 Varsity strokes, rowing in their College teams, each of which had gone Head of the River in their respective universities. These were Bob Lesley for Pembroke and Oxford and J H D Goldie for Lady Margaret (the name of the St John’s College Boat Club) and Cambridge, the latter defining an era in Cambridge rowing. The dominance of John Goldie in a Cambridge crew which won all 3 boat races between 1870 and 1872 is legendary, including breaking a bolt in his rigger in the 1872 race, and still managing to set an exceptional rhythm to help win. Oxford’s fortunes in 1872 consisted of a crew beset by injuries, and Bob Lesley may well have missed the opportunity to be more widely recognised as a talented rower, for Douglas Macleane in his History of Pembroke College states that “Mr Lesley proved one of the finest strokes ever produced at Oxford”.

 

Jacksons Oxford Journal of the 22nd June 1872, describes the first heat of the Ladies’ Challenge Cup featuring Pembroke as “one of the best contests of the day”. W.B. Woodgate in “Boating” 1886, describes the race as follows; “the two head of the river teams, each containing the respective university stroke, pitted Lady Margaret (St John’s) Cambridge against Pembroke. At first, Pembroke did equal time over the course with Lady Margaret Cambridge both on fixed seats, but the day after Pembroke got their slides they improved some 15 seconds on the time of the Lady Margaret crew who kept their fixed seats”.  Pembroke eventually took second place to Jesus College Cambridge, who rowed on fixed seats, but were a superior team, which enabled them to overcome Pembroke’s slide advantage.  It is also recorded that Pembroke held off at the end of this race as their two best rowers, who formed half the crew of the four for the Visitors’ Cup, Lesley and Mitchison, had to row again that day, and the calculation must have been made that this would maximise their chances for a win in the later race.  

 

 Jackson’s Oxford Journal of 1872 described Pembroke’s win of the Visitors’ Cup as “one of the best races of the whole Regatta”. Pembroke won by approximately half a length from University College Dublin, who were using fixed seats. The Dublin crew were regarded as one of the best ever sent to Henley. Certainly the Pembroke Coach, Woodgate, expressed his opinion that the Pembroke crew was a “moderate one” despite having Lesley and Mitchison as two of the winning four, so it would appear that the sliding seats and the longer period of training with them to perfect technique on the Four at Oxford really did reap its reward. What is also significant is that Pembroke were using wheels, which were soon discarded by boat builders in favour of greased glass or steel grooves or tubes, but wheels were to return to favour again in 1885. Pembroke then, were not only early adopters of the sliding seat, ahead of others in Oxford, but also pioneers in terms of the materials being used, as they anticipated the later wheeled models of sliding seats which did not become current until 1885.

 

Once again, the use and advantage of sliding seats remains complex and, despite the perceived advantage in the use of them, the race times at Henley in 1872 were less good than those on average between 1862 to1871. However, several variables come together to affect the performance of a crew. Racing conditions, the weather, wind strength and direction, the conditions of the course, the quality of the team, technique and stamina all play their part in a win.  In fact, a strong team on fixed seats would often be able to beat one on sliding seats, especially if the latter had not sufficiently perfected their technique. Indeed, it has been suggested that the optimum performance of fixed seat rowing was achieved by 1870. Nevertheless, although the Boat race and Henley overall average race times over those 10 years were not shown to be improved when boats were fitted with slides, this in no way detracts from the witness accounts of the races where, if sliding seats were used to best advantage, they could give substantial benefit to the racing team pitted against one using fixed seats. However, interestingly, both Kingston and Pembroke, who had adopted slides for the Eights on arrival at Henley in 1872, showed the same increase in speed once slides were fitted.

 

 By 1872, J H Clasper, the Tyneside boat builder and son of Harry Clasper, was urging the Cambridge crew in the Boat Race that year to agree to sliding seats in the boat they were ordering from him. However, J H D Goldie, although a pioneer of the sliding seat, was reticent to try it out at the University race – probably feeling the stakes were too high. It was therefore the 1873 Boat Race which was the first one in which both University teams used the sliding seat. Cambridge had won for the three previous years, and they were to master the technique of sliding better than Oxford and won by three and a quarter lengths or 29 seconds, with a total time of 19 minutes and 35 seconds. This time eclipsed previous races, but would have done so even without slides because of good conditions with a strong flood tide. Robert Lesley had coached the 1873 Oxford team with R S Mitchison rowing at No 5. CambridgeOxford won by 10 lengths. continued to win until 1875, when

 

In the 1873 Eights, slides came into general use in Oxford and, unlike other changes in boats, they proved a convincing improvement in pace during this first year. Exeter was determined to row on fixed seats and was continuously bumped, and on the 4th day succumbed to having slides fitted. However, slides continued to prove problematic and Pembroke Boat Club Minutes as late as 1934-5 describe their fitting as an “experiment” which was “without anticipated success” in the Robinson Fours*. The Minutes for 1936-7 state that “enabling several older members of the Club to row on fixed seats for a period was seen to have had good effect when they returned to slide”. In 1873, Robert Lesley had written in the President’s Log of the OUBC “It is now a golden rule, if a man cannot row well on a fixed seat he is no use on a slide. There are many extra tendencies, and faults, to be guarded against: (i) allowing the slide to go too soon, before the weight is on the handle of the oar; (ii) loss of form and swing; but in any case the sliding seat is conclusively faster than the fixed seat if properly used”. So problems of adoption and technique and fluctuating fortunes of the sliding seat were shown to persist well beyond their introductory period. Such illustrations of the problems highlight the courage of that early adoption by the Lesley crew coached by Woodgate.

 

Whilst Pembroke’s rowing fortunes may have fluctuated in the interim period,

Pembroke became Head of the River again in 1995 and gained the double Headship in 2003. It was in 1980 that the first Pembroke Women’s Eight took to the water, battling with rowing equipment designed for burly men with size 12 feet! Another proud moment came when Annabel Eyres (1984) rowed in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, making the Olympic final by 0.13 of a second and coming 5th in the final.

 

Of the Pembrokians who were instrumental in introducing the sliding seat to Oxford rowing, R S Mitchison’s obituary appeared in the 1936-37 copy of the Record. He matriculated in 1868 and spent his life as Rector of St Mary’s Church in Barnaby, Rugby (1880-1926) and died in 1936 an Honorary Canon of the Church.  His obituary records that he distinguished himself as an oarsman rowing in the Oxford Boat in 1872 and 1873. His younger brother, A M Mitchison, also rowed for Oxford in 1875 and 1876.

 

A veteran of the 1871 and 1872 Boat Races and coach of the 1873 crew facing the indomitable J D H Goldie, instrumental in the Pembroke successes at Henley and the important first Headship of the River in 1872, Robert Lesley returned to farm his own estate at Sinnington Lodge where he was born.  He was described in a History of Hunting as “a thorough sportsman who loved the very smell of the soil and the open air and who was a good farmer”. He was a Justice of the Peace for the North Riding of Yorkshire, and also retired from the Yorkshire Artillery Militia with the rank of Lt Colonel. He was Master of the Sinnington Hunt from 1884 until 1891, and died at the relatively young age of 54 on 1st July 1905, following a long illness. A friend described him as “having the instincts in his character of all that was manly, straight, and courageous” and as admired by a large circle of friends.  Although described as grave and taciturn on occasions, his friend stated that his “kindly heart and good understanding predominated over all things”. His brother H W Lesley wrote that Robert did not have much time for hunting until he became Master of the Hunt at Sinnington, being “occupied in the Oxford University Eight, and later in coaching the crews”.

 

Jo Church

 

* The Robinson Challenge Cup was presented to Pembroke by H M Robinson (1857) to be rowed for annually by four oared boats.

 

With grateful thanks to Professor Ben Davis for the idea for this article and to Amanda Ingram for finding the census information connecting Robert Lesley to Sinnington.

 

 

Sources

 

  • Oxford Rowing; A History of Boat Racing at Oxford From the Earliest Times With A Record of the Races Rev. W E Sherwood MA   (Henry Frowde – Oxford and London 1900)
  • The Minutes of the Pembroke Boat Club
  • Jackson’s Oxford Journal
  • Henley Regatta Official Results and University Boat Club Official Results
  • History of the London Rowing Club (Online)
  • History of Rowing in the North East
  • US Patents online
  • History of Middlesex Sport Online (British History Online)
  • River and Rowing Museum History Online
  • The Tyne Oarsmen;  Harry ‘Clasper, Robert Chambers, James Renforth by Peter Dillon 1993  Keepdate Publishing
  • One hundred and fifty years of the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race Richard Burnell Precision Press 1979
  • The Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race, Christopher Dodd ; Stanley Paul 1983
  • Melbourne, Sydney, Auckland, Johannesburg
  • Henley Royal Regatta;  Christopher Dodd;  Stanley Paul 1981 London, Melbourne, Auckland and Johannesburg
  • A Social History of Rowing; Neil Wigglesworth  Frank Cass 1992 London
  • Swing Together. Thoughts on Rowing.  R D Burnell  Oxford University Press 1952
  • London, New York, Toronto
  • The Badminton Library Series; Boating by W B Woodgate  3rd Edition London Longmans, Green and Co 1891
  • Reminisces of an Old Sportsman W B Woodgate  Eveleigh Nash London 1909
  • Racing at Henley,  Horace Cox “Field Office” Bream’s Buildings London EC
  • From reports printed in the Field Newspaper from 1903 onwards edited with a preface by Theodore A Cook
  • Henley Regatta A History R D Burnell London OUP 1957
  • Douglas Macleane’s A History of Pembroke College 1897 Clarendon Press
  • A History of Rowing, Hylton Cleaver Herbert Jenkins 1957 London
  • Boat Racing or the Arts of Rowing and Training George Morrison (Horace Cox, London)
  • England’s Oldest Hunt. Being chapters of the history of the Bilsdale, Farndale and Sinnington Hunts, collected during several years by J Fairfax Blakeborough
  • (published by the author, Fox House, Carlton-in-Cleveland) Middlesbrough Jordison & Co Ltd