Book Review: Bonnie brave boat rowers

At less than 100 pages, this book is a quick, snippet of the life, read about the professional scullers on Great Britain’s Tyne River from about the 1840s through to the early 1900s. This was a period when rowing was at its peak of popularity with the oarsmen celebrities and crowds large. Betting was rampant and the winnings for the oarsmen made the appeal of becoming a rower huge. To put it in perspective, sometimes the winnings were the equivalent of about a year’s (average) salary.

The crowds were large with one race, the Claspers, Chambers and Renforth attracting audiences of 100,000 (if estimations at the time can be believed) and there was plenty of press coverage, enough so that it overshadowed football at the time.

“The sporting heroes of the 1860s were almost all oarsmen,” states Dodd. 

This was also a time when there was much experimenting with boat design and boat weight in an attempt to get the winning edge through the equipment. Dodd expends a large amount of detail on the trials that were conducted to try and design a faster boat. Oars were also developed and the movement from “sliding on a seat to sliding with a seat.”

Some of these innovations were at the forefront of developments that have shaped present day rowing shells and oars. “Four developments combined to transform the ship’s boat from a tub to a sleek racing shell – the outrigger, the swivel, the sliding seat and the abolition, or at least the bringing inboard, of the keel.”

During this time races for the championship of England and those of the world title were sometimes held on the Tyne. This brought international talent to the area adding to the excitement and appeal of the sport.

Dodd writes with an economy of words. Every sentence packed full of information which sometimes means that the background to the context needs to be found elsewhere. This helps make it a book for the rowing enthusiast.

Overall the stories are colourful and paint pictures of when the sport of rowing played out in a hugely different manner to today. 

Bonnie brave boat rowers; The heroes, seers and songsters of the Tyne
By Christopher Dodd
AuthorHouse, 2014