2 October 2023

By Göran R Buckhorn

Seven months ago, HTBS editor Göran Buckhorn shamelessly began promoting The Greatest Rowing Stories Ever Told, an anthology he has edited. Today, at last, the book is out in the book shops.

The Greatest Rowing Stories Ever Told – Over Forty Unforgettable Stories, published by American publisher Lyons Press, has fiction and non-fiction stories, articles, essays, poems and an excerpt from a play. The book is in the publisher’s series “The Greatest [a sport] Stories Ever Told”.

I began working on The Greatest Rowing Stories Ever Told in the spring of 2022, and luckily, I had a group of American rowing historians backing me up by forming the editorial committee for the book. In this group were Bill Lanouette, Peter Mallory, Bill Miller and Tom Weil. Yes, you have seen their work being published on this website. In the group was also Rick Rinehart, Executive Book Editor at Lyons Press, himself an oarsman, who rowed at Kent School for the famous rowing coach and advocate Hart Perry.

Lyons Press is the publisher when it comes to rowing books. The company has published books on rowing by Daniel J. Boyne, Toby Ayer, Bill Lanouette and Peter Mallory. In 2010, editor Rinehart came out with Men of Kent: Ten Boys, a Fast Boat, and the Coach who Made Them Champions telling the story of how the boys from Kent won the 1972 Princess Elizabeth Challenge Cup at Henley Royal Regatta.

Being a collector of rowing books, I spent weeks going through my rowing books, magazines and other publications, which I had in my small study, called The Rowing Room. I also scanned the internet while I made a list of journalists, writers and authors whose texts I was interested in reprinting in The Greatest Rowing Stories Ever Told.

The first group of writers I approached was, of course, the regular and irregular contributors to HTBS. I felt pretty sure that most of them would come back with a positive reply. I was right. All of them proved to be more than happy to join the crew and give me permission to use their works. A few even wrote stories specially for this anthology.

Then there was a small group of publishers and copyright holders who demanded quite a lot of money to reprint the texts of their authors. (These texts are not in the anthology.) There were also a couple of copyright holders and literary agents who did not have the courtesy to reply to my enquiry – their loss, I would like to think. But overall, the writers I approached were happily agreeing to let me republish their work.

What you will find assembled in the anthology are excerpts of classic rowing stories, rowing on the River Thames and the Charles River, at Henley Royal Regatta, the World Championships, the Olympic Games, professional rowing, the downfall of East German rowing, a Boat Race murder, an Olympic champion taking his first stroke, female rowers writing about women rowing, poems on rowing and how a world championship race for professional oarsmen is depicted in a play, and much more. Did I mention that the oldest text in the anthology is from 1612?

The Greatest Rowing Stories Ever Told has the following contents:

Fiction
Ralph Henry Barbour: At the Mile
Frans G Bengtsson: Orm’s Beard
Mark Helprin: Palais de Justice – A Short Story
Ron Irwin: The First Meeting of the Crew
Jerome K. Jerome: Early Boating Recollections
Robert Treharne Jones: One Hundred Years from Now
David Winser: The Boat Race Murder

Non-Fiction
Aquil Abdullah (with Chris Ingram): The Pineapple Cup
Andy Anderson (aka Dr. Rowing): The Legend of the Japanese Eight
Toby Ayer: Training with Harry Parker
Mark Blandford-Baker: Henley Behind the Scenes
Dan Boyne: Excerpt from The Red Rose Crew
Göran R Buckhorn: Meeting a Rowing Superstar
Rebecca Caroe: My Potential Achieved
Frank Cunningham: Why a Sliding-Seat
Greg Denieffe: The Curious Case of Doctor Dillon
Chris Dodd: Downfall of Rowing’s Master Class
Stephen Kiesling: A Different Symphony
Tim Koch: The Feathers: A Forgotten Centre of Early British Rowing
Oliver La Farge: Excerpt from The Eight-Oared Shell
William Lanouette: Courtney v. Hanlan: Three Race, Three Disgraces
Brad Alan Lewis: Wet Beginnings
Peter Mallory: The Previous Administration
Thomas C. Mendenhall: Yale’s Eight at the 1956 Olympic Rowing
Bill Miller: The 1920 Report of the American Olympic Committee and John B. Kelly’s 1920 Olympic Rowing
William O’Chee: A Paean to Rowing
Rick Rinehart: Henley Royal Regatta
Sarah Risser: Take Me to the River: The Quest for a Permanent Rowing Home in Minneapolis
Lisa Taylor: Lucy Pocock Stillwell – A Woman in a Waterman’s World
Thomas E. Weil: A Memorable Race at Henley Women’s Regatta

Poetry / Song / Play
Joseph Ashby-Sterry: A Regatta Rhyme (On board the ‘Athena’, Henley-on-Thames)
William Johnson Cory: Eton Boating Song
James Lister Cuthbertson: A Racing Eight
Steve Fairbairn: The Oarsman Song
Philip Kuepper: Putting on the Garment of Water and Light
R. C. Lehmann: Style and the Oar
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: The Broken Oar
George Pocock: It’s a Great Art, is Rowing
R. E. Swartwout: Steve Fairbairn
John Taylor: Epigram 29
Ed Waugh: Rowing for the World Championships

You will find The Greatest Rowing Stories Ever Told in good book shops on both sides of the pond.

ISBN 978-1493072170, 281 pages, US$21.95 / £16.99.

The book is available on the following countries’ Amazon sites: USA, UK, Canada, Australia, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, France, Spain and Japan. It might also be available on Amazon in other countries.

If you decide to order your copy on any of the Amazon sites, and if you like The Greatest Rowing Stories Ever Told, please post a review on Amazon – thank you.