13 November 2023

By Michael J. Socolow

Michael J. Socolow, the author of Six Minutes in Berlin: Broadcast Spectacle and Rowing Gold at the Nazi Olympics (2016) and a former Columbia University (Heavyweight) and King’s Crown Rowing Association oarsman, has read the anthology The Greatest Rowing Stories Ever Told.

Rowers tend to be quiet. Remaining silent in an eight, a quad, or even while sculling alone, is prized. In the calm of an early morning row, one might hear birds chirp, oars dip and splash, an oarlock’s creak, the soft motor puttering of a coach’s launch, a coxswain’s encouragement, or heavy breathing arising from exertion. But you don’t hear much talking in the boat.

Yet, off the water, oarswomen and oarsmen tell stories. It’s only after practice is completed, when the boats and oars are stored, that some chatter or laughter in the boathouse might be heard. Rowers discussing something funny that happened during the row, or exchanging advice about improving form, or encouraging each other by recounting compiled memories of earlier adventures, emerges naturally. That’s where the stories begin. And the stories will continue on bus rides and car trips to regattas, and later in life over drinks, and eventually those who’ve rowed crew will forever relish and retell the best ones throughout their lives.

The Greatest Rowing Stories Ever Told, the excellent new collection of stories, poems, essays and narratives edited by the veteran Swedish journalist and oarsman Göran R Buckhorn, whose website Hear The Boat Sing comprises one of the web’s few remaining delights, recently prompted my thoughts on rowers and their stories. Of all the sports, rowing, it seems, is particularly difficult to communicate as an athletic endeavor. As a physical practice, rowing can be repetitive and monotonous. But within the process of learning to make a clean catch, how to properly unfold the body, and then how to extract the blade, feather and slide on the recovery, the rower participates in a dynamic combining intense individual focus with the apex of teamwork. Rowing is an athletic pursuit its adherents understand as an almost spiritual quest. When a boat is set perfectly, skimming rapidly across the water’s surface, with all eight oarswomen swinging together as a single crew, there exists no comparable feeling in sport – or life. Chasing that perfection is why rowers row.

The Greatest Rowing Stories Ever Told collects diverse and distinct perspectives on the challenges inherent in pulling an oar. The selection is wide-ranging in style, format, theme and scope. In fictional stories drawn from the archives – such as Ralph Henry Barbour’s “At the Mile,” which was first published in 1901 – the emphasis is on the drama and suspense of racing. In the midst of a tense duel, the story’s protagonist catches a crab, and his almost unconscious reaction amidst the chaos of the moment provides a surprising ending. Mark Helprin’s short story “Palais de Justice – A Short Story” deftly captures the power of interior monologue on the water. Towards the end of a row on a hot day that had silently evolved into an unannounced race with a much younger rival, an elderly oarsman realizes he must focus. Enumerated intrusions into his consciousness are banished, and finishing the row impressively becomes all that matters. “He did not think of the things he had seen as the century moved on,” Helprin writes:

“He simply beat the water with his long oars, and propelled himself ahead. One more stroke, he said, and another, and another. He was almost at his end.

He looked back, and a beautiful sight came to his eyes. The young man was bent over and gliding. His oars no longer moved but only brushed the top of the water.” (p.20)

Buckhorn’s compilation contains brief and engaging excerpts from several well-known rowing books, including ones from Daniel J. Boyne’s The Red Rose Crew (2000), Stephen Kiesling’s The Shell Game (1982), Brad Lewis’s Olympian (2021), and Toby Ayer’s The Sphinx of the Charles (2016). It also includes humorous pieces, such as Andy Anderson’s “The Legend of the Japanese Eight.” “Walk into any boathouse in the country and sooner or later someone will draw you aside and tell you the story of the Japanese crew that rowed at such a high rating that they died after the race,” (p.63) begins Anderson’s essay. He traces one of rowing’s great urban legends to the 1936 Imperial University crew from Tokyo that dazzled spectators and opposing crews with an impossibly frantic sprint off the line at both Henley and the Berlin Olympic Games. 

The Greatest Rowing Stories Ever Told contains inspiring stories, funny moments, engaging Olympic tales, and work from some of rowing’s most astute and stylistic writers, including Peter Mallory and Christopher Dodd. Somewhat unexpectedly, some of the most powerful and memorable parts of the book concern grappling with losing. There is much celebrated triumph here, including Thomas C. Mendenhall’s recounting the story of Yale’s 1956 Olympic champions, and excerpts from the 1920 Report of the American Olympic Committee describing medal-winning victories compiled by U.S. oarsmen, yet it was Aquil Abdullah’s rumination on the pain of losing the 2000 Olympic Trials in the single sculls by .33 seconds (to Don Smith) that proved most striking to me. Abdullah’s contemplation of work, success, failure, the single-minded pursuit of excellence, and how balance, scale, focus, perspective and context all contribute to understanding self-fulfillment and mastery of performance, is particularly thoughtful.    

The single most important transformation in the sport of rowing over the last half-century has been the development and growth of women’s crew, both in the United States and around the world. The Greatest Rowing Stories Ever Told includes memoirs from oarswomen and engaging stories about rowing from a female perspective. “I was never going to be an Olympic athlete,” (p.93) begins Rebecca Caroe’s “My Potential Achieved.” Caroe’s remembrance of joining a club crew in her 30s, and then experiencing the crew’s perfect unity during a preliminary race at Henley in 2002, will prompt readers to recall their own electrifying feelings of racing when everything moves in synch. “If you can have a peak performance feeling like I did that day,” Caroe concludes, “you will be satisfied for the rest of your racing life.” (p.97) Lisa Taylor’s brief biography of the pioneering oarswoman Lucy Pocock Stillwell (sister of George and Dick Pocock) reminds readers of the historic challenges faced by determined women athletes in the twentieth century’s first two decades.

The collection offers two revealing backstage descriptions of the regattas at Henley, one by Thomas E. Weil, who recounts a dramatic final at the 2012 Henley Women’s Regatta as viewed from the umpire’s launch, and the other by Mark Blandford-Baker, a volunteer who’s worked on the Henley Royal Regatta’s daily programme under the Stewards’ Committee of Management. It concludes with several poems where stylistic and lyrical compositions capture and relay the beauty of rowing. There is a poetry and music to moving on the water, and it seems fitting that the collection concludes by shifting from prose to other, more spiritual, dynamic, and emotional, forms of communication.  

Buckhorn’s selections might differ in format and length, but they are uniformly engaging and thoughtful. The Greatest Rowing Stories Ever Told comprises perhaps the most diverse and multifaceted rowing book I’ve ever encountered. Readers can dip in and out of this collection rather than read it in a linear fashion, and the best pieces can (and should) be re-read often. In this sense, this book makes an excellent and inspiring companion for long bus trips to regattas for collegiate and high school rowers, and it’s also likely to spark thoughtful and even wistful memories for old-timers still paddling out on the water.

Rowers know why they row. But it’s not easily explainable to those outside the sport. There’s something spiritual inherent in the exertion, and the dance of the boat, the flow of the water, and the rhythm of the stroke. Rowing remains a distinctive activity notable for the ways it can teach its practitioners about working with nature, about collaborating with others, and about themselves. Rowing, in this sense, is ultimately about life. That’s what makes reading The Greatest Rowing Stories Ever Told so richly satisfying.

Göran R Buckhorn, ed. The Greatest Rowing Stories Ever Told, Essex, CT: Lyons Press, 2023. ISBN 978-1493072170, 281 pages, US$21.95 / £16.99 (Paperback).