11 September 2026

By Hugh Dulley, London Rowing Club

This was originally published as a six-part series in LRC’s monthly newsletter, London Roar, in 2020 and is reproduced by permission. Picture research and captions by Tim Koch.

Beginnings
I started rowing on the Thames in 1954, which was a very different place to the Thames we know today. The tidal Thames was then primarily a commercial river, when the tide was high tugs would ply their trade drawing up to four barges. They created a large wash, so that any pieces of rowing were timed to take place between tugs. 

There was all the debris from the wharves, shipping and barges, which could create areas of fifty square metres of driftwood. These needed to be first spotted and then scrutinised carefully as they could contain beams of three metres in length, which if hit by a light wooden shell sculling boat would cause significant damage. 

At the weekend there were other hazards, namely Ranelagh Sailing Club at Putney and London Corinthian Sailing Club at Hammersmith, the former could muster some thirty sailing dinghies. They were unpredictable as they could suddenly tack.

The water quality was very poor with no fish and it was not possible to see below the surface and it left a slime on the foreshore. Not long before these times, the story was if someone was picked out of the river they were automatically taken to hospital to have their stomach pumped out!

My introduction to rowing was at the Westminster School. Before pupils could go out on the water there was the swimming test, a length of the public baths.

Then there was the dinghy test, conducted by the school boatman. This required the demonstration of competence in rowing a clinker-built dinghy with a twist, you had to spin the dinghy by backing down with one oar, while paddling on with the other. 

Once the test was surmounted you could graduate to a fixed seat, clinker-built scull. One summer the boat club sculled up from Putney to the Three Pigeons pub, at Richmond, for lunch. It was a long haul back.

Boats and blades
At Westminster School, novice oarsmen started off in tub pairs and fours. These were clinker-built boats with the lines of a skiff. The seats however were fixed, so we wore shorts with reinforced seats. 

This static (fixed seat) position meant that the stroke was much shorter, but when in a scull, balancing the boat was much easier. The other difference was that the school still had fixed pins, as against the current swivel gate.

The “gate” for the fixed pins was akin to that of a traditional skiff with two wooden uprights, at the end of a metal rigger. To hold the blade in place, the fixed pins had a thick string fixed across the top of the “gate”. To place the oar in position, the tip of the blade was inserted into the inboard side of the “gate”, and then pressed out. The button was formed so as the oarsman moved forward, the blade automatically squared, at the finish there was a very distinct clunk as the hands were moved away. 

The Westminster and Eton crews, who both still used fixed pins could be heard coming from a distance. The button on the oar was made of leather, so it was very important that it was greased before the outing. The senior school crews rowed in shell eights, but the rest of the crews rowed in clinker fours and eights, all with sliding seats.

Oars were then made out of wood, usually two pieces carved with a hollow in the middle of the loom. This made them more flexible and lighter. The blade was comparatively thin and even though it was reinforced with a copper strip at the end it was susceptible to damage when crews clashed or on the booms at Henley.

The oars were, what was called conventional, and at the tip were about 6 inches wide. The style had changed very little, I have my father’s oars used in 1928*, which are very similar to those used in the 1950s. 

However, all changed in the 1960s with the trial of many types of oars including the popular spade blades. One of the great experimenters at this time was Jumbo Edwards, the Oxford Coach, every year there would be a different rig for the Boat Race crew. This changed when Dan Topolski became coach and the emphasis was on fitness.

Boatbuilders and boatmen

There were then two forms of construction for boats, clinker built or shell, the latter involved spreading a thin wooden skin, a few millimetres thick, over a wooden frame. These boats were much lighter than the heavy clinker-built boats but were more liable to damage. In the days when pleasure rowing boats were allowed beside the Henley course during the Regatta, one LRC four was effectively sunk when the blade of a pleasure boat sliced through the skin of a fine four.

During this period the key to any large club was the boatman. He had three main roles, seeing crews out and back, maintaining the club’s boats and supervising the transport of boats to regattas. 

London was blessed to have the lovely Tom Phelps who was over sixty then, so he was helped by the redoubtable Fred, who was a very cheerful character. Tom was from the famous Phelps boating family and his brothers in addition to the boat builder were boatmen at I believe Thames, Jesus College and Winchester.  

In those days a stool was used, so that the crews could get in the boat without using Wellington boots. The demise of the stool came with the loss of boatmen, as oarsmen forgot to move the stool far enough up the hard to prevent it floating away on the incoming tide.

Coaching and training
Believe it or not, crews were coached from a bicycle in the 1950s. This would be impossible today as the trees and bushes have grown and multiplied long the old towpath. Then the coach would set the distance to be rowed or paddled, this would be to be to the chosen steps down to the foreshore. When the crew reached the steps, the coach would leave his bicycle and descend to the foreshore to speak to the crew.  

In those days there were a variety of very different rowing styles including the American Conibear and our own Jesus and Lady Margaret.

Colin Porter, at one time a member of (London Rowing Club) published a book Rowing to Win in 1959. An interesting title resulting from the previous concentration on style and the “Gentleman Amateur”, which prompted one distinguished old oarsman to say of Porter’s crews, “Oh well, they think of nothing else but winning races.”

Colin Porter considered fitness to be the most important facet. He coached National Provincial Bank RC, whose land training consisted of circuits, a 20 minute row on the tank and a 3-4 mile run around Barnes Common four times a week. LRC did similar land training using outside gyms as well as the tank and a very small gym at the back of it for weight training. London crews were allowed to drink up to two pints of beer a day.

A couple of LRC members joined Nautilus which was the first attempt to provide a national squad to represent the country – as against club crews, which was the practice in those days. Many years later these efforts were to come to fruition.

The LRC Grand Eight outings were usually upriver to Chiswick rail bridge or downstream to Battersea Power Station. The stretch through Fulham and Wandsworth was a wasteland of disused wharves, warehouses and a defunct coal fired power station. The eight would be coached from the Casamajor launch. This was kept in the boathouse on a somewhat rickety trailer which was viable launching down the hard but required six men to push it back up.

Regattas and Henley
A feature of regattas in the 1950s and 60s was large areas of canvas for the boats, officials, changing and the beer tent. To understand the changing tent, it is necessary to know that Regatta Dress for crews was navy blue blazer, grey flannel trousers and a club tie, so crews needed somewhere to change and hang up their regalia. A shower consisting of a bowl of cold water could be had afterwards.

The Metropolitan Regatta, as it was called then, was held on weekday evenings, usually starting at the Mile Post and finishing at the (London) clubhouse. They used stake boats, the trick to get a fast start was to square the blades when the umpire said, “are you ready”, although it cannot have been very good news for the stake boatman.

The crews at Henley were very different from today, for instance Oxford and Cambridge college crews entered the Ladies and Visitors and American university crews the Thames Cup and Wyfolds.

The Boat Tents at Henley were all marquees, which had the disadvantage that when it rained heavily water poured down the sides and flooded the surrounding area. It was so bad one year that we took the boat to the water in bare feet, washed our feet in the river and then put our socks on. Needless to say, the enclosure was also muddy and there was a tractor to pull cars out of the mud in the Regatta car parks.

In those days (London) HRR crews spent two weeks at Henley training followed by the Regatta. This was partly tradition and because the M4 was not built until the 1960s, so the route was the A4 via Heathrow and Slough. As a result, the Club stayed for a number of years at the fine old Medmenham Vicarage. 

The Club Steward and his wife provided the catering for all the crews and there was a barrel of beer in the pantry. Tom Phelps was also there: he had a large locked black wooden box with tools and wood for any repairs. The boatmen’s favourite pub (The Carpenters Arms) was on the site of what is now the HRR Headquarters and was, therefore, conveniently close to the boat tents.

The Regatta was rowed over four days (Wednesday to Saturday until 1986) which meant two races on Saturday in popular events such as the Thames Cup and Wyfolds. The upside was that Sunday was a very relaxed day and an old (LRC) member provided a fine buffet lunch at his home by the river.

The London Grand Eight

This is the last article in the series, and if you have read so far you will realise that this is a social history and not a record of Club wins or names from long ago. The idea was to show what rowing at Putney was like, both on and off the river, so that readers could either be reminded of those days or compare them with today. 

There were no (London) wins in the Grand, although the Eight did compete in Trials for the European Championships in 1965 but in the end no crew was sent. 

The Grand Eights pre-Henley racing was limited as there were not many suitable events but this changed after Henley when the Club took part in many and varied regattas. A popular one was St Neots because they gave quart tankards as trophies, one year the Eight had to beat University of London to get the tankard. Others were Hereford, Ross and on one occasion a four from the Eight went to Cirencester Agricultural College Regatta held on a canal.

There were other off- season activities including the Kings Road Run starting at a pub near Sloane Square and finishing in Fulham, if you could get that far. Peter Coni, later to become Chairman of HRR, was then in the Grand Eight. One Sunday afternoon he phoned round the Eight and suggested a pub crawl to Greenwich in Casamajor, then the Eight’s coaching launch. By teatime a group assembled at Putney. 

The first stop was by Tower Bridge, Casamajor was tied up to a barge. As we clambered out we were picked up by a Police launch searchlight and had to reassure them that we were from LRC. Then onto Curlew RC’s pontoon at Greenwich and we took the patrons of The Yacht (riverside pub in Greenwich) totally by surprise as we came up over the river wall. Then suitably refreshed at around 10.00 pm we set off back. 

We reached Hungerford Bridge, and after some debate we took the inner arch. There was a grinding sound and it was clear that all apart from the driver would have to abandon ship. This spectacle proved of great interest to the spectators on the bridge, and after a little pushing and shoving we were on our way home.

I am very conscious that there has been no mention of women’s rowing in my articles. The Club was then only for men and even visiting ladies were not allowed in the main bar, which in those days would have been described as a Public Bar. Instead, they were entertained in a comfortable annex next door.

* Hugh’s father was Hugh William Macpherson “Peter” Dulley who rowed in the GB Eight in the 1924 Olympics. A member of Thames, Peter Dulley was in the winning Thames Cup crew in 1928 and the winning Wyfold crew in 1929. A Lieutenant Commander in the Hong Kong Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, he was killed in the defence of Hong Kong on 19 December 1941 in an action in which he was posthumously Mentioned in Despatches. In 2016, Hugh compiled and published his father’s wartime letters and journals in a book titled A Voyage to War.