Rhubarb Issue 12: November 2023

I don’t remember specifically the celebrations that afternoon and evening apart from that they were good ones and when we returned to School our crew was given a hero’s welcome and the Warden, Frank Fisher, was very pleased. We were a talented group of oarsmen who had the essential winning ingredient of rowing for each other. When we moved Holden from the middle of the boat to stroke halfway through the summer (before then I had been stroking the boat) we had found our Henley winning line up. Holden turned out to be an outstanding stroke. Four of our crew went on to row at Oxbridge, and Holden and I were in a St Edmund Hall crew that came Head of the River at Oxford in 1959 and 1960 (fellow OSE M Sherratt was included in the 1959 Head of the River winning crew and younger brother C Sherratt in the 1960 crew, a team mate from our school PE winning crew). We also raced together at Henley as an Isis IV to win the Visitors’ Cup in 1959 in a course record. At Teddy Hall we were coached by wonderful OSE and Aulurian man and rower, Paul Burrough, who had been incarcerated in a concentration camp in Malaya whilst serving in WW II and then went on to become an outstanding Bishop of Mashonaland and then Teddy Hall rowing coach on his return to England. Our PE winning season finished with an invitation for our VIII to compete at the last Danish regatta of the season on Lake Bagsvaerd. The event we were entered in turned out to be the centre piece of the Regatta and we raced against Kvik in the final who, after a slow start from us, we beat easily to win the Regatta and receive our prizes from Prince Ingolf of Denmark, the perfect full stop to the summer’s rowing. As an old man, it gave me great pleasure to be at Henley Sunday this summer along with my son Hugh, who won the PE with the School’s 1st VIII in 1984, to witness the St Edward’s 1st VIII win the Princess Elizabeth Challenge Cup for the 5th time in the School’s history. The boys rowed magnificently holding off a very strong and heavier St Paul’s crew in the final from the much harder Bucks station that day. I enjoyed meeting the School’s Captain of Boats with Hugh after the race and welcoming him and his crew into the very special and exclusive St Edward’s School PE winners’ club.

Our first race was the toughest race, we were drawn against Shrewsbury one of the great rowing schools. It

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Teddies VIII vs Shrewsbury 1958

was a phenomenal battle with Shrewsbury going ahead early and increasing their lead to a length in a very quick time to the halfway mark. We were, however, rowing together and felt comfortable so when we put a spurt in, we were able to row through Shrewsbury as we came to the stands and finished a length and a quarter ahead at the finish. Coincidentally, 26 years later the 1st VIII my son rowed in to win the PE in 1984 also had to row down their opponents, St Joseph’s Preparatory USA, in the final in almost identical fashion. Next up was Tiffin who we raced in pouring rain and our tactic was to go out fast from the start. Tiffin held on gamely and our stroke Holden had to increase our rate twice to see them off as we won by 1 length. There were two very tired crews at the finish. The semi-final was against Portora Royal School from Enniskillen in Northern Ireland. We’d learnt from our mistakes in the race against Tiffin and rowed quite beautifully that day. We went off at a lower rate allowing more run between strokes and glided away from the Northern Irish putting in a spurt of ten towards the finish which left us with a winning margin of three lengths. Our code name for a spurt was Tinker Bell! At last, we were in the final of the premier schools’ race at the most prestigious regatta in the world and Oundle were our opponents, who weighed in seven pounds a man heavier than our crew. Once again, we settled into a low rate, smooth style, letting the boat do the work by striving for utter relaxation on the gather. At the mile post, amidst tumultuous cheering from supporters and friends (I think the entire School had made the pilgrimage to the Henley towpath) we went into a sustained spurt with rating over 40 and the Cup was ours. We beat Oundle by a length and a quarter in a time of 6 minutes and 59 seconds the first time the Princess Elizabeth Cup had been won in under 7minutes.

Crew: C.E. Pickard, R.J.C. Pearson, J.C.D. Sherratt, M.L. Pelham (Capt), C.D. Kinloch,

R.G. Churcher, G.R.T. Morgan, C.W. Holden, R.G.W. Walford (Cox)

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