THE SPORT OF ROWING Author R.S. de Havilland’s winning Oxford “Dark Blue” Oar from the 1883 Boat Race Now displayed in the Eton Eight Room Bow G.C. Bourne 10st. 11½lb. 69kg, 2 R.S. de Havilland 11st. 1lb. 70kg, 3 G.S. Fort 12st. 2lb. 77kg, 4 E.L. Puxley 12st. 3lb. 78kg, 5 Ducker McLean 13st. 2lb. 83kg, 6 A.R. Paterson 13st. 5lb. 85kg, 7 C.Q. Roberts 11st. 4lb. 72kg, Stroke L.R. West 11st. 4lb. 72kg, Coxswain E.H. Lyon 8st. 1lb. 52kg Bow, 2, 4, 5 and 7 were Old Etonians, and three of them became famous coaches. member of the large family of an officer in the Artillery – he said there had been thirteen of them – he depended from an early age on the rewards of his own work and intelligence. Like Warre, he had been President of the O.U.B.C. without ever rowing in the Eton Eight.”795 Gilbert C. Bourne,796 de Havilland’s Eton and Oxford teammate, remembers him as a “master of the art of boat propulsion. “Mr. de Havilland [was] round-backed, rough and vigorous. [He] came forward easily and confidently and then, without any marked uplift of the hands or any marked display of energy in throwing back the body, in the twinkling of an eye the blade of the oar was covered to its full depth, and instantly a mass of green water was piled up against it. “For the rest of the stroke this solid- looking mass of water was swept back with unfaltering precision [Schubschlag], and at the finish the blade of the oar left the water as it had entered it, without flurry or splash, 795 Byrne & Churchill, pp. 191-8 796 See below. and the mass of water swirled away with scarcely a bubble round the edge of the vortex which the movement of the blade had set up.”797 “His work depended on a tremendous thrust with the legs. In fact, his style had many points in common with that of the famous London oarsman, F.S. Gulston,798 [but despite this,] the London style was to Dr. Warre anathema.”799 “He disliked the Metropolitan style because it involved too exclusive use of the legs.”800 Byrne & Churchill: “Unlike Warre, [de Havilland] was spare of frame [148lb. 67kg at Eton in 1880 and only nine pounds more in 1883, his second year in the bow-pair of the Oxford Blue Boat] and rapid of utterance. He had a clear high-pitched tenor voice, dark and glowing eyes which seemed to pierce to the bottom of every fault and to convict the wrongdoer almost without a word. The character of his coaching, like 797 Bourne, Textbook, p. 7 798 See Chapter 8. 799 Bourne, Memories, p. 95 800 Ibid, p. 105 210
