THE UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON DYNASTY 45. George and Dick Pocock Family History – Ernest Barry – Emigration to North America On March 23, 1911,1599 young George Pocock (1891-1976) and his older brother Dick emigrated from England to the Pacific Northwest, financed by the remnants of the £50 purse George had been awarded three years earlier as the winner of the sculling championship of London, prompting him to say later, “I rowed my way from England to Canada.”1600 The two Pococks were born and raised in the world of boats and boat building. In the 1840s their uncle had built the very first experimental keelless racing shell.1601 Their maternal grand- father, “old Grandpa Vickers,” had been a builder before their father, in 1874 fashioning, for instance, the Lady Alice, a custom sectional boat which Sir Henry Stanley1602 took with him on one of his African explorations.1603 While the Pocock boys were growing up, their father, Aaron Pocock, was employed as the boatman at Eton,1604 “and Dick and George learned to row there alongside the toffs of the college.”1605 George Pocock: “Eton is a prep school with 1,100 boys and 650 shells, and my Dad was the head boatbuilder. At Eton, they take their rowing in seasons, eights first, fours next, pairs next and then singles, and when the singles get going you can almost walk across the river on singles. There was only one outside race, and that was one at Henley in an eight. They competed in the Ladies’ Plate.”1606 After they grew up, George Pocock Rowing Foundation Dick Pocock in his Doggett’s Coat and Badge, 1910 1599 G. Pocock, qtd. by KCTS-TV 1600 www.huskycrew.com 1601 Kelley, pp. 235-6 1602 In 1871, James Gordon Bennett, proprietor of The New York Herald, sent journalist Henry Morton Stanley on his first trip to Africa searching for Dr. David Livingston, a celebrated African explorer and missionary who had not been heard from and was presumed dead. After both Pocock brothers became professional sculling champions, Dick two years of searching, during which time Stanley’s reports were printed in The Herald, Stanley located his quarry and greeted him with the now famous line, “Dr. Livingston, I presume.” 1603 Kelley, p. 240, Dodd, World Rowing, p. 97, S. Pocock, p. 39 1604 Mendenhall, op.cit., p. 33. See Chapter 3. 1605 Chris Dodd, personal correspondence, 2011 1606 G. Pocock, qtd. by KCTS-TV 427
