Eton Excelsior Rowing Club

EERC, founded in 1826, is one of the oldest rowing clubs in Britain and will celebrate its bi-centenary in 2026. There has been rowing on the Thames in Windsor for many centuries, but the club’s oldest record is dated January 2nd, 1826, when several young men, “residing in, and about, Eton” subscribing sixpence a week, organised themselves into a club for “aquatic excursions in the summer season” with practice on Tuesdays and Fridays at 8 p.m. We know that they wore trousers and striped shirts called ‘zephyrs’, but , whether they raced or trained, and whether they rowed in fours or pairs, we do not know.

The Newspaper Cuttings Project

The web pages in this section provide transcriptions of more than 270 newspaper articles from an album in the Club archive. In January 2024, all 84 album pages were photographed and the digital images uploaded to Google Drive. Google auto-transcribed the image text which has been manually verified by checking against original cuttings.

Cuttings are being added gradually to the web site, so please come back to see what’s new.

Cuttings Content

As you might expect, the newspaper cuttings mostly cover the club’s rowing exploits reported in local newspapers; regattas up and down the Thames, the club’s annual regatta, annual meetings, socials and various club events.

Many articles provide detailed narratives which include the names of many former club members, local people and others from the many Thames-based rowing clubs who raced in the Windsor Regatta. So, if you think that one of your ancestors was a rower or you’re interested in rowing history, Windsor and Eton’s history or in history generally, you’re in the right place!

Many cuttings are dated by the original compiler. Some are undated but have been assigned a date based on an article’s context within the album.

Organisation

Cuttings have been arranged by decade and then by year. A ‘zoomable’ image of the cutting precedes each article text. A full index is available HERE.

1920s

In the 1920s, the club were rebuilding after WW1, continuing the club’s long 19th-century tradition on the Thames.

The picture is of George Pocock, probably from the 1920s.

Other decades will be added shortly.

Second World War

31 cuttings cover the period 1939 to 1945 and provide insights into how the club and the towns of Windsor and Eton prepared and responded to the war and how aspects of day-to-day life continued at a difficult time in World history. Events covered range from the trivial to the profound.

Text Veracity

Transcribed text is formatted for clarity and ease of reading and, intentionally, not as a textual facsimile of the original. While great care has been taken to accurately reproduce text, inaccuracies may remain, so get in touch if you spot any!

Dedication

This resource is dedicated to the memory of the eight members of the Eton Excelsior Rowing Club killed in action during the Second World War;

Sub-Lieutenant Arthur Giles Blake	Sergeant Ronald Giles
Sergeant Eric Albert Blore	Pilot Officer David Stewart Harrison
Lieutenant Ralph Rivers-Bodilly	Major Peter Augustus Edward Watson
Lieutenant Richard John “Dickie” Cork DSO DSC	Flight-Lieutenant Michael Myers Wayman DFC

The lives of these men are being researched as a separate project, and results will be published in due course. Please contact us if you have information about any of them.

EERC War Memorial (image credit – the Author)

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Ian Curington, without whose efforts and photographic technical expertise this valuable local history resource would not exist. I would also like to thank Ken Sutherland of the WLHG, who made it possible for the newspaper cuttings to be published on the Group’s website.