Reflections of the President
Published in Windlesora 21 (2005)
© WLHG
I joined EERC some 50 years ago and as a 16 year old boy I only spoke when I was spoken to, for the Club then was very different from now. It was physically much smaller. The boathouse was less than a quarter of the size of our new one. Facilities were primitive; there was a tap in a dank alcove to the changing room where one could sluice oneself down with cold water from a zinc bowl. There was a small bar and mild beer was dispensed from a small barrel that stood on the counter. The raft was very fragile and had to be towed across the river to be moored by the Donkey House where it would be safe when the river was in flood.
Weight training and rowing machines were unknown. All the boats and oars were wooden. There was one best shell eight in reasonable condition and two which were not. The two fours were clinker built and heavy. There was a best sculling boat and a heavy clinker sculling boat known as the rumtum. J never knew the origin of this name. There were also three or four privately owned boats. When the tub boat was brought in from the raft the boathouse was full.
The membership was not large. Few had cars and most lived closer to the club than nowadays. Many worked locally and it was exclusively male, although wives and girl friends were invited to attend some of the social events, and some members did sneak off in August to a local skiff and punting club where a tradition of mixed membership was firmly established.
Competitive rowing and sculling was also a male preserve (although mixed dinghies were raced at the club’s Annual Regatta) and the season ran from April to August. Crews were not put together before April and competed at the regattas based on the mid and upper Thames rowing clubs before and after Henley. To compete in a provincial regatta was regarded as pot-hunting and not good form. Crew members representing the Club always wore white cotton shorts and jerseys with half inch blue and amber rings (known as zephyrs and rather like an old-fashioned short-sleeved vest).
Socially the club was relatively close-knit and as well as the club bar members met in the Swan, the Crown and Cushion and the Bridge House Hotel. Traditionally, each regatta ended with a flannel dance, which meant come as you are, but the club’s New Year Dances at the Castle Hotel equalled the Rugby Club’s Boxing Night Dances in their importance in Windsor’s social calendar. The club was not impervious to social change and a pyjama party on the raft was proposed. Such were the divisions in the membership as to the advisability of this that a report appeared in the Daily Mirror. In disgust the club elders vetoed the proposal.
In contrast now the membership is more transient as people move in and out of Windsor, and women form an important part of the membership. Competitively they rival the successes of the men. Socially their presence is very welcome. Rowing is very high tec and all equipment seems to be carbon fibre or high grade plastic. lraining on and off the water goes on all year round and becomes ever more intense.
The differences can, however, easily be exaggerated. The urge to compete, to drive oneself to the limit, to experience the intensity of the bond that makes a team greater than the sum of its individual members, to enjoy simply being on the river, to celebrate success, to come to terms with losing and reform for the next competition, to enjoy the society of the club, these would equally be recognised by our members ol fifty years ago.
Colin Oakley
Eton Exelsior Rowing Club leaving the old boathouse for the last time
Windsor Local History Group 