OnTheWight were delighted to recently receive a call from California from ex-pat Brian Silsbury. The former Shanklinite told us how he’d rowed for Shanklin Sandown Club in the 1950s and was enjoying reading of the club’s successes each week through OnTheWight. He wondered whether our readers be interested in some of his memories? You bet they would we said. Here’s the first in a series of reflections of his time with the club. Ed
‘I must go down to the sea again to the lonely sea and sky’ wrote John Masefield in his poem, Sea Fever.
I didn’t need two years before the mast to catch sea fever. I developed it in the early 1950s at the Shanklin Sandown Rowing club, rowing a galley christened the Endeavour.
I probably sound like an old codger when I say she was not a fancy, lightweight carbon-fibre racing shell like those rowed today; she was a heavy, wooden, thirty-four foot long, clinker-built fixed seat galley that took four lusty lads or lassies to master and race her!
She also needed a cox perched in the stern sheets to steer and generally harass the crew. No wonder she was a sturdy boat; it was said she evolved from the early lifeboats dotted around the Island coast.
Out in all weathers
In addition to training several times a week, scratch crews would launch her most Sunday mornings irrespective of weather.
Not having the luxury of a jetty, we launched from the beach, straight into the incoming waves. It was imperative to hang on and keep the bow head on so that she didn’t get thrown broadside to the incoming waves. One lapse of concentration and she would be torn from our grasp and tumbled over.
With the four, twelve foot oars already locked into the rowlocks, it would be a costly and dangerous mistake.
Getting aboard was an art form
We crewed as bow pair and stern pair and, as we waded out, the waters reached up to our knees or higher.
“In Bow and Two” barked the cox.
Bow pair slid their bottoms over the gunnels, locked their feet in and shipped out their oars. The bow pairs job was to start rowing and keep the Endeavour’s bow pointed directly into the waves, giving the rest of the crew time to board.
“In Three and Four” shouted the cox.
This was good news for the Stroke and me. A couple of crisp strokes from the whole crew and we were on our way, the cox desperately slithering aboard as we moved away from the beach.
My sea fever
So it was not the old square riggers that did it for me. I caught the sea fever by enduring endless salt water soakings, blistering hands and a blistered bottom, whilst crewing aboard the Endeavour.
This photo below was taken in the 1950s off Shanklin pier. The scratch crew is carrying a racing buoy in readiness for an afternoon’s racing.
Click on image to see larger version
Image: via Brian Silsbury
What do you call someone from Shanklin?
Whilst trying to work out what term is used to refer to someone from Shanklin, we posed the question to our followers on Facebook.
They came up with a variety of suggestions, but as you’ll see from the top of the article, we settled for Shanklinite.
