30 May 2023
By William O’Chee
It is often said that fact is stranger than fiction, but few things are so strange as the tale of schoolboy rower and putative schoolboy spy, Alfred Roy Sparkes. Of the over 330,000 Australians to enlist during the First World War, he is the only who claimed to have worked previously in the Secret Service in Britain. However, whether this is true is something of a mystery.
What we do know is that, before the First World War, Sparkes had been a student at The Southport School, which has long been recognised as a bastion of schoolboy rowing in Australia. In fact, with its extensive playing fields on the banks of the Nerang River on the Gold Coast, its storied rowing history, and its towering castellated clock tower, it has sometimes been likened to an Australian version of Eton College.
The Southport School was founded in 1901, the same year that Australia became a nation, and its original building was the former summer residence of the Governor of Queensland. Being located beside the Nerang River, rowing soon became a pastime of choice for the school’s boarders. With frequent regattas, a thriving rowing community developed in and around the school.
The school itself presents a detailed and fascinating study of the popularisation of schoolboy rowing in Australia. Its founding Headmaster, Canon Horace Henry Dixon, had been at Cambridge before making his way to Australia. The Empire was at its peak. Dixon’s vision for education was English, Christian and manliness. He chose Horatio Nelson’s family motto as the school’s and dedicated the chapel to the soldier martyr, St Alban. Dixon then instituted a school cadet force and brought rowing to the banks of the Nerang River.
At this stage, schoolboy rowing in Queensland had a precarious existence. Brisbane Grammar School and Ipswich Grammar School had raced in fours in 1890 and 1891, but the latter ceased rowing after their rowing shed was washed away in a flood. Brisbane Grammar School and Maryborough Grammar School then commenced annual races in 1902 and were joined by The Southport School in 1908. However, this was Maryborough’s last appearance, leaving Brisbane Grammar School and The Southport School as the mainstays of schoolboy rowing in Queensland.
Although there is no evidence Dixon himself rowed when at Cambridge, he was fortunate in attracting to the teaching staff one Charles Campbell Thorold, who had rowed at Worcester College, Oxford. Thorold became the rowing club’s first captain, and organised regattas against the principal Brisbane rowing clubs as well as intra-mural competitions.
The participation of the school’s masters was a feature of early regattas, and a good picture exists of a Masters’ Four from 1908.
Sparkes, who was known as Roy, arrived at the school as a boarder in 1911 aged twelve, and was immediately attracted to what was, by this stage, a firmly established rowing club. He is well attested in the school’s rowing records. He first appeared stroking a crew in the Junior Fixed Fours that year, which who won their heat, then their semi-final and the final.
Later that year, Sparkes graduated to sliding seat rowing, and competed in the school’s Form Fours competition, occupying the stroke seat of the Senior Preparatory crew, who won their first round race against the Junior Commercial four. However, Sparkes and his crew lost their second round match to the Senior Classical four, who went on to win the final. Interestingly, a photo survives which is believed to show the Senior Preparatory crew winning their first round race. The technique at the finish leaves a lot to be desired, but at junior levels enthusiasm sometimes overcomes all manner of impediments, and it certainly did on this occasion.
In the following years, Sparkes progressed through the ranks of the school’s rowers. He appeared in 1913 in the Trial Fours race, from which the School Four was chosen, although he missed selection for this ultimate honour. He was not idle, however. In addition to winning academic prizes, he played cricket for the school and was an active member of the boxing club. His final rowing race was the House Fours in 1914, when his McKinlay House crew placed second to the crew from Mr Thorold’s House.
Sparkes left the school in the middle of 1914, having been chosen to travel to England and Europe with a contingent of other schoolboys from around the country in what was called the Australian Mounted Training Corps. While they were in England, the First World War broke out, and the boys and their leader, one Captain Alexander Rushall, were stranded for some months before being able to return to Australia. It was in this time that Sparkes and his companions were supposedly engaged to undertake secret work for British intelligence. But did it happen, and was it true?
In part 2, which will be published tomorrow, I will examine the activities of this schoolboy rower and putative schoolboy spy.