30 May 2024
By Tim Koch
Tim Koch finds some nineteenth century scullers brought back to life.
HTBS Types with long memories may recall my 2020 post, Putting Rowers on a Pedestal, a piece on statues of rowers and scullers. It was clear that those made of bronze and other metals usually survive the elements well but those carved from stone tended to deteriorate unless restoration and conservation work was carried out from time to time. At the time, one particularly notable example of decaying stonework was the 1866 monument to Robert Coombes in London’s Brompton Cemetery.
Coombes in life
Although born into a London waterman’s family in Vauxhall in 1808, it initially seemed unlikely that Coombes would ever be a competitive rower. He was small even for his time and class, he was about 5 foot 7 inches / 1.70 metres tall and his rowing weight was generally around 9 stone / 57 kgs. However, after his rowing career made a slow start, Coombes consistently beat men who were bigger and stronger.
Strangely, Coombes’ racing career ran between the ages of 27 (1835) and 44 (1852), a late start and a late finish. However, the records show that he was unsuccessful in the draw for places in the 1834 Doggett’s. This means that he finished his apprenticeship to be a waterman (which usually took six or seven years) at the then late age of 26. Chris Dodd’s history of Thames Watermen and Lightermen, Unto the Tideway Born (2015) explains that his apprenticeship had been extended as he had served in the navy. Similarly, perhaps, his great rival, Charles Campbell, did the first two years of his apprenticeship before joining the navy for three years.
In the Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, George Clement Boase wrote:
COOMBES, ROBERT (1808–1860), champion sculler, was born at Vauxhall, Surrey, in 1808, and as a waterman at an early age commenced life on the Thames…. Constantly matched against men his superiors in strength and size, he by his superior skill, tact, and attentive training almost always proved victorious in the long run.
His first public race was for the Duke of Northumberland’s purse of sovereigns on 4 July 1836. His principal sculling matches were against Kipping, Kelly, Jack Phelps, Campbell, Tom Mackinning, Henry Clasper, and Tom Cole, and his most important oars’ race was rowed with his brother as partner against the two Claspers. In sculling he beat John Phelps, F. Godfrey, George Campbell, and the majority of the best men. On 3 Oct. 1838 he beat J. Kelly from Westminster to Putney…This was the first… match without fouling of which there is any record.
As an oarsman his achievements were numerous. With J. Phelps he beat W. Pocock and J. Doubledee. He was stroke in the winning four at the Liverpool regatta in 1840, winning against five crews. On 8 Sept. 1842 he beat R. Nowell, Westminster to Putney, for £50 a side; in the following month they rowed again, when Coombes was again the better man, and was presented with a piece of plate in commemoration of his victories.
At Newcastle-on-Tyne, 18 Dec. 1844, he staked £100 and was the winner in a sculling match with H. Clasper. He became the Champion of the Thames on 19 Aug. 1846, beating C. Campbell easily. He held the championship longer, and rowed the course, Putney to Mortlake, faster, than any other man of his time; but on 24 May 1852, when aged forty-three, although backed at 2½ to 1 for £200 a side, he was beaten by Thomas Cole, a man half his age, by half a length…
George Clement Boase again:
With Wilson he won the pairs at the Thames Regatta in 1845, and with his brother, Tom Coombes, beat Richard and Harry Clasper in a match on the Thames in 1847…
Although he was sometimes defeated in pair and four oar races, yet he and his crews always came off with credit and stoutly contested the victories with their opponents. In speed and style during his time he was never surpassed, and he rowed many more races than any other man except Harry Clasper.
The Rev Sherwood’s, A History of Boat Racing at Oxford (1900), notes that in 1840: A professional, Coombes, champion of the Thames, and familiarly known as the Little Wonder, was hired to train the (Boat Race) crew for a fortnight for £10. They lost but this did not stop Oxford engaging him for an impressive £5 a week in 1841 – though the Dark Blues lost again, this time by 22 lengths.
Sherwood also quotes a “quaint letter” of 1840 or 1841 from Coombes:
Mr John Cox, Brasnall Colledge, Oxford.
I have riting thouse fue lines to ask you if you have enney idier wether you will want me this turme or not as I dont like to ingadge with anney other parte tell I year from you. Please to send me word wether you like your oars or not.
No mor from
Your humble servent
Robert Coombes
During a difficult period when amateurs were beginning to question the use of professional coaches, Coombes trained Cambridge in 1846 (won), March 1849 (won), December 1849 (lost), 1852 (lost). Also in 1852, he published a coaching manual, Aquatic Notes or Sketches of the Rise and Progress of Racing at Cambridge by a member of CUBC. Presumably getting help with the spelling, the advice included:
Sit well forward on the seat, and not away from your work right back on the cushion. A man don’t get into a boat to rest himself; if he wants that, he’d better go home to an easy chair…
I would advise a cold bath early in the morning, and a good rubbing with horsehair gloves or rough towel. Then run a mile having thick flannel next to the skin and a great coat or two on…
The best-made men for rowing are those with good loins, wide at the hips and long arms; average weight nine stone to eleven stone and a half…
Nine stone to eleven stone and a half is 126lbs/57kgs to 161lbs/73kgs.
The December 1849 Boat Race was the only one that has ever been decided on a foul, the umpire disqualifying Cambridge and declaring in favour of Oxford at the finish. For some, it was convenient to blame Cambridge’s coach, Coombes the coarse working-class professional, for this unsatisfactory result.
Coombes got rather more justified criticism when he again coached Cambridge in 1852 (there were no Boat Races in 1850 and 1851). The Light Blues were slightly behind approaching Hammersmith and, following Coombe’s advice, took the Surrey not the centre arch of the bridge, cutting the corner but losing the stream and allowing Oxford to extend their lead.
According to Wigglesworth’s Social History of English Rowing (1992), Coombes earned a healthy £2,080 in twenty years of rowing, beginning with £25 in 1835 and finishing with £100 in 1853 (thought there was no prize money in his last two years of competition, 1854 and 1855). His best year was 1844 when he won £280 from four races. At this time, a carpenter could earn £75 a year. Coombes’ contemporary, Harry Clasper, earned much the same, £2,230 in prize money over eighteen years (however, James Renforth, competing later between 1867 and his death aged 29 in 1871, won £2,590 in just five years as this was the height of commercial interest in professional rowing).
In memoriam
By the mid-1850s, Coombes, too old to successfully compete and his paid services no longer wanted by amateur rowers, had fallen on hard times and his last nine months were spent in a so-called “lunatic asylum” where he died on 25 February 1860 aged 52. His friends and admirers paid for his funeral and his grave in Brompton Cemetery.
Soon after his death, those who paid for Coombes’ burial were also planning a fitting memorial to be placed near his grave site. Coombes’ remains are not interned under the elaborate stonework that was eventually erected, they are actually buried nearby. After dying in poverty in 1860, his grave was presumably simply marked. When the monument was finished in 1866 after six years of difficult fundraising, there was no space around Coombes’ existing grave to place it.
Eventually, in 1866 a monument of Portland stone, 2.75 metres high, was placed near Coombes’ grave. On the top was an upturned wherry, over which was thrown a coat and badge and by the side were broken sculls. At each corner of the tomb were four figures representing Champions of the Thames: Robert Coombes, in his rowing costume, holding a broken scull; Tom Cole wearing his Doggett’s Coat and Badge; James Messenger in his Thames National Regatta Coat and Badge; Harry Kelley in rowing costume.
Brompton was a privately run cemetery when it was opened in 1840 but in 1852 it was “nationalised” and became Crown Property. Nowadays it is run by Royal Parks, a charity which manages eight parks belonging to the Crown and certain other areas of parkland in London. Its 32 acres are sited in an area of the capital that has long been fashionable and it holds 35,000 monuments marking more than 205,000 graves and mausolea.
Restoration
In the summer of 2022, there was a programme of conservation and restoration involving eight historic listed structures. The monument to Robert Coombes was one and replacement heads and arms were carved in Portland stone. The broken oar on the figure of Coombes himself was cast in a combination of gypsum and acrylic resin (it was originally sculpted as broken, presumably to symbolise a life lost). Mortar repairs were carried out to reinstate missing feet and pedestal details to all four figures. Throughout the process, conservators took samples to create bespoke lime mortar mixes to match the original surfaces in both colour and texture.
While it is admirable that Brompton Cemetery has gone to great effort and expense to restore the monument, after asking me to supply images of the four scullers in June 2021, there was no further communication from them. Had there been more contact, a couple of (arguably minor) mistakes could have been avoided.
The inscription on the upper ledge is a quote from Charles Dibdin’s opera of 1774, The Waterman:
Fare thee well, my trim-built wherry,
Oars, coat and badge, farewell.
