| Cygnet Rowing Club |
| Illustrated History |
The Early Years
Cygnet Rowing Club was born on the morning of Wednesday 12th February 1890 when `ten gentlemen, enthused with a desire to cultivate the art and practice of rowing' met at the (old) Duke's Head Hotel, Putney, to `discuss the desirability of forming a rowing club'. All ten were officers of the General Post Office; uniformed grades were not eligible for membership. Wally Wheldal, the first Secretary, proposed that the Club should be named the Cygnet Amateur Rowing Club and that its colours should be dark and light blue. In typical civil service tradition, a committee of management was formed and eight of the ten members were elected as officers, to safeguard the interests of the other two.
Rules, rules and more rules
The Club's first home was at the boathouse of Messrs Thompson & Bowers at Putney, from whom a private dressing room and two boats were hired for the princely sum of £20 a year. Post Office employees wishing to join the Club were required to pay an entrance fee of 1/-, plus an annual subscription of 28/- and twopence a month to the accident fund. Each member also had to have a copy of the rules which cost threepence. A great deal of time was devoted to drawing up the Club rules, and so prolific did they become that at one stage there appear to have been three separate editions in circulation covering every contingency that could be envisaged in the late nineteenth century. Thus, members could be variously fined for not turning up for an outing (sixpence); turning up late for a regatta (sixpence); using a boat for more than the allotted time (this was on a sliding scale rising from threepence for a scull to 1/- for an VIII); and worst of all, failing to turn up for a regatta (1/-).
Membership grew rapidly to reach almost 100 by the early months of 1891, establishing Cygnet as the strongest rowing club of its kind on the Thames. An invitation was extended to Crescent Rowing Club (also Post Office) at this time to join with Cygnet, but this was declined. The first fixture card appeared in 1890 and featured among others twelve upriver trips by skiff between April and September. A three-day camping trip also took place in June, the forerunner of camping on Hamhaugh Island, Shepperton, where the Club bungalow now stands. Morning races were a popular pastime in the early years, official Post Office duties generally being confined to the afternoon, and frequently attracted as many as seven four-oars and ten double sculls.
Amateur v professional
Organised amateur rowing in 1890 was confined to the universities and the larger clubs like Thames and London, who rowed under the aegis of the Amateur Rowing Association (ARA), which was formed in 1882. The main objective of the ARA was to uphold the standard of amateur, meaning gentlemen's, rowing; anybody who earned his living about boats or with his hands, or raced for money was branded a professional. Therefore, even a club like Cygnet, whose members were mostly telegraphists, sorters and counter clerks, risked being excluded from amateur competition by virtue of their trade. To overcome this situation, Cygnet joined with a number of other similarly disadvantaged clubs to form the National Amateur Rowing Association (NARA) in October 1890. The NARA immediately set about organising regattas under its own amateur status rules and Cygnet featured prominently in these, winning both Championship VIIIs and IVs in 1894. However, in 1895 a dispute arose over finance and Cygnet severed its connections with the NARA until 1900.
Club regattas
The break in relations with the NARA marked the beginning of the Annual Club Regatta. So well patronised were these occasions that it became necessary for the Club to hire a pleasure launch to bring spectators up from Waterloo Pier to Putney. Swimming was added to the Club's activities in 1892 and early regatta programmes show that swimming races (in the Thames) were at least as popular as rowing and sculling events. By the turn of the century the centrepiece of the regatta had become the Aylings Challenge Cup for `equal half outrigged tub IVs, with sliding seats'. This cup was donated by Edward Ayling, to whose boathouse the Club had moved by 1898. The entry fee for this event was 10/- and gold medals were awarded to each member of the winning crew.