July 2000
Boat Naming
Along with my move back to Europe comes easy access to England, including three long weekends in the course of a month. I returned to Henley Royal this year, after a four-year absence, although this time purely as a spectator with no connection to any crews racing.
While overnighting in Oxford, I was asked a question about boat names, and I figured it would be a fun topic for this month’s entry. Specifically, Wolfson College is getting a fleet of new boats, paid for by insurance money for the boats incinerated in last year’s boathouse fire. One idea they had was to put the boat names up for bid to raise money and gain sponsors.
This is a good idea, but my advice was that they should be careful and get a good price for the bids. Normally, if someone wants to name a boat they need to buy it. In this case, the boats were already paid for. Potential sponsors do not need to buy a whole boat to get their name on it, but they should at least put down a good chunk of money towards the cost of a boat, otherwise the Boat Club is giving the names away. The donation need not be all in one go – a pledge of, say, 3,000 pounds per year over three years (to name an eight) would be a tidy sum, and would also establish the gift as a longer-term relationship between the Club and the sponsor, which could work for mutual benefit.
If a sponsor were not willing to donate such sums, then there are numerous other things the Boat Club could do to sweeten a donation – other places to put the sponsor’s name, other events involving the sponsor, other ways of showing gratitude (besides the tax write-off). But boat names are somewhat sacred.
There is a certain mystique to naming a boat, and it is not a responsibility to be taken lightly. The Club should not be in the business of giving away the name and cheapening the tradition. In my book, there are only three good ways to name a boat:
First, a donor can buy a boat, or a sponsor can provide long-term donations which underwrite the Club and contribute to the pot which makes it able to buy boats (so, in this case where the insurance is paying for boats, then the sponsor may be paying for other less glamorous essentials such as travel or coaching or oars, but which is equivalent to the majority of the purchase price of a boat).
If the Club buys its own boats and does not have a suitable sponsor (or the donor does not wish to provide a boat name), then the second and third possibilities come in. The second possibility is for the Club to name its boats after people associated with the Club (or institution to which the Club is affiliated) who have made some special contribution to the Club or the institution. Thus, many of Wolfson’s boats were named for former presidents of the College who had shown their support of the Boat Club.
The third possibility for naming a boat, often amusing although less serious, is for the team’s executive to pick a name of particular meaning to them. So, for example, the Wolfson men’s first eight, bought after the fire, was given the name “Firestarter.” Oxford is actually full of cleverly named boats, as well as colleges which name their boats after themes (St. Catz had a Winnie-the-Pooh theme going for many years – maybe still).
In the same vein, just as it is important to take care in naming a boat, it should be remembered that the name lasts. This applies even to second-hand boats. Just as rowers come to feel a certain connection to boats they know which their club has named itself, so should they respect boats their club has bought second hand. A boat name is something sacred and mystical, and should be respected. Far better to learn why the second-hand boat has a certain name than to rename it with a name which perhaps has some meaning to the new owner.
I am not overly superstitious, so the idea that renaming a boat is bad luck is not something I would normally fret about. But, nevertheless, I cannot countenance renaming boats. I find it disrespectful, in the very least.
Three times I have been connected to teams which renamed boats, and all three times the boat has been bad luck.
Harvard once bought a boat from Vespoli which had been built for Yale. Yale refused delivery because the boat was slightly overweight, but Harvard took it at a discount. The boat arrived blue and with some Yalie’s name on it. It soon got a new gloss. The “Michael Christian” never won a single race. At Harvard, it was the custom to change boats mid-season for certain reasons, and even crews which otherwise never lost found themselves losing in the Christian. The Christian sank twice (once during the finals of the nationals - a race when no one else took on water), and was rammed full-speed by a BU heavyweight men’s crew in the Charles River Basin, causing serious structural damage and its ultimate retirement. I must say I personally never coxed the Christian, but this all happened during my time at Harvard.
St. Antony’s College, Oxford, bought a boat second-hand from Worcester College once - the “Raider.” The College actually paid for the boat, and they insisted on renaming it the “Temptation of St. Antony’s.” They had a big renaming ceremony before Eights Week in 1994 - I was coaching the St. Antony’s men at the time on the side from my regular coaching duties. After the renaming ceremony, the boat had about the most amazingly dreadful week I have ever experienced. To relate all the dreadful things that happened that Eights Week would be a column unto itself. The lowlights included the coxswain crashing out in a spot and in a situation I specifically prepared her for (and the photos taken at that spot show her looking into the bottom of the boat instead of ahead) - resulting in the boat sinking and needing to have its bow re-attached with duct tape in order for it to row the second day, a random fan who had nothing to do with the crew physically assaulting the Senior Umpire (when the Umpire was about to rule in the crew’s favor in a dispute) resulting in the crew being technically bumped to the bottom of the last division, and an encounter with a tree. On the final day of the regatta, the captain looked up at me on the start (from the bottom position of the bottom division) and said he felt confident because absolutely nothing else could happen - I told him not to curse himself. Sure enough, the final day - which included another encounter with a tree - resulted in a rather successful row. On the way back to the boathouse, however, the cox ignored my specific instructions, failed to follow the traffic patterns, and slammed head-on into another crew which was doing a racing start well over on the proper side of the river, a crew which happened to be a rather serious crew whose coach was - yep, me. At least it saved me from having to scream at the other coach. Several people were injured, the bowman was hospitalized with a hole in his spine (thank goodness for bowballs), I had nine severely traumatized women whom I scratched from their race, and I had a nervous breakdown. The “Temptation” sank. Over the Summer, a new bow was built for the boat, and the name “Temptation” was able to be put onto the new bow which had nothing to do with the bow of the old “Raider,” thus lifting the curse.
The third renamed boat I have been associated with was the “Graduate” at Wolfson College, whose story I told last September when the boat was destroyed in the OUBC fire. The short version is that the boat had won Henley in both of its first two years of life, that the College changed its name, and that it never won a race or scored a single bump for the next four years - until it became the second eight.
No, you won’t find me renaming boats. Quite the opposite. Instead, when I buy a second- hand boat, I try to learn the history of the name behind it. Who was Zander Scott? Who was William Leavitt? I do indeed know.