To the people of Renforth:

The oarsmen and women of Tyneside feel very proud and honoured to be invited to take part in a celebration race in honour of the late James Renforth after whom your town was named 125 years ago.

Tyne Rowing Club, which originally included the word amateur in its name, was itself formed in 1852 and only allowed gentlemen amateurs to be members. This excluded any ladies and anyone ho worked manually. Whilst all this was being formed, there was a lot of professional racing taking place on the River Tyne and the surrounding area. The word amateur was dropped in the 1970s, although there are no professionals in rowing now, and our members range from juniors to masters and include men and women.

The Tyne was an important river with a lot of industry on its banks with large amounts of shipments of coal from the local coal fields. The large boats were served by small boats and the river could be compared to the way large trunk roads serve in towns and cities today.

All of the inns along the river would sponsor rowers and big races were organized, but one of the main attractions of the sport was the betting which took place between the spectators and the locals of the inns who put up the scullers of the crews.

There were three particularly famous oarsmen from this era: Harry Clasper, Robert Chambers and, of course, James Renfoth. Harry Clasper, who competed from 1841 to 1860, is known to have won 2,586 pounds and competed at locations like London and Manchester. That may not seem like a lot of money today, but if you were to add inflation to it would probably compare with the earnings of some of our current international sports men and women.

It was Harry Clasper who introduced on the Tyne some very revolutionary rowing boat developments which are still in use today. He invented the outrigger, the siding seat and the fine shell.

Gregory Zed contacted me in January of this year to inquire whether we would be able to send a crew over to celebrate your town's anniversary. I know how difficult it is to make all of these arrangements; it makes me marvel even more what was involved for the Canadian crew to come to Europe initially and for the return match of the Tyneside crew to go to Canada. They didn't have faxes, E-mail, telephone of even air mail, all facilities we have used to communicate. The railways were only just opening and would have been much slower and all travel would have involved a long sea voyage, not just a quick flight there and back in a week.

I would like to close by thanking the people of Renforth for allowing a crew from Tyne Rowing Club to be honoured guests at your celebrations. I'm only sorry I am unable to attend.

The officers and members of the club together with the people of Tyneside join me in offering our congratulations for the first 125 years of the town of Renforth and offer our best wishes for the future. We also hope that our crew make many friends and that anyone who visits Britain over the forthcoming years will put time aside to visit Tyneside and the Tyne Rowing Club.

On behalf of Tyne Rowing Club

Ian Boyd

Club Captian