New Brunswick Parade

The Famous Oarsman

By Ian Sclanders

Editor’s Note: This is the ninety-seventh in a serious of articles dealing with people, places, and developments in New Brunswick.

This is about Saint John’s most famous athletic team, which was, of course, the Paris crew. It’s also about a very sad incident and some poets.

In the old days, before gasoline engines were invented, rowing was an art. And nowhere were there better oarsmen than in West Saint John or Carleton - whichever you prefer to call it. The lads there lived by the waterfront, and spent most of their time in boats.

Sculling was a great sport in Saint John then, even as it still is in certain parts of the world, and groups of young fellows would get together and guy themselves a shell.

One of these groups included Elijah Ross, George Price, Samuel Hutton, Robert Fulton and James Price, and they turned out to be a world-beating outfit. They began in a small way, by challenging the Indiantown Raftsmen’s Association crew in 1863. The poor raftsmen were so outdistanced that they couldn’t walk along the street for a while afterwards without having small boys poke fun at them.

The Paris crew - which was then known as the Carleton crew - cleaned up again in the summer of 1864. It started the summer of 1865 by showing its stern to seven other New Brunswick crews at Father Dunphy’s picnic at Sand Cove, and went on to polish off other contenders. In 1866, it rowed four races - and won four. Folks now sat up and took notice.

Now in 1867 - the year of Confederation - a tremendous regatta was being held at Paris, with scullers participating from most of the principal countries of the earth.

The people of Saint John figured that Saint John should be on the sports map - and that Elijah Ross, George Price, Samuel Hutton, Robert Fulton and James Price were just the ones to bring fame to the old seaport city. So they passed the hat around and raised $7,000 to send them to France.

What happened there is history. The four-man Carleton crew (James Price didn’t row but was the reserve oarsman) proved it was not only the fastest crew in New Brunswick, but the fastest anywhere.

There was a bang-up celebration when the quintet came home loaded down with ribbons and silver mugs. The only sour not was injected by United States newspapers which said grudgingly that while Saint John’s scullers had done fairly well at Paris, they hadn’t met the Republican crew, of Springfield, Mass. These newspapers claimed that the Republicans, who hadn’t been at Paris, could polish off the Carleton crew (by now designated as the Paris crew) any day in the week.

Saint John sent a challenge to the Republicans, inviting them to come to New Brunswick and race. The Republicans declined. All right, then, said the Paris crew, we’ll go to Springfield and race you. And so they did. And the Republicans fared about the same as the political party of that name in the last presidential election.

You get an idea of the interest there was in the Springfield contest, and the bets were placed, from the fact that a big-time gambler offered Elijah Ross $10,000 if he’d let the Republicans romp across the finish line in the lead. The valiant Ross planted a hamlike fist in the gambler’s eye, followed with an uppercut to the jaw, and left him flat on the floor.

Meanwhile the English, who considered that they had more or less of a monopoly on rowing, were vowing to even the score. It didn’t make the English happy to read such statements as this one from The Boston Daily Advertiser:

"The ‘four lumbermen’ from Saint John beat the very flower of English amateurs, the well known London Rowing Club, composed, I think, from old ‘Varsity’ oars, the picked four of the Oxford eight which had but lately beaten Cambridge in the great annual university struggle on the Thames. . . ."

So in 1870 we find England sending the famous Tyne crew of Newcastle to Canada. The Paris crew met the Tyne crew at Lachine that year and was defeated for the first time. Saint John’s oarsmen granted that the Tyne men had gained a fair victory, and offered no excuses, but they did request a return race. The Englishmen agreed, and the date of the event was set - August 23, 1871. The place: a six-mile course on the Kennebecasis River.

August 23, 1871, must have been one of the most thrilling days Saint John ever had. Age-yellowed newspaper files tell you that the residents, old and young alike, were crawling out of bed as early as 3 o’clock in the morning.

The city was crowded with sport fans from England and the United States and various parts of Canada. Special trains for Riverside, the starting line, began leaving Saint John at 4 a.m. and we read that "at 5 a.m. the darkness had given way to a cold gray mist and the road between the city and Riverside was dotted with teams, the drivers urging their steeds forward as if fearing to be late at the scene.

There was every kind of vehicle from a sloven to a barouche. . . .

The newspaper account continues that "the scene at the Kennebecasis was a remarkable one. The railway from Torryburn Cove to a point a mile and a half distant was covered with a motley mass of humanity. . . . Trees were lookouts, many a careless boy or ambitious man being perched among the branches. Small parties sat around lunch baskets and ate their breakfast. . . . Old women dealt out apples and gingerbread from stands along the roadside fences. Carriages came rattling in, trains arrived with thousands, the regiments on the rail became brigades on the embankment, and these became while corps d’armee on the entire river front. . . . Little boys ventured out on the water on rafts constructed with much haste."

Well, that gives you a bit of the picture.

And wandering among the throng was an odd gentleman, Byron DeWolfe, peddling paper sheet headed "The Boat Race." The middle column of this was occupied by a ditty entitled "The Song," which started:

"Our oarsmen are ready for duty.

And brace are the rivals they’ll meet;

The sweet river smiles and its beauty,

Both strangers and foreigners greet. . . ."

Mr. DeWolfe had a footnote: "The song on this sheet - tune, ‘Red, White and Blue’ - I composed in 25 minutes on Monday, 21st inst., in the woods, near the marsh."

As well as the song, the sheet listed the names, some of the ages, and the weights of the oarsmen. On the Tyne crew were James Renforth, stroke, age 29, weight 175 pounds; James Percy (age not given) 165 pounds; Robert Chambers (age not give) 174 1-2 pounds; Henry Kelly (age not given) 168 1-2 pounds; John Bright, reserve man (age not given) 164 1-2 pounds.

On the Paris crew were Robert Fulton, 6, weight 168 pounds; Samuel Hutton, 26, weight 158 pounds; Elijah Ross, 26, weight 158 pounds; George Price, 31, weight 154 pounds.

But the day that started so gaily ended in tragedy. The Paris crew was leading, and the Englishmen were frantically trying to catch up, when Renforth was stricken with a heart attack. He died that night.

And while he was breathing his last, another Englishman, who had come to Saint John and bet his last cent on the Tyne crew and lost, was writing a poem- "The Race and the Death of James Renforth." Part of this went:

"Then it was the noble Renforth, over all the world renowned,

Gathered all his strength to pass the, while he heard the cheers resound

From the shore, and from the people, and he knew well what was said,

James Renforth is in the stern boat, and the Paris crew’s ahead."

The bard had his epic printed and sold in the streets of Saint John until he collected enough money to buy passage home. Renforth’s boat was taken back to England. But he left his name in New Brunswick, for a pleasant community on the banks of the Kennebecasis was called Renforth in his honor. And even today, regattas are held there in the summer, but nothing to equal the famous affair of 1871.