Boat Club Blazers

New Billygoat Derek Rutter (2018), keen to acquire a Boat Club Blazer and finding himself preferring the Maroon style, asked me when and why Fitz made the switch from Maroon to White. I am not aware of a later Maroon blazer than that of Adrian Tollet (1972) and I have heard various stories over the years such as

1. All blazers were maroon in the 50s and the white one was introduced as a Henley blazer when FHBC started competing there (but I have seen photos of white blazers from before WWII!).
2. The “1^st May Colour” is actually the crest and that non-1^st May colours can wear the white blazer without the crest.
3. There was a time when the Maroon was a 1^st Lent blazer and the white was a 1^st Mays blazer.

I asked some men who might know:

George Proffitt (1966) was in camp 1 and said: I was under the impression that the Billy 1st eight blazer was always the maroon with grey piping – until that is the college started competing at Henley. Then a white Henley blazer was introduced, and then became the standard for the 1st May crew. I think this change happened around the time John Adams was in the thick of an incredibly successful  rowing career in college and the 1st May eight gained access to the 1st division? Your remarks about earlier photos do tend to scotch this version however.

John Jenner (1954) is also broadly for 1 but mentions crests in a different way to 2: I do not know when Adrian bought his blazer (surely after 1972) but the latest replacement one from Clothier’s was mine a few years ago (5 or 6) and I had the pocket transferred from my old one (which if one looks closely is faded or a different maroon). Before that when Geoff Harrison was elected Billygoats president he had one made via Ryder & Amies.  In the old days R & A blazers were of a lighter maroon colour (as Ken Drake’s), but I have a feeling that Geoff’s is the darker maroon and was in fact made by Clothier. Adrian’s blazer is non-standard as it is trimmed with narrow maroon & grey ribbon (similar to that used for white blazers) as opposed to the usual wide grey ribbon.

In my days there were only Maroon blazers and mostly made by Stuarts (then next door to Fitz House ) who eventually sold out to Clothier who had previously been making them anyway, (for some years after Stuarts moved to Chesterton Road). 1st Lent crews could have the College crest in wool and 1st Mays could have the gold & silver wire crests and I think 2nd Mays could have the woollen ones.

I too have seen a pre-war white blazer with trimming in maroon & grey cross strips. I cannot recall who had it or why it was awarded. As you say the current white blazers where introduced by Ian Codrington and Chris McCann (?) to go to Henley and when Clothiers were making many for all Colleges etc.  The trimming is maroon & Grey longways down the trim as it is (was) very expensive and almost impossible to get the cross trim (Don’t know what its officially called) and I think that colleges have discovered this and changed their design too. when their stocks ran out.

Adrian Tollet (1972) said: Blazer colours have certainly changed over the years. My understanding is this : Blazer colours changed to ALL maroon post war because of post war shortages. This suggests there would have been white blazers pre-war. In my day, the standard was 1st Mays : white with badge, 2nd Mays : maroon with badge, generic : maroon without badge. Since coloured cloth is more of a problem because of the need to match/dye it, common practice changed to : 1st Mays : white with badge, generic : white without badge. 

Ken Drake (1953) adds: My recollection does not differ much from what has already been written. I was under the impression that in my time the 1st May crew was allowed to wear the blazer with gold letters under the crest and 1st Lent crews were allowed to wear it with grey letters – possibly these were the ones referred to by John J as woollen. I deliberately waited until I had rowed in the 1st May crew before getting my FHBC letters added.

When I bought my blazer I did not think to ask everyone where they bought theirs and wrongly assumed they went to R&A. That was the reason I went there. Had I enquired of my fellow oarsmen at the time I would have found out that they went to Stuarts and would undoubtedly have gone there as well. There was no known policy that we should go to one or the other hence the situation I found myself in but obviously having bought it there was no way in which I could afford to buy a Stuart one. As everyone knows it is still the original that I wear when attending Boat Club dinners. The moth holes at one time looked as if my blazer had been decorated with smatterings of white paint but we have stitched up the larger holes so that is no longer as obvious as it once was.

Chris Gill (1965) needs to know the truth: I had always assumed that the maroon blazer was a 2nd Mays blazer and that the white blazer was a 1st Mays one.   The with or without crest variation is not one I’ve ever seen, nor would I know what it meant!

When you have the info, please let me know, so that I can tell the Scouse blighter who burgled my flat in 1969 and nicked my white one, what it’s significance is, as he parades up and down Lime Street in it!

As in so many things, John Adams  (1958) has the full details:

For many years there have been “mature” Billygoats attending Boat Club dinners in maroon blazers while students and some (less mature?) Billygoats have white blazers. Questions are being asked – Why are there two sorts of blazer? When was a change made and why?

When I joined Fitzwilliam House Boat Club in 1958 I recall there being a document which listed the F.H.B.C. Rules. These included a description of the type of blazer a member was entitled to wear. This depended on the highest level of Bumps crew in which he had rowed, Mays rating higher than Lents. (The rules also included the specification of a fine for members turning up late for an outing of, if memory serves, 1s 6d (7.5p) – I am not aware of the fine ever being levied.) The blazer specification in the Boat Club Rules in the fifties as I remember them is as follows

1^st May boat – white or maroon blazer with crest on breast pocket with F.H.B.C (embroidered wire)

2^nd May and 1^st Lent boats – maroon blazer with crest on breast pocket with F.H.B.C (embroidered grey)

3^rd  May and 2^nd Lent boat – maroon blazer with crest on breast pocket

Other boats – maroon blazer without crest.

Note – Until at least 1970 all crests were wire.

Here is a description of the route by which that specification was reached. Though after 1958 there are no records of rules regarding blazers of which I am aware, the story continues as far as the early 1970s up to which time I have good evidence.

1875 to 1908 – grey, then blue, grey again, then red/maroon

The path which the non-collegiate students of the 19^th century had to follow in negotiations with the Non-Collegiate Students Board (a University body) to have sports clubs with a name and with colours was long and tortuous. Details are given in Dr Grave’s ‘Fitzwilliam College Cambridge 1869-1969’.

A Cricket Club and a Boat Club were formed in 1874, and a boat first rowed in the Bumps in 1875. The 1875 uniform of the Boat Club was described as “a grey blazer trimmed with ruby, white straw hat trimmed with grey and ruby striped ribbon”.

These colours were kept for only a year; in 1876 the Boat Club hat was trimmed with orange and blue and the blazer was “blue with orange facings”. The colours for other clubs in the period to 1887 were described as “blue and buff” and whilst there was no Boat Club from 1879 to 1883, presumably when the Club restarted in 1883 it was in blue and buff/orange.

In 1884 the various Fitzwilliam sports clubs were combined (for financial reasons) and after much internal debate on colours it was agreed on 2 June 1887 that ‘red and grey’ would be the colours for all sports. Tailors in Cambridge were asked to quote for the supply of kit in ‘red and grey’ and the quotation accepted by the Fitzwilliam Amalgamated Clubs was from Messrs Charles Dixon of 6 Downing Street and included a “Boating Blazer, grey with grey and red diagonal ribbon”. The price was 16/- (80p) cash or 18/- (90p) credit.

After only three years, in 1890, change again: the Cambridge Review reported that the new blazer “is a red ground bound with grey silk. It was found necessary to do this as the grey ground of the old one went pea green.” So there it is – grey blazers look mouldy when they age! Perhaps that is why they had lasted only for one year when first tried in 1875.

In the revised Rules of the Clubs approved in 1908, the official description of the Boat Club blazer became ‘maroon and grey’.

1909 to 1939 – maroon or white

The earliest meetings of the Boat Club for which minutes have been found were those held in 1921. The record of the October meeting that year includes -“The following order of Colours was fixed :-

1^st May Boat   Blazer (red or white or both) with crest & letters, Scarf, Zephir, Socks & Cap

2^nd May Boat      Red Blazer, with crest & letters, Zephir & Socks

1^st Lent Boat       Red Blazer, with crest only, Zephir & Socks

2^nd ditto               Red Blazer, with pocket only, Zephir & Socks

3^rd ditto                Red Blazer, without pocket, Zephir only

All other members wear white shorts, white zephir and dark coloured socks.”

The above is taken from the Boat Club record of  a meeting of June 1921.

In the above June 1922 photograph of The Prodigals (a Fitzwilliam student club) I K C Bell and O B Pask (in the centre of the back row) are wearing their 1st May Blazers – white, trimmed with diagonal ribbon, presumably in red (maroon) and grey and so the same as the ribbon on the grey blazer of 1884. The blazers certainly look identical to that worn by John Willett (1^st May Boat 1947 & 48) at Bumps Suppers in 1961-62, which was trimmed with maroon and grey diagonal ribbon.

White blazers for 1^st May Boat members were probably around before 1921 – so from 100 or more years ago. They and the red (maroon?) blazers almost certainly were supplied by Ryder & Amies who advertised in every Fitzwilliam Journal at that time that they were “Sole Official makers of Fitzwilliam Society Colours. By Appointment Outfitters to Fitzwilliam House.” (They continued to advertise in Journals until 1974 using a similar wording).

In 1932 the Boat Club Committee discussed uniform again.

The 1st Lent blazer is “red (special shade, kept only by Messrs. Ryder & Amies) bound in grey silk ribbon or grey flannel, with College crest and letters, either wire shield and gold wire letters or silk shield and grey silk letters”, with the 2nd Lent boat missing the letters. The 1st May blazer is “white flannel with red and grey diagonal braid all round edges and across pockets etc. with wire shield and wire letters on pocket”, and the 2nd May again missing the letters

John Adams continues:

In 2013, the FHBC blazer pictured above was offered for sale on e-bay with the description “A 1937 blazer”. Trimmed with grey ribbon, this blazer has lettering F H B C below the crest on the breast pocket in grey – a 2^nd May or 1^st Lent blazer.

1945-1960 – maroon reigns

Fitzwilliam House Boat Club did not function during the war – only a handful of students were in Fitzwilliam. But the Club was restarted in 1945.

John Willet’s is the only white blazer known to have been owned by any member of the Boat Club in the period 1945 to 1960. How and when did he get it? Like several others who matriculated in 1946, John graduated after only two years at Fitzwilliam. It is possible that he had one year at University before the war – Fitzwilliam admitted a number of such men following their being demobbed. But Lt (A) F J Willett, RNVR, who was awarded the D.S.C. in 1945 for service in the Far East, was only 18 when he joined up in 1940.

No doubt clothes rationing, which began in 1941 and continued until March 1949, would have limited the sale of jackets and purchase of a Boat club blazer in that period would have been a great extravagance. From 1949 maroon blazers were worn by increasing numbers of Boat Club members; the blazers acquired by crews in the next ten years were all maroon. Why white fell completely out of fashion is unknown – the “Rules” would still have included provision for 1^st May Boat members to have them. Perhaps all 1st May Boat members who acquired a blazer did so before gaining a place in the 1^st May Boat. If that happened in say, 1949 to 1951, maroon blazers would have been established as the norm and thereafter with no-one around sporting a white blazer, any member setting out to get himself a blazer would have gone for the maroon.

1960-1962 – white returns

At the General Meeting of the Boat Club in June 1960 Robin Mackness was elected Captain and I was elected Secretary. In our first term in post we discussed blazers and Robin declared that the appropriate colour of blazer for a College appearing at Henley was white. (He had rowed there in the RAF crew in the Thames Cup when doing his National Service.) To appear at Henley had been a declared aim for the Club for years so together we went to Ryder & Amies to place our orders.

They had the specification for Fitzwilliam white blazers but though they had not made one for some time they still had the specified grey and maroon diagonal ribbon in stock. But there was a problem. They had only enough ribbon for about one and a half blazers and could not get more. Ribbon of that type was no longer being manufactured. They suggested our blazers be trimmed with longitudinally striped maroon and grey ribbon – with maroon on the outer edge on the lapels and grey on the upper edge on the pockets. And that is what we got.  By the time of the Lents Ian Worthington, one of the two others from the 1960 1^st May Boat who was still in the Club, had also got himself a white blazer.

The above photograph of the 1961 1^st Lent crew shows the three of us in our new blazers.  The sharp-eyed may spot something which I have only just noticed – after 59 years! The blazer which Robin (in the centre) is wearing differs from the other two – it has no crest on the breast pocket. (But the crest is there a few months later – when the May crew photograph was taken – see below).

By Mays 1962 the white blazer was worn by all rowers in the 1^st Boat.

The below photographs of the 1^st May Boats of 1960 to 1962 show the increase over that period of the popularity of the Boat Club blazer, and that being white – three out of nine with none white in 1960 to nine out of nine, eight white in 1962.

 

1st May Crew 1960

1st May Crew 1961

1st May Crew 1962

Post 1962

I believe a maroon blazer was never bought by a member of a 1^st May crew after 1961 but other members of the Club continued to acquire maroon blazers, with crests but no letters, for at least the next ten years.

No written record of any change to the rules which existed in 1958 is known.

–John Adams

As Adrian said, common practice since the mid-70s has been  1st Mays : white with badge, generic : white without badge, however, taking John Adams’ 1958 rules and updating for the change to College status, the latest agreed Boat Club rules for blazers that the Billygoats Society are aware of are:

1^st May boat – white or maroon blazer with crest on breast pocket with F.C.B.C (embroidered wire)

2^nd May and 1^st Lent boats – maroon blazer with crest on breast pocket with F.C.B.C (embroidered grey)

3^rd  May and 2^nd Lent boat – maroon blazer with crest on breast pocket

Other boats – maroon blazer without crest.

So Derek can buy a Maroon blazer if he so chooses, and Chris can head up to Lime Street to enlighten that scouse blighter.