George Yeoman Pocock is not the hero of
Daniel James Brown's excellent book
The Boys in the Boat, but he is one of them. He is also the book's poet. Every chapter, for example, begins with a quote from George Pocock. Today's entry is the epigraph for the Prelude.
The Boys In The Boat tells the story, stories really, of the quest by the crew of the University of Washington to compete at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. To cut a long story short, they were there, and they won. Rowing in a shell built by George Pocock, those eight oarsmen and their coxswain captured the gold.
From the depression and Seattle's Hooverville to glimpses into the war that lay ahead, Brown weaves several inspiring stories into one. He has great material to work with but he relies particularly on two men:
George Pocock, the boat builder from England and coach without the title coach; and
Joe Rantz, the engineering student from Spokane, whose hardscrabble life is high melodrama with a twist. It's all true.
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All of the elements fit: the history, the physiology, and the teamwork.
Some History. The 1936 Olympic Games were held in August, from the 1st to the 16th. The eight-man crew race was on Friday, the 14th. But it was earlier, on March 7, that the world got its first taste of what the Nazis had in store for it, when "thirty thousand German troops ... rolled into the demilitarized Rhineland." Taking note of the world's reaction to that, Brown writes:
"In England, foreign secretary Anthony Eden said he 'deeply regretted' the news, and then set about pressuring the French not to overreact."
As for the history of the games, Hitler, it seems, was not all that keen on the idea of hosting the games, something to which Germany was already committed, but his Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda
Joseph Goebbels convinced him the games had their uses. Here is Brown again:
"At the very least, an Olympic interlude would help buy him [Hitler] time-time to convince the world of his peaceful intentions, even as he began to rebuild Germany's military and industrial power for the titanic struggle to come."
On Physiology (and Poetry). George Pocock also had some things to say about the physical demands of the rowing. The epigraph from Chapter 5 begins:
"Rowing is perhaps the toughest of sports. Once the race starts, there are no time-outs, no substitutions. It calls upon the limits of human endurance."
A small comparison illustrates the point. Brown writes:
"Physiologists in fact have calculated that rowing a two-thousand meter race-the Olympic standard-takes the same physiological toll as playing two basketball games back-to-back, and it exacts that toll in about six minutes."
Teamwork - energetic, all-out selflessness is the overriding theme of this story. Brown recounts an incident early in 1936 when George Pocock invites Joe Rantz up to his workroom for a talk. Mr. Pocock tells Joe that, watching him, he got the impression that Joe felt he had to win the race by himself, as if he were alone in the boat. He gently explains that won't work.
"If you don't like some fellow in the boat, Joe, you have to learn to like him," Mr. Pocock tells him.
"It has to matter to you whether he wins the race, not just whether you do." Brown comments that a boat of nine may have many exceptional people, but it has no stars. And fittingly, he has Pocock make the point in the epigraph to the final chapter:
"Where is the spiritual value of rowing? ...The losing of self entirely in the cooperative effort of the crew as a whole."
George Pocock
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To state the obvious: This is a holiday and we decided to step back a bit from TPP, T-TIP, TPA, and Trade Facilitation, though, of course, there are always dots to be connected if you are so inclined. We are down to just this one day now, Memorial Day. Remember! And Enjoy!
