Sir Durward Knowles
Bahamian sailor who won his country’s first Olympic medal
SIR DURWARD KNOWLES, the sailor who has died aged 100, was the first Bahamian to win an Olympic medal for his country, taking bronze with Sloane Elmo Farrington in the Star class at the 1956 Games in Melbourne; eight years later he and Cecil Cooke won the country’s first Olympic gold medal in the same class at the 1964 Games in Tokyo.
The Star class, which involves two sailors in a 23ft keelboat, was added to the Olympics in 1932 and Great Britain took gold twice, in 1988 and 2008, before it was dropped after the 2012 Games in London.
Knowles, who was known as “sea wolf ”, took part in his first international regatta off Havana, Cuba, in 1946, finishing third. The following year he won gold in the world championship in Los Angeles with Farrington, putting the Bahamas on the sporting map for the first time.
The pair were reunited for the Olympics in London in 1948, sailing under the Great Britain flag because the Bahamas did not yet have an Olympic Charter.
In those games the pair finished fourth, having suffered a broken mast in one race and being disqualified in another. Thereafter their country entered the games in its own right. London was the first of Knowles’s eight Olympics, and in those early days his participation was supported by local benefactors.
His final Games was in Seoul in 1988 where, now aged 70, he carried the country’s flag. (He had been supposed to carry it in Melbourne in 1956 but was sick and it was instead carried by Tom Robinson, the track and field athlete.) Yet he was still not finished and in 1990 won the North American Championship in Boston, Massachusetts.
Durward Randolph Knowles was born in Nassau on November 2 1917, the son of Captain Harry Knowles, a harbour pilot. His mother, Charlotte, died when Durward was four and he was raised by his older sisters. His father introduced him to the water at a young age and by his teens young Durward was an accomplished and passionate sailor.
He was educated at Queen’s College, Nassau, where he enjoyed playing rugby. By 1942 he was captaining freighters plying the Caribbean and in 1952, after completing the necessary exams, he followed in his father’s footsteps as a harbour pilot, remaining in post until 1996.
In later years Knowles was a noted philanthropist and humanitarian. He became director of the One Bahamas Foundation, where he addressed directly the historical oppression of the country’s black population.
“I was brought up when white people were in charge of these lands and they treated the black people very badly,” he said in 2011 in a call for unity among the population. “I’m here to apologise on our behalf … We’ve [beaten] all the trials and temptations and now we’re here as one Bahamas.”
On another occasion he spoke of the self-discipline needed to be a sportsman, adding: “Fortunately for me I never drank or smoked all my teenage days.”
Durward Knowles, a devout Christian who invariably had a twinkle in his eye, was appointed OBE in 1964, knighted in 1996 and awarded the Bahamas’ Order of Merit the following year. In 2014 the Royal Bahamas Defence Force named a patrol vessel HMBS Durward Knowles in his honour. His biography, Driven by the Stars, by Douglas Hanks Jr, was published in 1992. In 2011 he donated his collection of medals to the National Museum of the Bahamas.
In 1947 Durward Knowles married Holly Shaw, an English girl who lived next door. She survives him with a son and two daughters.
Sir Durward Knowles, born November 2 1917, died February 23 2018