Is this really the 194th running of the Regatta?

The year marks the 194th running of the Royal St. John’s Regatta. That is if we ignore the year 1941. No Regatta was held that year due to the Second World War, so 2012 will actually mark the 193rd running of the Regatta.

But, we cannot forget that there were no Regattas held during the four years from 1914 to 1918 due to the First World War. Dozens of young men who lost their lives in that war were veterans of the St. John’s Regatta and Sam Ebsary, one of those veteran rowers, even played “Up the Pond” on his accordion, for his fellow soldiers, on the eve after Beaumont Hamel.

So, actually, 2012 will mark the 189th running of the Regatta. But what about the year 1892? That was the year of the “Great Fire” which destroyed the City of St. John’s, and many of the homeless were put up in tents along the banks of Quidi Vidi. That’s right, the Regatta was also cancelled that year. Let’s delete that 189th running and replace it with the 188th running of the Regatta.

Moving back further in history, archival records show that the 1860s was a decade of political unrest and turmoil. In 1861, armed Mounted soldiers rode horseback down Water Street breaking up the crowds that had been rioting and looting, and in the process several people were shot and killed, and a priest who was standing on the court house steps trying to calm the crowd, was shot and wounded by an unknown shooter hidden behind a window in a nearby building.

Public gatherings were frowned upon for some time after, and the Regatta was not held for the 10-year period from 1861 to 1870.

Certainly, we cannot ignore an entire decade of no Regattas. So, for the sake of historic correctness, as inconvenient that may be, note in the annals that 2012 will mark the 178th running of the Regatta.

There. Now we have the actual, figures to record. But wait! Do we? The Regatta officially started in St. John’s Harbour in 1818, and H. Mosdell, in his book of dates in Newfoundland history called ‘What year was that?’, notes that from the first Regatta to 1860, the Regatta was not a continuing event. Rather, for a number of reasons, it was held intermittently.

Between 1818 and 1860, there were 42 years, but only 24 Regattas.

Although 50 years ago there were missing newspaper records from the 19th century, that is not the case

total, today. I have examined that period several times and each time came up with 18 years from 1818-1860 in which no Regatta was held.

Since we are now back to the year of the first St. John’s Regatta in 1818, we can finally determine, once and for all, the exact number of Regattas held.

So we reduce the figure 178 to 160 and come up with the factual, concrete, historically-supported number of actual Regattas held. We can now say with absolute certainty that 2012 will mark the 160th running of the Royal St. John’s Regatta. Hold on ... In all these calculations, we made one glaring and obvious mistake. The year 1818 was not inclusive in the above calculations. For example, if there had been a Regatta in 1820 it would be the third running of the Regatta and not the second running.

It would be correct to say that 1820 is the second anniversary of the first Regatta, but in reality 1820 would mark the third Regatta.

When we include 1818 as a Regatta held, we change the “160th running” to the “161st running” of the Regatta in 2012.

Unfortunately, we are not ished yet.

Remember, over the past 100 years, the Regatta Committee has

fin- frequently changed its recognition of starting dates.

The multiple starting dates include 1828, 1826, 1824, 1825, 1816 and, only in the past decade, 1818. This change was made on the basis of new research that showed a rowing match took place on the harbour in 1818 to mark a Royal event. Added to this was the claim that such annual events were held to mark Royal occasions and anniversaries.

That may have been new evidence to most people, but not to Regatta fans with a knowledge of early Regatta history.

With respect to Regattas being held to celebrate Royal events, there was a Coronation of a King in 1821, but no Regatta was held and the event was recognized in other ways. The records from 1807 to 1826 have been repeatedly reviewed by several Regatta historians, and they found nothing that connects the single rowing match of 1818 to the first Regattas at Quidi Vidi, which were two-day events with rowing on Quidi Vidi on the first day and sailing contests the second day.

There is a record of a sailing contest on the harbour in 1810, and there is an announcement of a Regatta to be held in 1816 on the harbour, but no record that it was ever held.

In my own research of Regatta history, I carried out a year by year search of records and maps from 1800 to 1981. With respect to the 18th century Regattas, I reviewed these records several times.

The only other Regatta historians who conducted such a year-byyear search are Frank Graham, the late author and Newfoundland sports archivist, and the late Jack V. Rabbits, Regatta historian and sports writer with The Evening Telegram.

Neither accepted the year 1818 as the starting date of the St. John’s Regatta.

It is interesting to note that in the 1940s, Rabbits claimed the Regatta started in 1824 or 1825. Newfoundland was not officially recognized as a colony until 1823 and it is possible that the Regatta began near that date.

In last year’s Telegram Regatta Supplement, I presented a history of the St. John’s Harbour Regattas, which shows these were all part of the Quidi Vidi Regatta and had their origins in that Regatta.

I have found 34 years between 1818 and 2011 for which there were no Regattas. With the Regatta of 1818 being inclusive, 2012 will mark the actual number of Regattas to 2011 as 160 with 2012 marking the 161st.