Broadening Readings of Sport Monuments: The Arthur Baynes Memorial Obelisk

Abstract

Monuments to past and present sports performers are increasingly commonplace. Despite the potential for analyses of sports monuments to provide new and valuable insights into past and present sociocultural practices, studies of monuments and other forms of material culture have, until recently, received limited attention in sports historiography. In addition, new scholarship has tended to focus on sporting statues over other, non-figurative, monumental genres. This article will attempt to redress this relative neglect and contribute to a broadening discourse of sport, memory and materiality by analysing one particular sporting monument, a memorial obelisk erected in 1933 on the banks of the Brisbane River in Queensland, Australia to prominent 1920s sculler Arthur Alexander Baynes (1899–1932). The article examines Baynes' sporting career, considers his memorial within the context of obelisks and other commemorative monumental forms, and reads the memorial in its various discursive international, national, regional and local contexts. By providing a detailed analysis of this one ‘local’ sporting monument, the intention of this article is to add to the expanding literature on sporting material culture and, in particular, broaden our readings of sport monuments.

Keywords::

• Arthur Baynes
• material culture
• monuments
• obelisks
• sculling

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Arthur Baynes' daughter, Helen Thomson, for her interest in this project, and his granddaughter, Kathy Thomas, for making available Baynes' personal papers. In addition, we would like to acknowledge the kind assistance of Vivien Harris, Archivist at Brisbane Grammar School, for providing excerpts from school records, and various members of the CRC and Rowing Queensland as they answered our queries over the course of this research.

Notes

^1.Nelson and Olin, “Introduction,” 3.

^2. Rename the Hale Street Link bridge, http://202.148.140.187/blogs/name-that-bridge/2009/07/help_brisbane_city_council_nam_1.html. Spelling and punctuation as in the original. The rowing sheds do not, in fact, commemorate Baynes.

^3. For an overview of Australian sporting sculptures, see Hedger, Public Sculpture in Australia, 167–9. See also Monument Australia: Sport < http://monumentaustralia.org.au/themes/culture/sport>; Era of the Biff, “Statues, Grandstands, Hall of Fame, Teams of the Century, Legends Walks, Roads and Parks,” < http://www.eraofthebiff.com/p20-monum.html>.

^4. Nelson and Olin, “Introduction,” 3.

^5.Inglis, Sacred Places, 7.

^6.Gibson and Besley, Monumental Queensland (book sub-title).

^7. For recent conceptual discussion of material culture and sports history, see Hardy, Loy, and Booth, “The Material Culture of Sport”; Borish and Phillips, “Sport History as Modes of Expression”; Stride, Wilson, and Thomas, “Honouring Heroes by Branding in Bronze” and Hill, Moore, and Wood, Sport, History, and Heritage.

^8. See, for example, Osmond, Phillips, and O'Neill, “‘Putting up Your Dukes’”; Schultz, “Contesting the Master Narrative”; Smith, “Frozen Fists in Speed City” and Smith, “Mapping America's Sporting Landscape.”

^9.Huggins, “Death, Memorialisation”; Huggins, “Reading the Funeral Rite” and Huggins, “Gone but Not Forgotten.”

^10. For one comparative examination of three non-figurative monumental forms commemorating one athlete, see O'Neill, “Remembering Johnny Mullagh.”

^11. See, for example, Sorek, The Emperors' Needles and Zukowsky, “Monumental American Obelisks.”

^12.Hempseed, Seven Australian World Champion Scullers; Ripley, Sculling and Skulduggery, v; Adair, “‘Two Dots in the Distance’,” 54 and Cashman, Paradise of Sport, 36.

^13. On rowing and sculling in Australia, see also Adair, “Rowing and Sculling”; Bennett, “Rowing and Sculling” and Bennett, The Clarence Comet.

^14. Ripley, Sculling and Skulduggery, 138

^15. Queensland Birth Certificate No. 1899/64312, Queensland Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages. Baynes had a sister, Leila Turner [née Baynes]: see Courier-Mail (Brisbane), January 13, 1953, 3 and Sunday Mail (Brisbane), April 10, 1988.

^16.Sydney Morning Herald (hereinafter SMH), May 15, 1893, 6; Courier-Mail (Brisbane), January 13, 1953, 3 and Brisbane Grammar School Magazine, November 1953, 88.

^17. Several members of the wider Baynes family were also involved in rowing and were members of the same Commercial Rowing Club (CRC). Frank ‘Tiger’ Baynes, Arthur's uncle, was honoured with a complimentary regatta by the CRC on his fiftieth birthday in 1906, and he was reportedly still rowing in 1921 (Daily Standard, June 17, 1921 and Daily Mail, June 29, 1919) and “Baynes' cousin, Dick Baynes, was an early sculling opponent in handicapped races” (Daily Standard, December 21, 1917).

^18.Brisbane Grammar School Magazine, June 1920, 30.

^19. “Rowing and Sculling Records of Arthur A. Baynes from 1914” (hereinafter Scrapbook No. 1), n.d., 10. This was one of a series of diary entries and news cuttings kept in scrapbooks by Arthur Baynes and his family and very kindly loaned to the researchers by his granddaughter, Kathy Thomas.

^20. Scrapbook No. 1, 10.

^21.DailyStandard, December 21, 1917, in Scrapbook No. 1, 12.

^22. On leaving school, Baynes went to work with Troup Harwood & Co., public accountants in Brisbane: Brisbane Grammar School Magazine, November 1932, 105. Throughout his diary, but especially before a major race, Baynes records the periods of training he undertook. These typically involved two weeks or more being coached by George Towns either in Sydney or Brisbane.

^23. George Towns (1869–1961) won the first of his professional sculling world championship titles in 1901 and held the title until losing it in 1905 to the veteran Australian sculler Jim Stansbury. Towns regained the title in a return match against Stansbury in 1906 but forfeited it to his brother, Charles Towns, in 1907. On finishing his racing career, Towns began an oar and scull-making business in Sydney, later expanding to building rowing boats as well. He also coached many amateur and professional scullers and was prominent in the rowing world, being credited as instrumental in codifying the rules for the World Professional Sculling Championship. Ripley, Sculling and Skulduggery, 170 and Hempseed, Seven Australian World Champion Scullers, 72–80.

^24. Scrapbook No. 1, 14.

^25. Amateur rowing excluded all manual workers from competition, and this rule was rigidly enforced in NSW. In contrast, other states and colonies developed more pragmatic amateur definitions: Ripley, Sculling and Skulduggery, 149.

^26.Brisbane Courier (hereinafter BC), May 17, 1920, 8 and “Guerin-Foster History of Australian Rowing,” http://www.rowinghistory-aus.info/interstate-championships/1920.php

^27.BC, May 21, 1920, 3.

^28.Referee, May 19, 1920.

^29. Arthur Baynes diary entry, n.d., Scrapbook No. 1, 54; DailyStandard, June 18, 1920. The Diamond Sculls remains a major event for male single scullers but has since been superseded in prominence and significance by the Olympic Games and World Rowing Championships. However, during the 1920s, the Diamond Sculls Race at Henley Regatta was considered by amateur scullers the more prestigious event and may possibly have been another factor in Baynes electing to concentrate on this event rather than the Olympics.

^30.Daily Mail, June 18, 1921 and Sun, June 19, 1921, in Scrapbook No. 1, 50.

^31.Daily Standard, January 21, 1921, in Scrapbook No. 1, 48.

^32. Baynes was not the first Australian to race in the Diamond Sculls Event at Henley, with T. Harrison Bourke and Roy Adam having both entered in 1906: SMH, July 2, 1906, 7.

^33.Daily Mail, June 18, 1921 in Scrapbook No. 1, 50. See also: BC, February 16, 1922; BC, April 1, 1922, 15, in “News cuttings of Arthur A. Baynes” (hereinafter Scrapbook No. 2), 8.

^34.BC, November 7, 1922, 3 and BC, November 23, 1922, 10.

^35.BC, November 23, 1922, 10 and Brisbane Grammar School Magazine, November 1922, 54.

^36.Daily Telegraph, June 27, 1923; Daily Telegraph, July 12, 1923 and SMH, September 21, 1923, 15.

^37.Daily Telegraph, June 27, 1923.

^38.Brisbane Grammar School Magazine, No. 161, 1988, 168; “Forgotten Sporting Hero” (Sunday Mail (Brisbane), April 10, 1988) and Scrapbook No. 1, end pages.

^39.Daily Mail, May 12, 1926, in Scrapbook No. 2, 33. The 1926 Australian Sculling Championship was also the first year that the scullers raced for the President's Cup, a perpetual trophy donated by the first president of the Australian Amateur Rowing Council in 1925, Mr E.C. Watchorn.

^40. For reports on the local golfing success of Baynes, see BC, July 6, 1925 and BC, August 17, 1925.

^41.BC, August 1, 1929, 22 and personal papers kindly loaned by Kathy Thomas: “Family Group Sheet for Arthur Alexander Baynes.”

^42.BC, August 13, 1932, 15; Townsville Daily Bulletin, August 13, 1932 and Brisbane Grammar School Magazine, November 1932, 105.

^43. “Family Group Sheet for Arthur Alexander Baynes.” His death certificate lists the cause of death as “Carbuncle of lip, Staphylococcal, Septicaemia, Toxaemia”: Queensland Death Certificate No. 1932/18130, Queensland Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages. Another report claimed that he had also developed an infection of the knee shortly before his death: Brisbane Grammar School Magazine, November 1932, 105.

^44.BC, August 13, 1932, 15; Argus (Melbourne), August 15, 1932 and Longreach Leader, August 13, 1932, 12.

^45.BC, October 4, 1932, 5. The trophy continues to be awarded annually: Rowing Queensland via telephone conversation with lead author (January 22, 2013).

^46.BC, December 1, 1932, 7 and BC, December 5, 1932, 7.

^47.BC, December 6, 1932, 4.

^48.BC, February 18, 1933, 6; BC, March 20, 1933, 7 and BC, March 23, 1933, 14 (tablet).

^49.BC, May 1, 1933, 5, 12 and Brisbane Grammar School Magazine, June 1933, 117–8.

^50.Colvin, Architecture and the After-Life.

^51. Sorek, The Emperors' Needles, 11–3.

^52.Alexander, “The Public Memorial and Godefroy's Battle Monument,” 23, 19.

^53. Ibid., 23.

^54. Zukowsky, “Monumental American Obelisks,” 574, 579.

^55.Butterfield, “Monuments and Memories,” 30.

^56.Lowenthal, The Past is a Foreign Country, 323.

^57. The Spirit statue in Chicago of Michael Jordan slam dunking a basketball, and the statue at San José State University in California of 1968 Olympians Tommie Smith and John Carlos making their medal dais salute, are examples: see Sydnor, “Sport, Celebrity and Liminality,” 221–41 and Smith, “Frozen Fists in Speed City,” 393–414.

^58.Gilbert, A Grave Look at History, 32. See also: Smith et al., “Socioeconomic Differentials in Mortality,” 1554–7.

^59.Rowlands and Tilley, “Monuments and Memorials”; Eggener, Cemeteries and Gilbert, A Grave Look at History.

^60.Petersen, “The Peter Jackson Memorial”; and Corry, Waverley Cemetery Who's Who Sporting Lives.

^61. Huggins, “Gone but Not Forgotten,” 480.

^62. Inglis, Sacred Places, 41.

^63. Huggins, “Gone but not Forgotten,” 481.

^64. Ibid.

^65.Dargavel, “More to Grief than Granite.” For a brief discussion of Avenues of Honour in a sporting and localised context, see Hess, “Playing With ‘Patriotic Fire’,” 1396–97.

^66. Inglis, Sacred Places, 50, 154.

^67. Ibid., 49, 153.

^68. Ibid., 35.

^69. Ibid., 41.

^70. Ibid., 59.

^71. Ibid. (book title).

^72.Petersen, “The Peter Jackson Memorial.” See also Petersen, Gentleman Bruiser, 338–44.

^73.Referee, July 17, 1901, 7. The writer goes on to say Americans neglect their sporting dead and cites Jack Dempsey ‘as a notable instance’.

^74.Courier-Mail, July 8, 1935, 9, 14 and Worker, July 8, 1935, 15.

^75. Hedger, Public Sculpture in Australia, 47.

^76.Society of Sculptors Queensland, Brisbane Sculpture Guide, 10–11, 19–20, 28.

^77. A statue would not have been the first to commemorate a rower. In 1926, the city of Toronto in Canada erected a bronze statue of former world champion professional sculler, Ned Hanlan, see Kidd, “Hanlan, Edward (Ned).”

^78.Bennett, “Searle, Henry Ernest” and Bennett, The Clarence Comet, 93.

^79.Morning Bulletin (Rockhampton, Queensland), February 28, 1918, 3. The stone is now housed in the local museum, see Parker, “One of Australia's ‘Rarest Jewells’,” 8 and Stewart, Australian Dictionary of Biography.

^80. For an image, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cabarita_monument.JPG

^81.BC, December 10, 1932, 8. Emphasis added.

^82.BC, December 7, 1932, 17; BC, December 9, 1932, 7 and BC, December 10, 1932, 8.

^83.BC, May 1, 1933, 5. The plaque measures approximately 48 cm by 38 cm.

^84. Inglis, Sacred Places, 154.

^85. Hempseed, Seven Australian World Champion Scullers.

^86. “Guerin-Foster History of Australian Rowing,” http://www.rowinghistory-aus.info/interstate-championships/03-mens1x.php

^87. “Commercial Rowing Club, Our History,” http://www.commercialrowing.com/history.html

^88. Baynes Snr was made a life member of the CRC in 1924: BC, September 27, 1924, 11. His uncle was also a life member: Wetherell, A Short Historical Sketch of the Commercial Rowing Club (inside back cover).

^89.BC, February 18, 1933, 6.

^90. “Commercial Rowing Club 1905–2001,” 8130, Box 15222 o/s Clippings 1905–1996, State Library Queensland.

^91.Bale, Roger Bannister and the Four-Minute Mile, 132.

^92. Ibid., 134.

^93. Ibid., 133.

^94. “Forgotten Sporting Hero” (Sunday Mail (Brisbane), April 10, 1988).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Gary Osmond

Gary Osmond is a senior lecturer in sport history in the School of Human Movement Studies at the University of Queensland. His current research interests include material, visual and digital representations of the sporting past.

Claire Parker

Claire Parker is a senior lecturer in sport studies in the School of Science and Technology at the University of New England, Armidale, NSW. Her research interests include the historical and socio-cultural dimensions of aquatic sports, in particular gender issues within swimming, water polo and rowing. Her experience as a former sculling representative for GB at the World Rowing Championships and Commonwealth Games helped to provide personal insights in to the world of rowing and this research.