Swaddle & Winship

Thomas Swaddle & William Winship were boatbuilders based at Scotswood, near Newcastle-upon-Tyne who gained a reputation for being amongst the top boatbuilders in the country. Thomas Swaddle had been foreman at Jewitt's Boatbuilders before setting up in partnership with William Winship. The exact connections of the individuals to rowing families is not known but certainly in the late 1860s and 1870s there was a well-known oarsman called Thomas Winship, from ‘a well-known Tyne rowing family’. Between 1869 and 1871 he was part of the ‘Tyne Champion Four’ with Jimmy Renforth, James Taylor and John Martin. Their most notable victory came in 1870 when they defeated the St John, New Brunswick crew, champions of North America, on Lake Lachine in Quebec.

In 1876, for the first time, Swaddle & Winship supplied the winning boat to the University Boat Race, used by Cambridge UBC. Oxford rowed in a Clasper boat.

Swaddle & Winship’s influence went further afield as many of their boats were sold abroad. The Australian Town and Country Journal of 17 September 1880 noted that ‘The cost of a Swaddle and Winship wager boat delivered in Sydney, would be about £30 (as the boat cost £18, the cost of delivery from Newcastle to Sydney was, presumably, £12). This information comes from Trove, a splendid online resource provided by the National Library of Australia consisting of a vast collection of digitised newspapers, books and images. Trove shows that Australian papers had many references to Swaddle’s boats taking part in numerous races in Australia (and in England) between 1876 and 1889. It was not just singles that were imported, in 1882 Melbourne Rowing Club had an eight sent over. These were their ‘glory years’ when the name of ‘Swaddle and Winship’ was respected not only on the Tyne and on the Thames but also on the Parramatta and the Yarra and, no doubt, on many other famous (and not so famous) courses throughout the rowing world.