Peter Jones died aged 82 on 5 December 2024. He was a leading cox and school rowing coach in the 1960s – ‘80s and a member of the London Rowing Club (LRC) for sixty one years.
Liverpool-born and bred, he won a major scholarship to read mathematics at Wadham College, Oxford, matriculating in 1960. He coxed several Wadham crews and, we believe, was trialled for OUBC. In 1963, he gained a first-class degree in maths, started a teaching career at Emanuel School and joined London Rowing Club (LRC) in September of that year.
Peter coxed London crews from 1965 until 1971 (with a break in 1967); 6 throughout his coxing career, he maintained a consistent weight of 8st. 3 to 6 lbs.
He coxed the LRC Grand crew in 1965 and 5 Thames Cup crews thereafter, reaching the final of the latter in 1970. Contemporaries in the Club remember him for his coxing excellence and for what he brought to the crews.
In 1974, Peter stepped in at the last moment to cox a Belgian crew, Antwerpse Roeivereniging, which won the Thames Cup after a terrific race against Harvard. We do not know the full story but the HRR office have confirmed that his name appeared in the Sunday programme, even if for some reason he is not mentioned in the HRR record of races for that year. Around this time he also appeared as a cox in the film Magic Christian, very much a comedy film of its day with Peter Sellers and other luminaries. It featured a chaotic race and collision midships on the Tideway with Jumbo Edwards coaching in a launch in the distance – not something health and safety would have tolerated today.
Peter was to shine through emphatically as a coach of school crews – at Emanuel; then St Stithians College, a private Methodist school outside Johannesburg 1977-83, and finally Abingdon School 1983-89. He joined Derek Drury, master of rowing at Emanuel, in his first year and was given the colts crew to coach. Peter teamed up with Paul Littleton – LRC member, later Captain and much later Committee Chairman – to provide coaching from a launch, rather than bicycles on the towpath as was usual in those days, and achieved remarkable early success: the colts crew came second equal in the Schools’ Head, four seconds behind the winners and twenty seconds faster than the school’s own first VIII. After that Peter never really looked back, and we can thank him for introducing several Emanuel oarsmen to row at LRC in the years that followed.
We may produce an account of his career as a school coach in the obituary section of the London Rowing Club’s website.
Peter was in many ways his own man, and always a cheery and humorous fellow. He would have accepted that his three main interests in life were mathematics, rowing and beer. There are fond memories of regular get-togethers with chums at the Duke’s Head. He retired early from teaching in his 40s to look after his elderly parents in Liverpool. He resolutely refused to use a computer and his correspondence with successive Club membership secretaries was conducted in his minute and neat hand. Above all, he was a loyal London man.
Julian Ebsworth, London Rowing Club