Turn back the clock: Penn rowing's legendary 1955 crew

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They were described as being the best in the world, even outright invincible. Sixty years ago, a Penn heavyweight crew made waves across the rowing world after outrowing a Vancouver crew on a sunny summer day in a race on the River Thames. The crew, coached by rowing legend Joseph “Joe” Burk, had won nothing less than the Grand Challenge Cup, the premier race at the annual Henley Royal Regatta.

The 1955 crew that had emerged victorious under Burk — John Weise, Harry Parker, Bart Fitzpatrick, Chuck Shaffer, Tom Friend, Frank Betts, Bruce Crocco, Fred Lane and coxswain J.L. “Fox” DeGurse — would go down in Penn rowing history as one of its finest.

Earlier in the year, they had broken Navy’s 31-race winning-streak in impressive fashion by taking home the Adams Cup. At the Eastern Sprints in the same season, the Quakers had initially been behind, but emerged with the win after a rare watery comeback.

Indeed, the 1955 crew was special. Burk himself captured its character in his description from a quote in Peter Mallory’s "Evolution of the Rowing Stroke."

“There were no stars, no magnificent hulks of manhood, no poetry of motion — just a well-integrated crew with a tremendous desire to win.”

The spirit of the crew and its coach had pushed them to defy the winter that year, and had — rather than rowing indoors in tanks — spent the winter practicing on the frigid Schuylkill.

According to a particularly indicative anecdote shared by Lane, coach Burk once dove into the freezing water in late December to make a point to comfort his rowers, showing that they would be okay should they fall in during practice.

After the academic year was over, Penn's crew headed to England to go oar-to-oar with some of the world’s best at the Royal Henley Regatta.

In the Grand Challenge Cup, the most prestigious race of the lot, the Red and the Blue managed to best the Thames Rowing Club — then considered the top crew in all of the British Isles — in the semifinal. The Quakers had won by a half-length, and the win shocked the crowds of spectators who had gathered to cheer on their national front-runner.

On the other side of the bracket, the combined forces of the Vancouver R.C. and the University of British Columbia had upset the Krasnoe Znamia crew from the Soviet Union after a powerful comeback. A novel, but formidable force, the Vancouver crew would represent Penn’s opposition in the grand final.

In the final, Penn found a comfortable lead early on, and was able to maintain it throughout. Vancouver closed in, but in the last stretches of the race, Penn was once again able to pull ahead. In the end, Pennsylvania — as it was often referred to back then — won by 20 feet in a time of 6:56.

It was a triumph on the Thames for the Red and Blue, in what had been described as a race between the two premier eights in the world.

After the historic win, the rowers and the coach would go on to have successful subsequent careers. Burk would remain as the coach until 1969, and Parker would go on to become one of Harvard’s most successful rowing coaches.

Though both passed away in recent years, they are, along with the others of the crew of 1955, immortalized in not only the history of Penn rowing, but in the history of the sport.