Tales of London's Docklands by Henry T Bradford Page A

for the skill, the comradeship and the teamwork essential to win matches.
    Eddy was always ready to tell ‘his’ team (and anyone else who would listen) how he had advised Colonel What, What! during his wartime army service that Big Dave was the soldier best suited to take on the wrestling champion of India, and how he had ‘guided’ and ‘trained’ Big Dave into becoming the Unofficial Heavyweight Wrestling Champion of the Indian Sub-Continent. But he told them this, he would hasten to explain, in order to get them to understand that, if he could do that with a talentless, oversized lout such as Big Dave, ‘who had a brain that could easily be fitted into the eye of a needle’, he was sure that, with such obvious athletic material as their goodselves displayed in training, it would beggar him no problem to turn them into tug-of-war champions. Big (good-humoured) Dave usually put a damper on Eddy’s denigrating statements with follow-up comments such as, ‘That maligning midget carried a bucket of water and a sponge. He didn’t even have to use them. If I’d listened to that moronic, pathetic excuse for a human being to “get stuck into it”, that “mobile Buddha” they’d put me into the ring to fight would have killed me. It’s no thanks to him I’m still alive.’

    The King of the Belgians public house, East Street, Gravesend, c . 1950. (Author’s collection)
    â€˜Bodywise you may be, but you’re brain dead just the same. It’s a pity I didn’t let it polish you off,’ Eddy would mumble under his breath.
    â€˜I heard that!’ Big Dave would say, and the team would all laugh.
    That was how Eddy had moulded them into a force to be reckoned with. So it is of little wonder, therefore, no one denied Eddy’s commitment to the team. However, the methods he used to instil enthusiasm and discipline were those he had learned as a physical training instructor during his service in the army, with a few notable refinements, of course, for he knew from experience how far he could push men, and, more importantly, how far they would be pushed before they began to push back. He also knew that humour played a major role in all training procedures, so he not only joked with the tug-of-war team, but by also making references to their stance, he drilled them into a concerted movement of body, limb and, what he knew was more important, mind. The result of his training endeavours was that the team in action had the appearance of being a single machine. They had been mentally and physically welded into a fighting machine with one simple objective – victory. Eddy had taken every possible known factor into account during the training schedules – except one.
    Come Regatta Day, Gravesend promenade was packed with local people and visitors who had come to watch the various events, which were always entertaining. There were, first and foremost, the rowing races into which publicans from throughout the town entered teams with dubious rowing skills but who were more than capable of holding their own when it came to sinking a pint or two. It should come as no surprise to the reader to learn that the public house teams were invariably less than sober when they arrived on the promenade, and it was quite normal for some of them to fall into the river off the causeway as they tried to scramble into the boats before their race had even got started. After the race many of them were thrown into the river anyway. The winners, when they left the Regatta, hardly ever made it back to the pub they represented, let alone home. Publicans really knew how to look after their rowing crews, although it was a poor oarsman who remembered anything about the events on the following day or even the day after (except for his headache, that is).

    The Clarendon Royal Hotel, East Street, Gravesend, facing the River Thames. (Author’s collection)
    The