We sadly have to report the death on Sunday of one of our illustrious former members, Pat Barry. He had been suffering from lung cancer and was a day away from his eightieth birthday.
Pat learned to row out of the Barn Elms Boathouse along with his friend from Tulse Hill School, Lionel Bailey. Presumably at the instigation of his father Lou, who was coaching at Quintin at the time, they both joined the club and in 1965, along with our current president, John Peters, they won their races for Great Britain at an Anglo-Dutch junior international match at Henley-on-Thames, with Pat in a single scull and John and Lionel in a coxless pair. Later that year Pat successfully stroked the club’s outright winning coxless four in the storm-tossed Head of the River Fours. In 1966 he stroked (with Lionel at 7) a fast Thames Cup eight to victory, after a dead heat, over Isis at Reading Regatta and at Henley Royal Regatta they met Isis again, succumbing to them this time by half a length. The club went on to win The Daily Telegraph Cup at Maidenhead Regatta later that season.
Stroke of Thames Cup VIII 1966 (image courtesy of Lionel Bailey)
In the late 1960s he gravitated towards Tideway Scullers School, which his father had helped establish and who was coaching the best crews in the country. In 1968, after winning Senior Sculls for the London Cup at the Metropolitan Regatta representing Quintin (a prestigious event in those days, along with the Wingfield Sculls and the Henley Diamond Sculls), Pat continued his winning ways, with victory in the Double Sculls at Henley Royal in TSS colours with partner Dick Findlay (now of QBC but then of National Provincial Bank RC). Pat was also stroke of the winning Tideway Scullers crew four times in the Head of the River Race. His last row for Quintin was in a Wyfold Four at Henley in 1972, after which he retired from competitive rowing.
Here is a Pathe News video clip (no sound) of the Double Sculls final in 1968.
Pat came from what can only be described as a rowing family. His great uncle, Ernest Barry won the Doggett’s Coat and Badge Race in 1903 and was world professional sculling champion from 1912 to 1914 and again in 1920. Pat’s father, Lou, and uncle, H.A. “Bert” Barry, were both successful professional scullers: Lou and Bert were both English professional sculling champions and Bert also won the world professional championship in 1927. Pat’s elder brother, Bill, was also a top sculler, at the age of 23 narrowly losing the final of Henley’s Diamond Challenge Sculls by two feet in 1963. As well as representing Quintin in the Diamonds, Bill won the Stewards Challenge Cup in Quintin colours two years later, after winning a silver medal for Great Britain in coxless fours at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.
Roger Hine
Pat Barry and Lionel Bailey at Henley in 2016
