Regatta Pull Devil, Pull Baker - Freda
Annis Apart from during
the War we always had a Regatta, I think. When I was a kid we used to have
regattas. I don’t know if they have now because I haven’t been down
for years. But there was one thing we always looked for and they finished
up the Regatta with it. ‘Pull devil, pull baker.’ And they had two
teams from the fishing boats. One had bags of flour and one had bags of
soot and they pelted each other! And you didn’t know which was which by
the time they’d finished! But we used to love that when we were kids! We
used to shout ‘Oh, are they going to have “Pull devil, pull
baker?”’ Out of control - Joyce
Blackwood When I was teaching
my friend and I went one day to help this other teacher, who also had a
chicken farm. And while we were there we saw a dinghy and said, ‘Oh,
that’s nice. You’ve got a dinghy.’ She said, ‘Yes. We don’t use
it. Would you like to borrow it?’ So my friend Margaret and I said,
‘Oh, that would be lovely.’ So her father kept a coal business so
there was a lorry to bring it here and we carted it here from Kelvedon and
we put it in the water. And it was a Regatta Day and we’d neither of us
ever sailed before. And we got in this boat and there were dozens of boats
coming up from Brightlingsea on the Regatta – many more than come now
– and we got out in the middle of the river and we couldn’t do
anything with this boat! We didn’t know what to do, which way to turn,
so we hung on to the sand works while all these boats came past and then
we came back up the river again and discovered that the centre plate was
broken so we had no control over what was happening in the boat at all! I can remember
regattas because they always used to happen at the end of the sailing
season when the yachtsmen were back, when they’d come back for the
season and then they used to have the rowing races and things like that,
and that was before my time. When we were young, the Regatta Days the Quay
was full of people and you used to have all sorts of activities on the
water – not just sailing. There used to be ‘Pull devil, pull baker,’
and that’s when they threw soot and flour at each other. And ‘Ducks
and Drakes,’ they used to chase people across the marshes, and
tug-of-war and all sorts of things used to go on, and it was an event
because there weren’t many events in the village, but the regatta was
one that did bring people out. And a local farmer used to bring down bales
of straw and put down for people to sit on, and a good day out it was. It
was lovely. My highlight - Tim
Denham My highlight, every
year, was Wivenhoe Regatta. I used to love to rush to have an early
dinner, and rush down and see the One-Designs rigging, and just waiting
for the boats to come up. It used to be a lovely day. It always seemed to
be sunny. And Mr Macaulay from the top of the village used to take bales
of hay down and spread them all along the Quay, and people would sit and
drink and chatter and watch as the boats came up. And I used to get down
there as early as I could, longing for somebody to ask me if I’d like to
crew for them, but being a little chap I didn’t get asked that very
often. But you actually acted as a ferryman in the Club dinghy and went
backwards and forwards picking up the crews – putting them aboard the
One-Designs and picking them up after, at the end of the race. September regattas - Bill
Heslop Regattas started
again after the Sailing Club got reorganised with the new boats. Regattas
prior to that, in the days of the yachting, used to happen in September,
when all the steam yachts used to come home and lay in Wivenhoe for the
winter. They used to have the sailing matches between the crews , and
Wivenhoe Regattas, as you probably see in the Nottage, and the old posters
we’ve got there, were quite big events. Sheer guts - Eunice
Baker I’m on the Regatta Committee [c 1965] and that’s the miniskirt rage all the time, everybody’s got the miniskirt, and I’ve got an 18 year old daughter with a miniskirt, and my husband think that’s terrible, he think that’s a pelmet, so don’t have nothing to do with it, he wouldn’t. Anyway, Regatta Committee. The men on the Regatta Committee decide, for the Regatta Day, there’d be a Miniskirt Competition. And, of course, being on the Committee, I knew what the prize was – a five course meal for two, a different drink with every course, and a liqueur afterwards. And I’m doing the hotdog stall at the Regatta, me and Derek. And that’s in the middle of the afternoon, ‘The Miniskirt Competition will now take place.’ I’m right down there, doing the hotdog stall with my husband, and I’m all greased up - my aprons, overalls and that, greasy. When it come over the loud hailer, ‘The Miniskirt Competition will now take place,’ I never told nobody I was going in for it – not my husband, not nobody. I whipped off my coat, and I’d got Cheryl’s miniskirt on, and I raced up there. I was 46 years old! And George Gale, the top-line journalist of his day, that was his first year in Wivenhoe, and he was the judge at the Rose and Crown. ‘For sheer guts, I award this competition to Mrs Baker.’ I had to borrow a dress off my sister-in-law to go in! The Brewery Tavern. We had five different courses, a different drink with every course, and liqueurs afterwards. That was worth winning! Because he could eat now. For three years, he couldn’t. When we had turkey and everything, I had some nephews and nieces come down for Christmas from Leicester, he had to have dry toast while we all had Christmas dinner! But now he could eat. Regatta
- Mikes Downes Well, for quite a
few years, the traditional form of Regatta died out, and it just became
sailing matches, which are not of much interest to the general public,
because most of the time they’re down the river out of sight. So the
Sailing Club, at one stage, tried to encourage shore-based events, and
water-based fun things, but the problem with sailing people is they all
want to be out on their boats, so not many people want to get involved in
running it! So that died a death after a little while. But then a few
public spirited people said, ‘Well, why don’t we create an
old-fashioned type regatta again?’ So the Wivenhoe Regatta Association
was formed, and now they organise an event which includes shore-based and
fun water events, like the shovel race, and there’s a tug o’ war which
takes place in the mud, and other events which aren’t necessarily
nautical, but we still have the dinghy races and the cruiser and smack
races. It tends to be run on the more traditional side for the boats. But
the Sailing Club have now decided that it’s better they incorporate
their regatta in with the Town Regatta, so that it’s much more of a
community spirited thing now. And as you’ve seen, there’s stalls out
on the Quay, where various local charities have set up their stalls to try
and raise a bit of extra cash, and most of the surplus funds go to St
Helena’s Hospice. [For more about the Wivenhoe Town Regatta,
including photographs - click here].
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