Rangoon University Boat Club (RUBC) was founded by Sir Arthur Eggar (Law Professor) in 1923. He rowed at Cambridge University and popularized the Egg-Bairn rowing style. He was impressed with the prowess of the Burmese Laung rowers and wanted to introduce the Western rowing style to RU students. He pledged a third of his Professor’s salary for running the Boat Club.
In the mid 1950s, Sir Arthur Eggar wrote an autobiography for the Guardian Magazine and was published in three issues.
The early RUBC crews competed against RBC (Rangoon Boat Club), Burmese Laung rowers and the Inlay Leg-rowers.
Sir Arthur was elected Life President of RUBC. A bronze bust was displayed on the Club Promontory (before the Adhamma Era).
His successors include Commodore Than Pe. U Tun Thoung, Sithu U Tin and Saya William Paw.
The 40th Anniversary Regatta was cancelled due to “disturbances” and “security concerns” in 1963.
Sithu U Tin (President) decided NOT to cancel the 40th Anniversary Dinner at Kandawgyi.
Sithu U Tin, U Po Zon and U Tin Htoon compiled the history of RUBC and published in the souvenir program.
To celebrate the 40th Anniversary, U Tin Htoon and several Old Members compiled a Souvenir Magazine.
U Tin Htoon chaired the Souvenir Magazine Sub-Committee.
U Myo Myint was Vice-Chair.
U Htaik San (Henry Kao) was Secretary.
I was a Contributing Editor. I wrote Prelude for every section. I also wrote three articles.
In addition, the group donated towards the cost of reprinting Sir Arthur’s Autobiography (which would be of interest not only to rowing enthusiasts but law students and staff).
Founder & Life President of RUBC
The back cover of the RUBC Regatta Program usually displayed the short version of Sir Arthur Eggar’s Rowing Song.
Pull long and steady boys
Strange though it may seem
The hardest stroke won’t send the boat
The swiftest down the stream
If you wish to keep your boat afloat
And brave life’s stormy weather
You must not put your oar too deep
But always “PULL TOGETHER”
RUBC (Rangoon University Boat Club) and CURC (Calcutta University Rowing Club) raced on December 13, 1958.
RUBC won the Inter-Varsity race.
In the early days, prizes were awarded only to the winners.
Later, cups of varying sizes or medals (Gold, Silver and Bronze) were awarded to the top three Novice crews.
P Orr Tun Yin sold the cups and medals.
The 40th Anniversary Issue and the 90th Anniversary Issue lists the Challenge Cups.
U Nyo donated a huge sum to the Rangoon University Estate. The RU Student Union Building and the RUBC Boat Club were built with his donation.
U Nyo also donated the “U Nyo Cup” for Coxed Eights. It was later replaced by the President’s Challenge Cup.
Venables Bowl (for Coxless Pairs) was won by Dr. Harry Saing (Bow) and Tin Htoon (Stroke) at the 1958 ARAE Regatta held at Calcutta,
Willingon Trophy (for Coxed Fours) was by Dr. Harry Saing (Bow), Victor Htun Shein (2), Sunny Teng (3), Tin Htoon (Stroke) and Sein Htoon (Cox) at the 1960 ARAE Regatta held at Colombo.
RUBC used to elect EC at the AGM (Annual General Meeting).
Usually the election is for Treasurer.
However, if there are vacant positions, they are also filled.
It usually takes four years to become a Captain.
One gets elected as Treasurer at the AGM.
He becomes Secretary, Vice Captain and Captain at the subsequent AGMs.
For some period
Sir Arthur Eggar founded Rangoon University Boat Club (RUBC) and served as the Life President.
In the 50’s, he wrote his biography for the Guardian Magazine in three installments.
Several old Crocs donated to reprint Sir Arthur Eggar’s biography in time for the 90th Anniversary of the Founding of RUBC.
The donors include
The biography was printed along with the Commemorative Issue for the 90th Anniversary of the founding of RUBC. I served as Contributing Editor for the Commemorative Issue. I wrote three articles and Preludes for all the sections.
On the first trip, Sir Arthur came to Burma and served as a Lecturer in Mathematics at the University of Rangoon.
He returned to the UK. After becoming a lawyer and serving in the Middle East, Sir Arthur returned to Burma as a Law Advisor to the Burmese Government and as Professor of Law.
He founded Rangoon University Boat Club (RUBC) in 1923. He pledged a third of his salary (as Professor of Law at Rangoon University) for use by RUBC. He was elected as Life President of RUBC.
He donated a Pewter Trophy to be presented to the winner of the Senior Novices event.
Sir Arthur rowed at Cambridge University. He is credited for proposing the Egg-Bairn rowing style.
He wrote his biography for the monthly Guardian Magazine (in three installments).
In 2013, U Tin Htoon, U Myo Myint, U Htaik San and team compiled a Commemorative Issue to celebrate the 90th Anniversary of the founding of RUBC.
I was a Contributing Editor for the Issue. I wrote Preludes for each section. I also wrote three articles.
In addition, U Tin Htoon invited selected Old Members (mostly RUBC Gold and some Past Captains) to contribute to the re-printing and distribution of Sir Arthur’s autobiography. The intended audience include present and past members of RUBC, and also teachers, students and practitioners of Law.
Saya U Tin Htut, U Tin Htoon, Dr. Thein Htut, Dr. Tin Wa, Dr. Donald Chan, U Myo Myint, U Hla Min, U Thura Thant Zin, U Htaik San (Henry), and Daw Joe Phyu responded.
RUBC repaid the metta and cetana of Sir Arthur Eggar by displaying his Bronze Bust on the Club Promontory.
Sadly, during the Adhamma Era, the Bronze Bust of Sir Arthur Eggar disappeared from the Club Promontory.
There are at least two Rowing songs. The one printed at the back of the Agenda for the RUBC Regattas is as follows.
Pull long and steady bows
Strange though it may seen
The hardest stroke won’t send the boat
The swiftest down the stream.
If you want to keep the boat afloat
And brave life’s stormy weather
You must not put your oar too deep
But always “Pull together“.
Photos by Ko Khin Maung Myint (M71)
Ko Khin Maung Myint, Ko Myint Than and Ko Win Kyaw were Novice crew mates (with Ko Sein Myint as cox). They later rowed for RIT.
Ma Tin Aye (C73) wrote :
ရှားပါးဓါတ်ပုံကျွန်မတို့လေးယောက်တွဲပုံလေးပါ
ကျွန်မတို့ဆီမှာတောင်အဲဒီပုံမရှိလို့ခုမှ save ရပါတယ်ကျေဇူးပါ ကို Hla Minနှင်.ကို Khin Maung Myint
အဲဒီအချိန်က Inter Institute လှေလှော်ပြိုင်ပွဲလေးယောက်ပွဲ(Fours)မှာကျွန်မတို့အဖွဲ့ပထမဆုရွှေတံဆိပ်ရခဲ့ပါတယ် သတင်းစာထဲမှာပါတဲ့ဓါတ်ပုံနှင့်သတင်းနှင့်ဖြတ်ပိုင်းရယ်ဆုရထားတဲ့လှော်တက်ပုံရွှေတံဆိပ်ရင်ထိုးရယ်လည်းသိမ်းထားရင်းကအိမ်အပြောင်းအရွှေမှာပျောက်ဆုံးခဲ့ရပါတယ်အဲဒီအချိန်ကကျွမတို့ရဲ့ Cox က ကိုစိန်မြင့် ကိုမြင့်သန်းတို့ပါ ကျွန်မကbow ပါ စိတ်မကောင်းစရာသတင်းကတော့ အဲဒီ Fours ထဲမှာပါတဲ့ကျွန်မတို့ရဲ့သူငယ်ချင်းကြည်ကြည်ဝင်း (Stroke) ကပြီးခဲ့တဲ့ 29th July2021 မှာ Covid နဲ့ ကွယ်လွန်သွားခဲ့ပါတယ်
HlaMin 