Sidney Swann

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Sidney Ernest Swann (1890–1976) was a Manx-English clergyman and rower who represented Great Britain in the 1912 and 1920 Olympics. He was born on the Isle of Man and was the son of a rower and clergyman who spent time in Japan as a missionary.

Swann went to Rugby School and then Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He took up rowing at Cambridge and quickly excelled. In 1910 he won the Colquhoun Sculls as a freshman, and helped Cambridge win the Visitors’ Challenge Cup and Wyfolds at Henley. In 1911 he won the Lowe Double Sculls and rowed in the Cambridge Boat Race crew in 1911 and 1912. He also set a record by rowing across the English Channel in 3 hours 50 minutes in 1911.

As a member of the Leander Club, Swann was the only Cambridge rower in the Leander eight that won the gold medal for Britain at the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm. He was the first Manx person to win Olympic gold, and another Manx Olympic gold would not come until 2012.

Swann continued to win rowing honors, including the University Pairs (1913), the Grand Challenge Cup at Henley (1913), and the Silver Goblets at Henley (1913 and 1914, partnering his brother Alfred). He captained the Cambridge crew in the 1914 Boat Race and led the team to victory.

World War I interrupted his rowing career, and he served as a military chaplain. After the war he returned to Cambridge as Chaplain and helped with Cambridge rowing in the early 1920s. He was part of the Leander eight that won silver for Britain in the 1920 Olympics.

Swann’s career as a clergyman took him around the world. He was Archdeacon in Nairobi (1926–27) and in Egypt (1928), then returned to England in 1933 as vicar of Leighton Buzzard. In 1937 he became vicar of St Mary Redcliffe in Bristol and, in 1941, was appointed Chaplain to King George VI.

In 1943 he became the first principal of the RAF Chaplains’ School at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he taught moral leadership to RAF officers and a chaplains’ refresher course. He left the post in 1944 and later became Canon Emeritus of Bristol Cathedral.

After his father’s death, Swann served as president of the National Amateur Rowing Association from 1942 to 1956, guiding its activities until it merged with the Amateur Rowing Association when amateur rules changed.

Swann died in Minehead, Somerset, at the age of 86.