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Maureen Howatt Archive

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• Maureen Howatt Archive

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Harry Clasper was a boat designer and builder and a professional rower. He was born in Dunston on 5 July 1812 and later moved to Jarrow where he worked in Jarrow pit. He later became apprenticed as a ship's carpenter in Brown's Boatyard in Jarrow. He later worked as a wherryman for Garesfield Coke Company.

He formed a crew for boat racing with his brother and two other men, Clasper being the stroke, his brother Robert the cox. He later tenanted The Skiff public house in Derwenthaugh. The Derwenthaugh crew, as they became known, were the dominant racing crew on the River Tyne but was defeated by a crew from the River Thames in a five mile race on the Tyne on 16 July 1842. He also operated the boathouse on the Wear in Durham.

In 1845 Clasper and his four brothers formed a coxed crew of a boat he had designed and built called Lord Ravensworth won the four oared event in the Thames Regatta and were termed the four-oared World Champions. Clasper, with a variety of crewmates, won the Champion Fours in the Thames Regatta another six times. In later years he ran various public houses in Gateshead and Newcastle upon Tyne. He died on 12 July 1870, ironically, probably of a stroke and thousands watched his last journey along the Tyne. He was buried in Whickham churchyard.

The research notes have bene retained in three files as presented to the office.

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