Look out, it’s Jaws off the West Pier!

Brighton Argus, 10 May 1976

Sharks a mere 200 yards off  Brighton this weekend frightened swimmers and went dangerously close to two boats off the West Pier.

On Saturday afternoon, when the sharks were first spotted, police toured the beach with loud hailers warning swimmers not to go out too far. Among the first to spot the sharks was Susan Trangmar, of Ditchling Crescent, Brighton. She and her boyfriend, Roderick Coyne, were rowing about 200 yards from the West Pier when a passing speedboat hailed them.

“We looked around and saw the fins, Susan said. “There were two of them, really quite close to the boat.

“The most frightening moment was when one of them dived and we panicked for about three minutes, thinking it might come up underneath the boat, like something out of Jaws.”

Find this and other fascinating stories in our collection of local newspapers at the Brighton History Centre.

Brighton and the 1948 Olympics

With the 2012 Olympics opening tomorrow, it is interesting to note that Brighton can claim several connections with the Olympic Games of 1948 – the last time London was the host city.

Black Rock Swimming Pool

Jean Caplin took part in the Women’s 200 metre breast stroke at the Wembley Pool in August 1948. Eighteen year old Jean, of the Brighton Ladies Swimming Club, was national ASA champion in 1946. Her trainer was Jack Thompson, Superintendent of the Black Rock Swimming Pool. She made it through to the second semi-finals but lost out to Nancy Lyons of Australia.

At the Goldstone Ground in July, Afghanistan played Luxembourg in the Olympic football competition. Despite the crowd yelling ‘encouragement in Arabic and Hindustani’, Afghanistan lost to Luxembourg six goals to nil.

Goldstone Ground, Hove where the Olympic football match took place

Also present at the Olympics was Brighton man, Mr A J P Martin, a timekeeper at the boxing events. He was present at a match where Arnoldo Pares, Argentine bantam-weight, tried to reduce his boxing weight by cutting his hair with a borrowed penknife.

Roger Musgrave, son of Clifford Musgrave, the Director of the Royal Pavilion and Museums,  was an interpreter for the French team attending the Olympic Games. Despite being based in Acton, he seemed unperturbed, stating that he was ‘interested in everything – except sport’

Paul Jordan, Senior History Centre Officer

With thanks to Vicki Tambling for her research.

Olympic Display

References to the Olympics seem to be everywhere at the moment, some cropping up in the unlikeliest places! Searching recently for an exhibition catalogue from the 1950s, I discovered details of an Olympic Games Philatelic Exhibition held here at Brighton Museum in October 1959. Present at the Museum Opening Ceremony, among other dignitaries, was Count Vittorio Zoppi, the Italian Ambassador in London, representing the host nation for the Games to be held the following year in Rome.

Official souvenir catalogue

The collection on display belonged to Ernie Trory, a local man who was a member of the British Olympic Association and of the Brighton and Hove Philatelic Society. According to the exhibition catalogue, his idea was born soon after the London Games in 1948, and he quickly built up a significant collection of stamps, postmarks, postal stationery, seals and vignettes dating back to 1894, when the International Olympic Committee was established. Trory wrote an award-winning book, A Philatelic History of the Olympic Games, and won worldwide recognition – and many medals – for this fascinating collection, which included a set of commemorative stamps issued for the Games in Athens in 1896.

A keen local historian, Trory had previously published A Postal History of Brighton, 1673 – 1783. In our technological age, it is difficult to imagine a time when the post didn’t just appear on a daily basis, but Trory described the early, unsuccessful attempts to move mail from one place to another. His research also tells us that the earliest postal services to and from the town, were advertised in the London Gazette on 24 May 1686; they amounted to deliveries to Sussex towns, including Brighton, leaving London on Monday nights, and returning from the same places on Tuesdays.

Trory himself was a committed communist who joined the Party in 1931, at the age of 18. He took part in a hunger march from Brighton to London in 1932 (described in his book Between the Wars: Recollections of a Communist Orgainser) and visited Moscow in 1936. He founded a publishing company, Crabtree Press, and in 1946 wrote The Sacred Band: A Contribution to the Social History of Brighton, which he dedicated to ‘those members of the [trade union] movement who regularly attend their branch meetings’.

The sacred band

Politics and philately were not his only interests, however. He swam in the sea throughout the year, often enjoying a dip on his birthday in January. A Pathe news clip captures one such occasion in 1954; watched by crowds of men and women in their winter coats and hats, Trory and a group of similarly hardy Brighton swimmers run down a snowy beach to the water, enjoy an invigorating swim, and then return for a celebratory slice of cake.

And, perhaps even more unexpectedly, he discovered in middle age an aptitude for weight-lifting. Entering his first competition at the age of 50, Trory won many veteran awards and continued lifting weights into his seventies. Baron de Coubertin would certainly have been impressed.

Kate Elms, Brighton History Centre