William Beach

Bill Beach (1850-1935), sculler, came to New South Wales as a young boy with his English parents, who settled at Albion Park, NSW. Having begun work at the age of nine, and having trained as a blacksmith with his father, he first got into a heavy, fixed-seat rowing boat at the age of seventeen. He was in his early thirties when he began rowing seriously, winning £25 for a race at Woolloomooloo Bay. Sponsored by a publican, John Deeble, he upgraded his boat, won the Australian championship in 1884 and secured the world championship by beating Australian-based Canadian Ned Hanlan (‘wizard of the sliding seat’) a few months later. He accumulated victories and prizewinnings until March 1886, when he and Deeble went to London. In August Beach won the International Sweepstakes on the Thames for a prize of £1 200. He defended his Thames title in September and won the world championship and £1 000 in November. He returned to a hero’s welcome in Sydney. In November 1887 thousands of spectators saw him beat Hanlan again, on the Nepean. A year later, again in front a vast crowd on the Parramatta River, he beat Hanlan once and for all, for £500. A father of twelve, Beach lived at Dapto all his life (in later life, in ‘Champion Cottage’) and was active in municipal organisations. He is commemorated in Bill Beach Park at Mullet Creek, Dapto and in the Bill Beach memorial monument, Cabarita Park, Concord.