18 Facts About Bert Bushnell

Bertram Harold Thomas Bushnell was a British rower who competed in the 1948 Summer Olympics and won the gold medal alongside Dickie Burnell in the double sculls, having had hopes to compete in the single sculls following a series of victories whilst competing in South America.

Bert Bushnell retired from rowing in 1951 and ran his own company renting cabin cruisers, and had three children.

The Bert Bushnell family have had a Royal Warrant since before the First World War and this has continued into the present generation with the senior member appointed a Royal Waterman to the reigning British monarch.

John Henry Bert Bushnell carried on the business of renting self-propelled rowing boats, dinghies, skiffs, punts, camping punts, until the early 1920s when he obtained electric canoes followed closely by motor-driven launches.

Bert Bushnell first competed in rowing in August 1939 at the Maidenhead Regatta.

At the 1946 Henley Royal Regatta, Bert Bushnell lost to Burnell in the Diamond Challenge Sculls.

Bert Bushnell won the Wingfield Sculls in 1947, but lost to Jack Kelly in the semi-final in the Diamond Challenge Sculls in 1947.

Bert Bushnell hoped to compete at the 1948 Summer Olympics in the single scull event.

However, after he was a distant runner-up by five lengths in the Diamond Challenge Sculls at Henley Royal Regatta on 4 July 1948, to Australian policeman Mervyn Wood, who subsequently won the Olympic singles that year, Bert Bushnell was chosen instead to pair with old Etonian Oxonian rower Dickie Burnell in the Olympic double sculls event, having never previously trained with his new partner.

Bert Bushnell would invite Kelly and Wood over for dinner, with his guests bringing the food.

At the Olympic regatta on the Henley Royal Regatta course, which only measured 1900 metres, Bert Bushnell was in the bow and Burnell the stern seat, or as Bert Bushnell indicated later: "I was on the bridge and Dickie was in the engine room".

Later the businesses were split with Bert Bushnell transferring to Maidenhead, and his older brother Leonard operating the original Wargrave boatyard until Leonard's death in 1974.

Bert Bushnell was a founder member and later Chairman of the British Hire Cruiser Federation.

About 2000 Bert Bushnell donated his gold medal to the River and Rowing Museum in Henley, as he was concerned about it being stolen from his home and figured it was easy enough to go and visit it at the museum.

In October 2006 Bert Bushnell presented the trophy to Alan Campbell as winner of the Wingfield Sculls.

Bert Bushnell died at the Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading, Berkshire on Saturday, 9 January 2010, aged 88, survived by his three daughters and his partner Monica Rees.

Bert Bushnell's funeral was on 27 January 2010 at the Parish Church of Saint Mary the Virgin at Henley-on-Thames.

Bert Bushnell was initially thought to be the final surviving gold medallist from the British team at the 1948 Summer Olympics, however David Bond wrote in to The Guardian to inform the newspaper that he was very much alive.