Bravely We Rode And Well
BRAVELY WE RODE AND WELL
How American Metal Triumphed In The Great Brooklands Fargo Of '21.
JOSEPH BLOGGS
MAYBE A HALF century ago this year, a premonition warned H.F. Brockbank that Brooklands, Britain's only paved race track, would be crumbling to rubble before it ever saw another 500-mile motorcycle race.
Brock evidently was determined to get value for his entry fee while the going was good. Around the half distance mark in a race that was to make July 2, 1921 a redletter date in Brooklands' annals, the back cylinder head of his Blackburnc engine developed a centcr parting. lie had no spare fireplace with him but, taught by long experience to persist through thick and thin against secmingly hopeless odds, he dcspatched an aide to the Blackburne factory, 10 miles away, to get one. It arrived 80 mm. later. Brock broke off his single-cylinder motoring long enough to fit it, and was back in business again.
Then a valve cap blew out of the virgin head. The resulting flame jet caught fire to Brock’s breeches as he was diving off the Home Banking on the fastest leg of the circuit at around 80 mph. “Man is born to trouble, as the sparks fly upward,” says the Book of Job. Although he still had two-thirds of the track’s 2.76-mile perimeter left to cover before reaching his pit, Brockbank kept the throttle wide, thereby spreading the conflagration to his upper garments. When he finally pitted, scorched locally but less hurt than one would imagine, his mechanic, with a touch worthy of messrs. Laurel and Hardy, hosed Brock’s entire body and his face with pyrocidc.
Brockbank’s hunch had been right. As long as Brooklands survived, i.e., up to the outbreak of WWII, there never was another motorcycle 500-mile race there; the next one anywhere in Britain stayed “pending” for 37 years, until Thruxton in 1958. The incidents of the Blackburne head replacement and its rider’s facial “cosmetization” were fairly typical of the original, unforgettable 500. Also typical of the early Twenties racing scene in Britain was the fact that Brooklands’ longest day was dominated by American bikes, with an outright victory for Indian, and a Harley second up; U.S. big Twins enjoyed a supremacy at this period in all forms of British speed sport. It’s doubtful whether many who participated in the 1921 grind still survive, and most of those who do are either untraceable or of an age where memories play tricks on them. But two, Victor Horsman and Douglas Davidson, are still entirely cumpas in the mentis.
Horsman, now retired but in lively touch with the Liverpool motor engineering business that he founded and headed for over half a lifetime, rode a self-tuned Norton Single in the 500. “I took the race seriously,” he says. “I was just starting to make my way in the racing game, so, knowing it would be tiring, I went into hard training.” This made sense because the track surface, still not fully recovered from years of neglect during WWI, left practically everything to be desired; also, the Neanderthal fork springing of the day was laughably deficient in shock absorption. “I set myself a time schedule based on existing records, involving maintaining a steady speed of about 65 mph, and determined to disregard what anyone else did. I think I must have been the only bloke in the race who did this, and my impressions are of people rushing past me, then into the pits, then away again.”
Among the 1000-cc Indian contingent was one Reuben Harveyson, a man who enjoyed fun too much to ever go into training, hard or otherwise. He took such a beating that by mid-distance he was ready to, and did, call it a day. As it happened, though, he heartily disliked Horsman and vice versa. So when Reuben’s father pointed out to the boy that Vic was still alight on all burners and apparently shaping for a higher overall placement than the Harveyson Indian, notwithstanding the latter’s half-liter advantage, Reuben suffered himself to be lifted back into the saddle and resumed the kampj. Vic Horsman went on to top the 500cc class; Harveyson stuck the distance out and placed 3rd overall. His old man hadn’t been so far wrong at th at: on the all-powers scoreboard, the Norton ranked only one place below the Indian. Hate afterwards ripened to friendship in the Ilorsman/IIarveyson relationship, and old feuds were forgotten.
HOTSHOES AND NO-ACCOUNTS
The novel, if slightly daunting, prospect of 500 consecutive racing miles had attracted entries from the leading Brooklands hotshoes, including three vvho’d recently made, or shortly would make, speed history of a special kind Bert Le Vack (Indian), Douglas Davidson and Claude Temple (Harleys). Three months before the 500, Davidson had become the first Old World rider, or maybe the first rider anywhere, to beat 100 mph, authoritatively timed, though in one direction only. The following day, pitting his board track eight-valve Indian against Davidson’s Harley, Le Vack had sensationally covered the flying kilometer at 106.52. And in September, two months after the 500, Temple was to make the whole triple figures hassle an international concern by turning exactly 100 mph for the mile, tiiped both ways.
So it wasn’t surprising that England’s motorcycle press pundits had little hope for the relatively crude and underdeveloped British big Twins against the competing Indians and Harleys on July 2, 1921. They foretold the race would prove “stiffer than the TT,” adding that a 5 percent mechanical survival rate was the best that could be expected. But they were unduly pessimistic: just over half of the 64 starters made it to the finish inside the 12-hour time limit.
A field of this size was less surprising than it seems, insofar as the organizers weren’t exactly picky, either as regards riders or machines. Their main aim, it’s evident, was to put entry fees in the bank. They didn’t pay you to entertain their public, you paid for the privilege of it. Thus the established overdogs of Brooklands, men like Le Vack, Davidson, Temple, with their pur sang factory or ex-factory iron, rubbed elbows on the track (sometimes literally) with rookies and no-accounts riding bikes that wouldn’t see 70 if they were ridden down a precipice. These included, for instance, two-bog standard Matchlesses that “had been assembled the previous day and received no preliminary testing.” The makes enlisted, most of them long since defunct, recall a chapter of English motorcycle history when eggs were sparsely distributed in a multitude of baskets: ABC, Acme, Beardmore, Blackburne, Brockbank-Blackburne, Coventry Victory, Coulson, DOT, Douglas, Edmund, Hobart, Ivy, Levis, Line, Martin, Martinsyde, Massey Arran, Morris Warne, New Comet, New Imperial, Rex, R.W. Scout, Scott, Trump, Wooler and others.
Technically, one of the 500’s few novelties was the 25()-cc Morris Warne, a horizontal Twin with stcel-linered, aluminum cylinders but an incongruously primitive belt drive and no gearbox. Surprisingly, at a date when Herr Otto’s well known cycle supplied the power impulses for almost all European small displacement engines with any claim to high performance, a stroker set the pace in, and won, the strenuously competitive 350 class. It was described as “a standard sports model.
The ham element among the riders was typified by mahout J. Hadley, who went off into a brown study when he should have been gauging his braking for a pitstop, overshot and whammed a wedge into a conclave of officials with his BrockbankBlackburne, tiddly winking outraged factoti in all directions. The most publicized runner in the act, S.E. Wood (Douglas), whose entrant was none other than the Duke of York—the future King George VIbroke a chain and threw a tire simultaneously, then was disqualified for naively allowing himself to be pushed to the pits.
Considering that Brooklands would, before its demise in September 1939, be lapped by a motorcycle at over 124 mph, and that the fastest of the annual car 500s that started in 1929 would be won at a higher speed than the contemporary Indianapolis 500, it can be imagined that the punier bikes lapping in the low sixties that July day in ’21 didn’t exactly present a titanic spectacle. It was, however, redeemed to some extent, particularly in the early and middle stages, by the methods of the big-name, big-bike minority. For them the guiding principle seemed to be to wind the elastic right up and wait for something to give. These “bravely we rode and well” tactics, that had bitched the Redcoats’ hopes at Balaclava 67 years earlier, put trouble in store for many from the drop of the flag at 7:30 a.m., when the field shook the dust of a three-rank grid from 64 pairs of wheels. For easy identification of classes, riders wore distinctively colored vests.
LE VACK VS. DAVIDSON
Le Vack, the acknowledged King of Brooklands, had made one concession to prudence and his personal comfort. Instead of entering his board track eight-valve Indian, which was then the fastest thing on two wheels in Britain, and perhaps in the world, albeit a temperamental and savagely unluxurious mode of transportation, he settled for a big side-valver of the same make slower but less antisocial. It was nevertheless fast enough to trade the leadership, right from the start, with Davidson’s quick L-head Harley. Repeatedly they came past the pits neck to neck, then one, anon the other, would inch ahead a few bike lengths. Le Vack, a reporter noted, remained “imperturbable” throughout the longdrawn duel, whereas Davidson, except when he was eating Indian-flavored dust, kept glancing nervously behind at his crouching red-jerseyed pursuer.
Rubber, meaning both tires and belts for many of the British contenders, and just tires for the American-mounted elite with their all-chain transmissions, was the Achilles’ Heel of the trans-Atlantic racing world 50 years ago. And Le Vack was the 500’s f irst important victim of this ever present bane. He punctured, far from his pit, legged it home and changed his back tire and tube. Davidson, unopposed, forged ahead into a 7-lap lead.
Me anwhile, among the strung-out also-rans, Nemesis was dealing out doses of dolor. Cyril Pullin, who, later in the year, would hit a hundred miles per hour on a 500-cc Douglas for the first time ever, was in the throes of an epidemic of drive belt failures. Before he was through, his Zenith Anzani big Twin chewed nine belts to bits and burst or punctured seven tires. Only a minority of riders were wearing crash helmets these hadn’t yet become compulsory for racing in Britain—and Harry Reed doubtlessly regretted his nonprotective headgear when the. front tire left the rim of his DOT, jammed in the forks and landed him on his crown, flat out. Then Stanley Greening (Coulson), a luminary of the JAP engine firm, described a similar ass-over-ears parabola and joined Reed in the ranks of the walking wounded. The picturesquely named rider Smith asked to be allowed to change one of his Morris Warne’s cylinder heads, which, after the Brockbank precedent, could hardly be refused. (Actually the rules allowed the replacement of anything except cylinders and crankcases, which were put in wedlock by official ACU seals before the race started). When the magneto on E. Kickham’s Douglas failed, he was able to stay in the fight because the makers, with seemingly supernatural prescience, had had a spare mag sent by rail to the Weybridge depot, only a mile from the track; a mechanic whizzed thither, collected it and was back inside 20 min. whereat the Doug burst into renewed life.
Local fragmentation of the track surface had something to answer for, too. W.II. Bashall, riding a 750 Martinsyde, product of the Martin and Handasydc Co. that had built fighter planes for the Royal Flying Corps in WWI, was so painfully peened by deckle-edged bits of concrete that he had to stop and have his cuts dressed. Though this lost him the class lead to a Coventry Victor rival, he afterwards restarted, bloody but unbowed, and resumed the chase.
Le Vack, likely still reckoning that it would only be a matter of time before Davidson’s Harley overcooked itself or took its turn in the mounting massacre of tires, accepted a further mileage deficit by pitting to fit a new back wheel. This precautionary change was prompted by chances that the original wheel had been weakened while slowing on the flat suffered earlier. Immediate upshot of Bert’s temporary sidelining was that a man who’d never ridden Brooklands before, Fred Dixon, moved up into 2nd place, making the overall order Davidson-Dixon-Le Vack. Dixon, later famous as the only man to ever win solo, sidecar and car TTs, was riding a side valve Harley similar to Davidson’s in all main respects except one: through somebody’s aberration, presumably Fred’s, its forks had sidecar geometry. The effect on its handling, ridden solo, wasn’t apparent by merely looking at it, but if ever a bike needed a ring in its nose, that was it.
THE SHOWMAN'S TOUCH
Dixon had discovered its homicidal bent during practice but, unable to effect a proper diagnosis and cure in the time available, had made shift by facing his saddle with sandpaper and relying on friction to keep him seated during the impending karate bouts. The dodge worked, though with the minor reservation that the abrasive wore a hole in his breeches and rashered his backside, drawing copious blood.
A 20-sec. stop to discard the sandpaper didn’t cost Dixon his place but something else soon did. At full clip on the Railway Straight his front tire blew, pitching the Harley into a 180-deg. wobble that shot him over the handlebars and sent him lolloping along the concrete in diminuendo somersaults. 1'he covey had rolled clear off the rim; to make the bike rideable to just as far as the pits, he halfnelson’d it back on with his bare hands. Twenty minutes later he was back in the race and a half hour after that he was, incredibly, leading. Davidson had dropped from sight. He recalls:
“I’d latterly been getting a lot of pain and stiffness, dating from bullet wounds received in the first World War. The evening before the 500 I’d had an intensive course of massage but on race day I still wasn’t really in any condition to ride. Well, 1 managed to stick with the Harley for nearly 340 miles, at which time 1 was leading. Then a valve broke. Pushing this big bike to the pits, about a mile and three quarters away, was something I couldn’t possibly have managed by myself, exhausted as I was. So, knowing what the result would be, I let another fellow in on the pushing. Naturally they disqualified me, and that was that.’’
With Davidson out of the way, the Le Vack vs. Dixon duel swayed Bert’s way, in spite of a catalog of minor troubles that included sparkless plugs and a puncture or two. Gradually the Indian gained on the Harley, then took it, then started piling up a lead that was never challenged. Presumably forgetting, or not realizing, that the victory loot would include a parcel of world records, but evidently anxious to avoid an overkill victory, he added a true showman’s touch during the last 20 miles by stopping off on the uninhabited side of the track and smoking a cigarette. This unrehearsed disappearance, his wife told me years later, nearly gave her a nervous breakdown as she agonizedly comtemplated the possibilities.
Fred Dixon, with no cigarette to sustain him, homed 9l/2 mi. later, and Reuben Harveyson limped in after a further half hour’s interval. Reuben’s condition by this time, Motor Cycle reported, was “decidedly groggy,” to which Motor Cycling added that, “surely there has never been a motorcycle event in which physical fitness counted for so much. The long continued monotony of tearing around the track, combined with the sustained crouching attitudes, wearied the riders until some of them appeared thoroughly exhausted. Yet others, among them some who completed the 500 miles at the fastest speeds, were prepared to carry on indefinitely.”
Honorably included among these others was the hard training exponent, Victor Horsman, whose 500 not only beat the 750 class winning average but trousered five ‘/2-liter world records, ranging up to 500 miles and eight hours, at speeds mostly around 62 mph. Le Vack himself collected no less than 10 Class L (lOOOcc) records, the fastest at just over 80; and Fred Dixon, the Brooklands deb w'ho’d never set eyes on the track until the day before it sliced thick shims off his blunt end, established a new “E” mark for 200 miles.
Mechanical and structural failures and malfunctions noted in the organizers’ log of the great fargo of ’21 included 18 valve breakages, “a very large number of refusals of engines to start properly after pitstops,” an unspecified tally of tire bursts and punctures, chain and belt breakages, leaking tanks, fractured luel lines, snapped-off handlebars, sundered frame lugs, loose and/or broken wheel spokes, spark plug flameouts, magneto faults, engine seizures, cracked cylinders and heads, and what hast thou.
Whether all these afflictions, or just a selection of them, fell to the lot of J.K Hull is not related, but he and his Wooler (a make known as the Hying Banana on account of its attenuated yellow gas tank) created some kind of inverted record by taking until 6:30 p.m. to complete the course. Bravely he rode but unwell. II Hull could have forseen that the next 500 would take place in 1958, no doubt he d have voted that far too soon.
