Prothero

 

F E, or F T E, Prothero appears in several places on this site. Unfortunately, I have not been able to assemble a full account of his life; here is what little I know.

Francis Thomas Egerton Prothero esq, BA, JP, was in 1901 lord of the manor of Malpas, near Newport in Monmouthshire, south Wales. He lived at Malpas Court, which was built by his grandfather between 1835 and 1838; it had a new, non-Prothero owner by 1916. In 1864 he married Mary Fanny Susanna Lewis and had a son, Freke Lewis, who died in the Boer War in 1900, and a daughter, Florence. F E died in 1917 and his wife in 1927.

The most useful source of information is a 1912 article reproduced on the Newport Past website. We learn that Prothero won book prizes at Eton (a small school near Slough) and prizes for rowing at Oxford. Rowing was his principal recreational activity; he had rowed on the Rhine, the Danube, the Seine, the Aar, the Moselle and the Weser, as well as on British rivers.

Christopher Thornhill of the Royal Cruising Club http://www.rcc.org.uk/ told me:

FE Prothero and WA Clark were both members of the Cruising Club (The Royal Cruising Club from 1902). Prothero was rear commodore from 1896 to 1900 and is described by Sir Arthur Underhill, the Club’s founder, as ‘a canoeist and oarsman of renown who has paddled or rowed over most of the rivers of Europe and Britain’. I think he was on the Danube in 1896. […]

F E Prothero and W A Clark edited A New Oarsman’s Guide to the Rivers and Canals of Great Britain and Ireland, a Cruising Club Manual which was published by George Philip & Son, London in 1896. Prothero wrote Supplement to A New Oarsman’s Guide. The Suir — The Nore — The Barrow — The Boyne, published by Cruising Club Offices, London in 1898. The Preface to the Guide says:

Our object is […] to stimulate the taste for a most delightful mode of travelling, by making oarsman aware of the large possibilities that exist even in these little islands of ours. To this the presence of some unknown or uncertain elements will be more an aid than a hindrance.

It has not been thought necessary to include any river or canal that passes wholly or in great part through a grimy manufacturing district, where nought in nature pleases and man is — well, apt to be in harmony with his surroundings; nor, except as part of a through route, any that is altogether devoid of interest in respect of scenery or architecture.

Happily, these restrictions do not seem to have led to the omission of any Irish waterways, although Prothero — who seems to have written the Irish material himself — did not manage to reach all of the waterways covered and was not always able to draw on accounts by other oarsmen or canoeists.

Use the Search box to find Prothero extracts on this site.