Paddling film from the thirties
Monday, March 8, 2010, 9 comments
British Pathé, an impressive archive of historical films, have some interesting material from the British polar expeditions during the last hundred years.
One film clip in particular, intrigued me: Greenland´s Icy Mountains No. 4 from 1932. Capt. Bartlett (who sailed with Peary) reach the Greenland coast with the schooner Morrisey and meet the hardy Eskimos.
The film is just over 2 minutes and the part that caught my interest starts at 47 secs – a group of Greenland hunters paddle past the camera in their kayaks. Look at their paddling technique: the high cadenza and the flowing organic movement that indicates high efficiency and minimal effort. A technique whittled down to a necessary minimum. No splash and almost no wake, they look like they could go on forever.
One might suspect that the high frequency could be somewhat exaggerated – the frame rate is not always accurate from old cameras. But those speeded-up old movies were often from hand cranked cameras and before standardization. The Pathés from the thirties were motor driven (a clockwork) and the frame rate was standardized – and looking at other parts: the people running along the cliff, the little boy jumping on board etc, indicates no frame rate shift.
So what I see is an impressive flow in the strokes, that I have seldom seen elsewhere. Looking closely at the movement of the blades I get the same feeling as watching an Olympic 500-meter final – the same combination of beautiful flow and micropaus/acceleration in the same dynamic stroke motion, but here used for effortless endurance instead of short term explosive power. Impressive and inspiring...
