Bert Bushnell
| Personal information | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Full name | Bertram Harold Thomas Bushnell | ||||||
| Nickname(s) | Bert, Bertie | ||||||
| Nationality | English | ||||||
| Citizenship | British | ||||||
| Born |
3 September 1921 Wargrave, Berkshire, England |
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| Died | 10 January 2010 (aged 88) Reading, Berkshire, England |
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| Sport | |||||||
| Country |
 United Kingdom
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| Sport | Rowing | ||||||
| Event(s) | Single and double sculls | ||||||
| Club | Maidenhead Rowing Club | ||||||
| Former partner(s) | Dickie Burnell | ||||||
| Retired | 1951 | ||||||
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Medal record
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Bertram "Bert" Harold Thomas Bushnell (3 September 1921 – 10 January 2010) 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.
Having initially competed in athletics whilst at school, he took up competitive rowing in 1939, and during the Second World War he worked at John I. Thornycroft & Company's shipyard as a marine engineer and was involved in the evacuation of Dunkirk. He retired from rowing in 1951 and ran his own company renting cabin cruisers, and had three children.
Bushnell was born in Wargrave, Berkshire, the younger son of John "Jack" Henry Bushnell (born 17 January 1885 in Richmond, Surrey; died March 1970), a ship builder who had operated his own boatyard at Wargrave since 31 December 1917, and was a former rower who gave up his own Olympic dreams in order to provide for his family, and Lena Simmonds Bushnell (born January 1893 in Richmond, Surrey; died December 1957), who had been a shorthand typist and an opera singer. His older brother was Leonard John Bushnell (born 19 May 1918; died 1974). The 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 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. Both the motor-propelled craft could be hired for self-drive or with drivers. During this time boat building of various types was carried on at the site and, as years passed, larger and more sophisticated craft were constructed for both sale and hire. In the mid-1930s the first self-drive holiday hire cruiser was built and thereafter others followed up until 1939 when the boatyard took on rapid expansions to cope with Admiralty contracts to build fast motor boats for both Naval and RAF air/sea rescue.
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