Rover History 1945 - 1956

1949 - "Further outlook - 'Continuing Fair'".

1949 saw the return of a number of the Forces members and early in the now, New Year, we welcomed back Rex and Dick, and also another new member from the Seniors - Pete Gurney.

The first visit of the Senior Patrol to the Crew took place on 28th of Febuary in '49 and a very jolly evening was had. As the Crew was "becoming too large", a proposal was made that we should split the Crew into two Patrols and meet on seperate nights. This did not find favour as can be imagined, but nevertheless, the 'seed' had been sown and it made us sit up and do a bit of stocktaking. It was eventually decided to have a second Mate, and Dennis was appointed to act in this capacity along with Dave Parkin. The Secretarial affairs came under scrutiny and it was decided that it would be advisable to appoint an Assistant Secretary, so Dick was found a job.

Towards the middle of the year, two new members joined the Crew. They were Geoff Booth and Maurice, and two more chaps returned from the Forces, Ray Nell and "Shag" Shaw. Things were getting better as far as membership was concerned, at least so we led ourselves to believe, but later in the year the axe came down again and Mick and Ken were whipped from us into the Forces and in addition two members resigned . These were Pete A and Man-Gee. As Mick had been our Treasurer, further re-organisation was necessary, and Peter Stacey became Treasurer.

Three more Investitures took place in the year, these were Terry, George and Dick, swelling the Rovers a little more and reducing our 'stock' of Squires. Three outsiders were taken under our wing, one was to be attached to us for some time, he was Geoff Wilson, a Rover from Leeds, the other two were on a visit to this country for a year under an exchange scheme between Sheffield and Wellington, NZ. The New Zealanders, Jim and Cyril were soon at home with us and we with then and they soon became frequent visitors to the Den.

A proposal to reduce the subs from 1/- per fortnight to 6d was soundly defeated by 8 votes to 2, and strangely enough, the only two who voted for this were the two who were earning the most - it just shows doesn't it, you can never understand human nature. A further Dance was held and this time we had a 'Nautical Dance' which again proved a success.

The Crew made a strange decision towards the end of the year and that was they agreed to join forces with the Dramatic Society and the Youth Club, to put on a Revue called "Dry Gang", the reason for this strange title? D for Drama, R for Rovers and Y for Youth Club. The show was quite successful, and our kitty was about two to three pounds better off for this one night show. So you can see that we certainly had a mixed bag of activities during this period.

We were not to ride the waves of success' for long however, for soon after all these events, we sustained a further setback in that Jim, the RSL, resigned owing to leaving Sheffield. This didn't cause us to collapse, but we were at a pretty low ebb once more. We presented Jim with an inscribed tankard for all his good work.

So the ending of the year came and we were once again a leaderless Crew. This was as far as HQ were concerned, but we were not helpless for long, and Dave Parkin took over the reins and started a period of leadership that was to continue for almost twelve months.