Godfrey Whittall

Godfrey Whittall was one of five members of the Whittall family who represented Smyrna FC, winners of the silver medal, at the 1906 Olympics. He was Lloyd’s agent at Canakkale in the Dardanelles before emigrating to Rhodesia, where he died.

One of three footballing brothers who all born in Smyrna (now Izmir) Turkey, he played alongside siblings Edward and Alfred in Athens. The three brothers were sons of Edward Whittall a well known botanist who shipped many Turkish flowers and bulbs to Kew Gardens to be displayed in their famous botanical gardens and several species are named after him. The Edward Whittall Garden at Bornova is Turkey is still in the hands of his family and his great grandson Brian Whittall continued to cultivate the gardens Edward created. The house is used on occasions as a wedding venue. The three Whittall brothers were joined in the 1906 team by their cousins Donald and Herbert Whittall, Edmund (also his brother-in-law) and Jacques Giraud and Percy la Fontaine.

Sport was very much a hobby in the Levant at the turn of the 20th century despite the Bournabat Rugby and Football Club being founded in 1894. It was never taken seriously as the Whitall’s first priority was the commercial world they were engrossed in. That all started in 1809 when Liverpool-born Charlton Whitall, the great-grandfather of eight members of the 1906 Olympic football team, went to Smyrna, a major sea port in Western Turkey, on behalf of the Liverpool trading company he worked for when just aged 18. Two years later he established his own trading company, C.Whittall & Co, and they exported Turkish produce to England. It became part of the Levant Trading Company which had been established since 1581 to regulate and control trade between England and Turkey. When Charlton died in 1867 he was one of the last surviving members of the Levant Company. The Levant became a community consisting predominantly of Westerners (mostly British, French, Dutch and Italian) who settled long term or permanently in the Ottoman Empire and the 1906 Smyrna Olympic XI consisted of nine British and two French players.