Roland Prout

Roland Prout was the son of a Plymouth children’s book author. In 1922 the family moved by motorbike and sidecar to Canvey Island and built a bungalow on a plot of land they had bought. Roland and his younger brother Frank enjoyed the outdoor-life at their new home, and when the two siblings were barely five-years-of-age, their father built them a canoe in which to traverse a local creek. Their father started a boat-building business in 1935 and Roland and Frank helped out in the business whenever they could. The business eventually became very successful as G. Prout & Sons. In 1964, one of their catamarans was the first multihull vessel to circumnavigate the earth, and in 1989 they won a Queen’s Award for Industry.

In the early 1950s, Prouts made the world’s first production catamaran, the Shearwater, and with it came the Shearwater class of racing. Prouts catamarans became well known all over the world, and in 1963 they launched the 77ft (23.5m) Tsulamaran at Canvey Island. It was the largest European-built catamaran at the time.

Roland and Frank Prout were no newcomers to canoe racing in the post-war era and won seven prizes at the Chertsey regatta in 1949. An outdated amateur status rule, however, forbade them from competing in National Championships because they were professional boat builders. This rule changed, however, and in 1951 they made up for their long absence by winning the K-2 1,000 and 10,000 metres titles at the 1951 National Championships. Roland also won the K-1 1,000 title. The siblings added the K-2 500 in 1952, had a clean sweep of all three kayak pairs titles in 1953, and rounded off their career by capturing the K-2 1,000 and 10,000 in 1954.

Prior to the 1952 Olympics, the brothers spent some weeks in Sweden training with the 1948 Olympic gold medallist Hans Berglund, but they disappointed at Helsinki by finishing seventh and last in the opening heat in the K-2 1,000 metres. Roland later became a very successful catamaran racer.