Charles Cotterill (“Skipper”) Lynham 14 June 1858 to 27 October 1938 LYN00001

Home Page The home page of the Farndale family website of which this section is a part

Baker Home Page The Home page of the Baker family part of the website

The Baker Directory The Baker Family directory

Baker History Notes on the Baker family history

The Baker Family Tree The Baker Family Tree, which is the best way to search the family history

General Sir Martin Farndale KCB

Stoke on Trent

1858

Charles Cotterill Lynam, son of Charles and Lucy Emma (nee Garner) Lynam, was born on 14 June 1858. He was baptised on 15 June 1858 at the Anglican church of St Peter Ad Vincula at Stoke on Trent (PR). His birth was registered in the third quarter of 1859 (GRO Staffordshire Vol 6B Page 164).

Charles Cotterill Lynam was the eldest (in surviving to adulthood) of fourteen children of the architect Charles Lynam and his wife Lucy Emma.

Isle of Man

1870

Charles Cotterill Lynam was educated at King William's College on the Isle of Man.

Stoke on Trent

1871

1871 Census – The Quarry, Stoke on Trent, Staffordshire

Charles Lynam, 42, architect and surveyor

Lucy E Lynam, 37

Charles C Lynam, 12

Robert G Lynam, 11

George Lynam, 10

Lucy E Lynam, 8

Henry M Lynam, 6

Mary Lynam, 5

Helen P Lynam, 4

William V Lynam, 3

John Y Lynam, 1

A governess and three servants

Oxford

1879

After graduation he worked for a short time in his father's office and then in 1879 won a scholarship to Hertford College, Oxford. There he played for the Oxford varsity chess team and the rugby football team and graduated in 1882.

During his university days he cruised and sailed on the inland waters of the Thames.

Stoke on Trent

1881

1881 Census – Hartshill the Quarry, Stoke on Trent

Charles Lynam, 52, alderman, architect and surveyor

Lucy E Lynam, 47

Charles C Lynam, 22

Henry M Lynam, 16

Lucy E Lynam, 18

Mary Lynam, 15

Helen P Lynam, 14

William V Lynam, 13

Thomas R Lynam, 9

Alfred E Lynam, 8

Richard B Lynam, 6

Katherine M Lynam, 5

James W Lynam, 2

Three servants

Oxford

1882

In 1882 Charles Lynam was appointed assistant master at the Oxford Preparatory School (now called the Dragon School).

1885

In 1885 Charles C. Lynam married Catherine Alice Hall (1865–1957).

Catherine Alice Hall (HAL00100), aged 19, married Charles Cotterill (“Skipper”) Lynham, a schoolmaster, (LYN00001) at Audlem on 6 August 1885 (MR).

1886

Charles Lynam became headmaster in 1886.

Skipper Lynam was one of the leading headmasters of his generation and was revered by all the staff who served under him and the boys (and later, girls) who attended the school.

1888

Their daughter, Catherine (“Kit”) Lynam (LYN0002) was born in 1888.

1887

Their son, Charles Gartner Lynam (LYN0003) was born on 13 August 1887.

1891

1891 Census – The Quarry, High Street, Stoke on Trent

Charles Lynam, 62, architect and surveyor

Lucy E Lynam, 57

Charles C Lynam, 32, school master

Helen P Lynam, 24, teacher

James W Lynam, 12

George Lynam, 30, surveyor

Thomas Llewelyn, a mathematics teacher was visiting

Two servants

1895

In 1895 Charles Lynam moved the school from Crick Road to Bardwell Road into buildings designed by his father.

C. C. Lynam became famous for managing the school according to principles of liberal humanism, "actively encouraging originality in boys and affording them every opportunity to discover and develop their own interest and genius. He was also a strong supporter of co-education, and his daughter was the first girl to enter the school."

1901

1901 Census – The School House, 30 Bardwell Road, Oxford

Charles Cotterill Lynam 42, schoolmaster

Catherine A Lynam, 35

Charles G Lynam, 13

Catherine M Lynam, 12

Alfred Lynam, brother

Mabel Lynam, sister in law

Charles C. Lynam greatly enjoyed sailing and cruising and often invited friends and Dragon School's staff members to accompany him in yachting. He disliked being addressed as "Sir" and preferred to be called "Skipper".

As a yachtsman Lynam had a touch of genius. His cruises in Blue Dragon I, II, and III up the west coast of Scotland and across the North Sea to Norway and the North Cape became legendary. In recognition of the latter, a distance of 1387 miles, he was awarded the challenge cup of the Royal Cruising Club.

C. C. "Skipper" Lynam promoted subsidized tuition for talented students unable to pay the full tuition and served as the Dragon School's headmaster from 1886 to 1920, when he retired. The Dragon School was co-educational from the 1890s onwards, gained a considerable reputation for its freedoms, and was sometimes referred to as Lynam's preparatory school.

Skipper Lynam had in his life time three boats which sailed under the name of ‘Blue Dragon’.

Blue Dragon I Blue Dragon II in the Shetland islands in 1909 Blue Dragon III

Some publications include:

Lynam, Charles Cotterill (1907). The Log of the "Blue Dragon," 1892-1904. Written by Various Hands and Now Revised and Set Forth by C.C. Lynam. Illustrated with Sketches, Photographs and Maps.

Lynam, Charles Cotterill (1913). To Norway and the North Cape in 'Blue Dragon II., ' 1911-1912 ... Illustrated in Colour and with Photographs, Sketches and Maps.

Lynam, Charles Cotterill (1917). Songs of the "Blue Dragon".

See also The Skipper’s War.

1917

John Betjeman and his family used to holiday at Trebetherick in Cornwall, where they met up with Skipper Lynam’s brother ‘Hum’ and his family. John had not been happy at his school in Highgate and Hum persuaded the Betjemans that John should attend the Oxford Prepartory School. The future Poet Laureate John Betjeman joined the Oxford Preparatory School as a ten year old boarder in the Summer Term of 1917. John was very homesick to begin with and Skipper spent some time with him, arm on his shoulder, getting him through it.

He later wrote about his time at the school in ‘Summoned By Bells’ (Chapter V Private School — To the Dragon School in Oxford; bicycling to look at church architecture) in which he recalled Skipper Lynam reading out the names of those who had died “for King and Country and the Dragon School.” The news, John could see, caused Skipper considerable grief, but for the boys what was of far greater interest or concern were their bicycles, gangs “and what there was for prep.”

London

1921

1921 Census – 6 Parliament Hill Mansions, St Pancras, London

Catherine Alice Lynam, 55

Charles Garner Lynam, 38, born at Audlem, Cheshire, an engineer with Messrs Armstrong Whitworth.

1938

In retirement he was a keen sailor and world traveller. At age eighty, after recently returning from a voyage to Australia, he embarked on a voyage from England to Padang aboard M. V. Alcinous (Blue Funnel Line). On the outward voyage, he died of angina and, according to his wishes, was buried at sea on 27 October 1938.

R. G. Collingwood, a fellow passenger, wrote a note of sympathy to Skipper Lynam's brother Alfred Edmund "Hum" Lynam (but did not mention that a hammerhead shark and a carpenter's error nearly created an embarrassing situation).

Skipper Lynam died on 27 October 1938 at sea.

Frank Sidgwick (1879–1939), scholar, publisher, writer of light verse, and old boy of the Dragon School, wrote The Times obituary for Mr. C. C. Lynam.

MR. C.C. LYNAM

HEADMASTER OF THE DRAGON SCHOOL

“Mr. Charles Cotterill Lynam, the ‘Skipper’ of the famous Dragon Preparatory School at Oxford from 1886 to 1920, and an honorary Fellow of Hertford College, died at sea on Thursday at the age of 80. The eldest surviving child of the large family of the late Mr. Charles Lynam F.R.I.B.A., of Stoke-on-Trent, he was born on June 15th 1858. He was educated at King William’s College, Isle of Man, and at Hertford College, Oxford, where he took honours in mathematics. For three years he played Rugby football for the University, being for some time the time a ‘three-quarter’ in Harry Vassall’s famous XV. But he did not get his ‘Blue’; in his last year he had begun teaching at the day school in Crick Road, Oxford, which had recently been started, under the Rev. A.E.Clarke, by a few Oxford Dons for their sons, and could not or would not play in out-matches. After taking his degree in 1882 he became assistant master at the school, and on the death of Mr. Clarke four years later he was appointed headmaster. He retired in 1920, and was succeeded by his brother, Mr. A.E. Lynam.

In 1887 he married Catherine, daughter of Mr. J. Hall, of Kynsal Lodge, Audlem, Cheshire, and had a son and a daughter, both of whom passed through his school, the latter being the first girl to enter, while his son became a master on the staff. J.H.R. Lynam, son of A.E.Lynam and nephew of C.C. also became a master at the school and was an international hockey player.

Mr. Lynam was an original member of the Association of Head Masters of Preparatory Schools, being elected chairman of the council in 1908 and again in 1921. In 1895 he founded, and for five years edited, the organ of that body, the ‘Preparatory Schools’ Review’.

Originally the official title of the school was ‘the Oxford Preparatory School,’ but later it was changed to the Dragon School. Just before the end of last century it was moved to Bardwell Road, in buildings designed by Mr. Charles Lynam senior. Boarders began to be taken in the early nineties, and soon equalled or even outnumbered the day boys. But it would be misleading to write in official terms of the school or of its headmaster. Long before the end of last century ‘Lynam’s’ had a reputation far beyond the bounds of Oxford; and it is in many ways significant that from the early nineties its presiding genius was known as ‘the Skipper’ – not merely at first sub rosa by the school and the staff in unofficial hours, but in the event by the formally rhetorical parent on speech day. The use of the nick-name, so appropriate to one who was headmaster half the year and yachtsman the other half, was characteristic of the absence of stiffness and formality which the school imbibed from him.

In a crisis now happily forgotten at one of the great public schools, a goaded assistant master once suggested in private the postulate that ‘if a headmaster can’t preach and can’t teach, he ought to be either a scholar or a gentleman.’ Three of those qualities were patent in the Skipper, but preaching, in its ordinary sense, he deliberately avoided. His one sermon was the example he set to all alike; and if its text can be stated in brief, it lies in the root of the word ‘generosity,’ not only in its current connotation but also with a flavour of its classical forebears. So, too, he was a pedagogue in the purest sense of the word – a companion of his boys, not an Olympian wielding the ferule. No one was prouder or happier than he in any honour won by them in their educational routine or afterwards in the world; no one saner in realizing its relative value. One of the most brilliant of his old pupils, speaking at an Old Boys’ dinner, put the rhetorical question : what was the distinctive character of the school and its training? and found the answer in the Skipper’s refusal to force his boys into conventional moulds, in his active encouragement of originality, in his affording them every opportunity to discover and develop each his own interest and genius. The Skipper attached great importance to leaving boys free to do what they liked with their spare time, instead of forcing them into a scheduled programme out of school as well as in school.

Ashore or at sea, the Skipper’s innumerable minor capacities made him a good man for an emergency. The geniality and sweet reasonableness that could soften and convince an irate harbourmaster in a midnight gale, or persuade a gamekeeper that the Skipper and twenty or thirty boys were doing no damage, or even were friends of the owner, stood him in good stead also in the drawing-rooms of querulous parents. In the amenities of life he was a keen player of bridge and chess; an indefatigable sketcher in pencil, water-colour, or oils; a most voracious reader of fiction; a capable plain cook. For thirty years he annually ‘produced’ a play of Shakespeare at the school (and surely nowhere is Shakespeare so well acted), often painting the scenery, and always coaching and prompting the boys and their sisters in the rehearsals, through that post-Christmas holidays period when one influenza germ will decimate a cast at the eleventh hour,

As soon as a term was ended (and sometimes before) the pedagogue dissolved into the mariner. His love of cruising began with schoolboy escapades off the Isle of Man, and developed by way of undergraduate canoe-racing into the devotion of nearly all holidays to the sailing of his own craft. His first yacht, the ‘Yellow Dragon’, was wrecked on the Happisburgh Sands in 1891, and he and his “crew” – an Old Boy, afterwards killed in the South African War – were rescued with difficulty by a Lowestoft trawler. The first ‘Blue Dragon’ was built for him by Theo Smith at Medley on Port Meadow, Oxford, and launched in 1892; her chronicles being written in ‘The Log of the “Blue Dragon”, 1892-1904,’ it suffices to say that he sailed her down the Thames and kept turning to the right until he made Cape Wrath. She was seven tons, Lloyd’s register; he cruised sometimes single-handed, but by preference with family or friends aboard – never a paid hand, and but once a pilot. In 1905 he sold this boat, and bought the ‘Isla’ from the then headmaster of Rossall, renaming her ‘Blue Dragon II’. In her he revisited the Western Isles, Orkney and Shetland, and in April 1911, made an epic crossing of the North Sea to Norway, reaching the North Cape in the following summer. For this feat he was awarded the challenge cup of the Royal Cruising Club. He was sailing that boat up the Christiania Fiord in 1914 when the news of the outbreak of the War reached him, and he only returned with difficulty to England, leaving her behind in Norway. While the war lasted he cruised ashore in a motor vehicle that was both ambulance for the wounded sent to Oxford hospitals, and caravan for holiday trips. ‘Blue Dragon III’, purchased after the War, was an “auxiliary” from the start, and though the Skipper, then over sixty, still preferred to sail, he welcomed the independence of wind and weather supplied by her engines.

With his school, as with his yacht, he was a ‘captain courageous,’ instinctively enterprising himself, and inspiring his crew with the confidence of his enthusiasm. To the looker-on, scholastic or nautical, many of his adventures appeared rash – were, indeed, frequently called so. But the Skipper, sitting at the helm of school or ship, continuously exercised a sixth sense of seamanship, which effectively took the wind from his critics’ sails.”

(The Times’, October 29th 1938)

Frank Sidgwick then set about writing a memoir in celebration of Skipper’s life. Sadly, he died before its completion, but these words found in his notes, make a fitting conclusion: “Like others of his generation from his part of England, he had, at least at one time, the endearing old-fangled habit of ending his letters without the formal ‘yours.’ I have been turning over many which end simply ‘Love, Skipper.’

Added to the gravestone of his brother, Dr Robert Lynam: ALSO OF CHARLES COTTERILL LYNAM HIS BROTHER WHO DIED AT SEA OCT 27th 1938