Brownsea attracts visitors from all over the world, as you can see from the donated badges and Visitors' Book in the Trading Post / Scout Visitor Centre run by the Brownsea Island Service Team. The photograph below is of Scouters from Japan who, with me, were a part of the Headquarters 'Heritage Tour' in September 2000. Scouting Games Stalking Games Tracking Games Indoor Games Camp or Playground Cycists' Games: Bikes Town Games Night Games Seamanship Games First Aid Games Games for Strength On Trek Kim's Game. Baden-Powell's Games B-P's Adult Military Games Dan Beard's Games A. Mackenzie's Games G. Ripley's Games Ernest Seton's Games J. Thurman's Games.
Brownsea Island – The First Scout Camp. The camp BP organised from the 31st July to 9th August 1907 was actually an experimental summer camp to test his ideas in his book “Scouting for Boys” on Brownsea Island, a 500-acre, windswept tract in Poole Harbour off England’s southern coast. Brownsea Island Scout Stone On 1 August 1907 20 boys pitched their tents on Brownsea Island, little realizing how important and far-reaching their week would be. Lord Baden-Powell's experimental camp, based on scouting skills learnt in the army during the Boer War, set the foundation of the Scouting and Guiding movements today.
Here’s a guest post featuring four great rediscovered games for Scouts from Enoch Heise. Enoch’s blog Scouting Rediscovered should be on your reading list. Enoch has loads of enthusiasm and practical information on getting to the heart of Scouting from the perspective of a young (18 years old) Eagle Scout. Listen to a discussion with Enoch on Podcast 136.
Like you I am always looking for something new to add to the program but the best new ideas almost always turn out to be old ideas!
Sometimes, Meetings and Troop activities can get stuck in a rut, and this vital, 2-hour opportunity for fun and growth can be wasted. The solution to this is to keep the program varied and interesting with all kinds of Patrol Games and inter-Patrol competitions.
Too often, though, our creativity fails us and we find it hard to come up with a good selection of these games and activities. Fortunately, we have the benefit of 100 years of Scouting history full of all kinds of great games. These traditional Scout games are just as fun for Scouts today as they were decades ago. Sometimes they raise skill levels; sometimes they give great physical exercise; sometimes they’re just a lot of fun!
I’ve included the details of four of my favorite ones here in this post!
Wounded Prisoners
The great thing about Scout games is that they can be used to help Scouts improve in certain important skills. Instead of dryly drilling Scouts in a rank requirement, it can be turned into a game with a little preparation and creativity.
First Aid requirements are an excellent example of this. On the surface, First Aid requirements can be some of the most boring that Scouts have to learn. However, they are also some of the most important. Our history is full of examples where a Scout’s training has saved the life of an injured person. By turning First Aid practice into a game, Scouts can have fun while getting more proficient than they ever would otherwise. Baden-Powell gave us one such First Aid game in “Scouting For Boys” called ‘Wounded Prisoners’. Here is how it goes:
“Placed at various points, each fifty yards from camp, are prisoners: one for each competitor in the game. These prisoners have a tag, describing an injury, attached to their shirts. At a signal each of the competitors has to make for a prisoner, give him first aid for his injury and bring him home. The one who reaches camp first with a prisoner properly cared for, wins.”
This is a very simple game, but if done right, it can be very exciting. You can also adapt it to many different circumstances. It can be held during a meeting instead of just at camp. Two or three Scouts could be sent instead of just one for each ‘injured’ person. You can make it so Scouts have to traverse different obstacles and types of terrain. Mac os x 10.11 download free.
Depending on how you set it up, each rescue team can either already have the required materials to do the job or they can be required to improvise. For instance, a broken leg can be splinted with a tree branch and some Scout neckerchiefs, and a stretcher can be fashioned from a couple of Scout staffs and sweaters or jackets. Leaders, or preferably older Scouts, should be the umpires and decide whether the competitors properly cared for the victim.
Whirling Jackstay
Games don’t always have to relate to a specific rank requirement, of course. Some games are great to do just for fun! They can keep things moving during Scout Meetings (Scout meetings should never stagnate by sticking to one thing too long!). They can burn off excess energy, and by creating a controlled period for ‘skylarking’, it’s a lot more fun and Scout-like than letting things devolve into chaos.
One game that I have found to be very popular with Scouts in my Troop is an old one called the “Whirling Jackstay”. I first tried this one out during a special Patrol Meeting while I was a Patrol Leader. Since then, it has spread to the rest of the Troop. This one came from a 1958 English Scout Book called “Patrol Meeting Blueprints” by John Sweet which gave ideas for Patrol Meetings in an illustrated format. Here is a copy of the game:
Depending on how fast the center man is twirling the rope, this game can be more or less challenging. I weighted the rope with a tightly bound bunch of cloth. Depending on how heavy the weight is, the game can get a little rough. I remember with some amusement the many times a Scout’s feet were caught mid-jump which sent him tumbling heavily to the ground. Nevertheless, this game has become a firm favorite for meetings.
The Blind Spider
Here is another great ‘just-for-fun’ game you can try with the Patrols in your Troop. It is called “The Blind Spider”. Here it is as described by John Sweet in another Patrol book he wrote called “Patrol Activities”:
“Blind Spider: A good game for the Troop-room where an overhead beam is available. Each Scout has a knotting-rope, one end of which is made fast to the beam. One Scout is blindfold and becomes the “Spider”. The object is for the Spider to catch as many “flies” as possible by touching them. Everyone, including the Spider, must keep hold of his own rope. When caught, the flies drop out.
This is quite a subtle game. The whole secret, of course, lies in the cunning way in which the spider entangles his own rope with the others, while the flies skip nimbly to and fro to dodge him – and in so doing get their ropes hopelessly entangled.”
Here is a helpful illustration from “Patrol Meeting Blueprints”:
This is really quite an ingenious variation of ‘tag’. All it requires is an overhead beam or tree branch, a blindfold, and a series of rope lengths.
This game should be kept fast-paced. For an averaged-sized Patrol with each member getting a chance to be the ‘spider’, it should only take about 10-15 minutes a round.
Thimble Finding
In the past, the skill of observation was much more heavily emphasized in Scouting than it is now. This is unfortunate, because observation is just as useful (if not more so!) today. Baden-Powell gave many observation games in “Scouting for Boys”. One of these is “Thimble Finding”. It is a very simple game which can be played indoors during a meeting. Here is how it goes:
“Send the Patrol out of the room. Take a thimble, ring, coin, bit of paper, or any small article, and place it where it is perfectly visible, but in a spot where it is not likely to be noticed. Let the Patrol come in and look for it. When one of the Scout sees it, he should go and quietly sit down without indicating to the others where it is. After a fair time he should be told to point it out to those who have not succeeded in finding it.”
This game puts a different twist on a simple “find the object” game. Not only can Scouts discover the object by simply looking for it, they can also get clues by observing the other Scouts.
This game also has limitless possibilities for variations. Multiple items can be used; the items can be put in more or less discrete locations; and different rooms can be used.
This is just one of many observation games which should be brought back into use by modern Scout Troops. I say “should” because training in observation is something that is vitally important in Scouting. So many people go through life today in their own world without being aware of what is going on around them. So many accidents could be prevented, so much good could be done, if more people practiced and got into the habit of good observation.
I hope you enjoyed reading about these historical Scout games. Try them out in your own Troop! The traditional Scouting program that the Scouts of the past practiced offers many solutions for the same difficulties we face in modern Scouting. Scout Meetings boring? Lackluster rank advancement? Chaotic ‘goofing off’ during meetings? Try some traditional Scout games! Get creative! Teach the Scouts in leadership about good planning, and challenge them to make each Scout Meeting better than the last one!
You can find John Sweet’s Patrol Meeting Blueprints in PDF format here (courtesy of the Dump)
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MARY EVANS PICTURE LIBRARY
Lieutenant General Robert Baden-Powell (1857-1941) became a national hero for his actions in the Boer War, but is remembered today as the Father of the Boy Scouts.[/caption]‘Summer celebrations mark the centenary of the first Boy Scout camp, organized by General Robert Baden-Powell for 20 boys of mixed social backgrounds on Brownsea Island in Poole Harbour’
BROWNSEA ISLAND’S WESTERN beach might well be the oddest in England. It is as if a shingle beach has had each of its small, seawashed gray stones replaced with a broken bit of red terra cotta pipe, creating a pottery beach that extends 100 feet into the water and stretches out of sight in both directions. It is a wondrously outlandish sight, helped along by historic association. At this place, in 1907, the international Scouting movement began. This spot in the midst of busy Poole Harbour is the location of the first Boy Scout camp ever.
Poole Harbour takes the form of a large rectangle on England’s southern coast, about 100 miles southwest of London. The old port city of Poole occupies its northern shore, part of a larger conurbation that stretches north through Bournemouth and Christchurch. The harbor’s southern shore is almost uninhabited, and hosts a series of internationally important wildlife refuges. Inside the harbor are eight nearly uninhabited islands, of which Brownsea is the largest—roughly a mile and a half long, and a half-mile wide.
Brownsea sits athwart Poole’s main ship channel, and so served as a harbor defense during Tudor times; its 1545 blockhouse forms the center of its manor house, Brownsea Castle. It soon passed into private hands and was owned by a series of wealthy merchants and gentry. These owners not only transformed the blockhouse into a grand estate, they also created lavish private gardens and hundreds of acres of farmlands, giving Brownsea a permanent population in the process. In 1852 a new owner erected a huge pottery work at its western end, in the belief that Brownsea’s clays could be mined for fine china. They couldn’t; but the plant limped along for 35 years producing clay sewage pipes. It is the broken refuse from this plant that forms the shingle in front of the first Scout camp.
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NATIONAL TRUST
[/caption]In 1901 Brownsea came into the hands of the wealthy socialites Charles and Florence van Raalte. Under the van Raaltes, 200 islanders farmed and raised daffodils for the London fresh flower market, and furnished the large staff required by the van Raalte’s lavish lifestyle. Two islanders ran the van Raalte’s ferry, the Blunderbuss, along the half-mile passage between Brownsea Castle and Poole’s beach suburb of Sandbanks. One of its regular passengers was Guglielmo Marconi, who was staying in a hotel beside the Sandbanks Pier as he conducted his wireless experiments; Marconi taught the van Raalte children to communicate in Morse code by blinking their eyes. But Marconi wasn’t the only celebrity the van Raaltes had collected; Robert Baden-Powell was another of their friends.
‘This was the core of Baden-Powell’s Scouting method; not merely woodcraft and camping, but self-directed, independent action toward a common goal’
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JIM HARGAN
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JIM HARGAN
[/caption]Old Time Scouting Games Played At Brownsea Island Boy Scouts
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JIM HARGAN
Located just west of Bournemouth on the south coast of Dorset, Poole Harbour is the largest natural harbor in Britain, and one of the largest in the world. The bustling quayside of Poole stands in sharp contrast to the serenity of Brownsea Island, just moments away from the dock by boat.[/caption] Two years before the van Raaltes purchased Brownsea Island, Baden-Powell was an army colonel in charge of a small garrison at the South African town of Mafeking when he found his troops surrounded by an enemy Boer army that outnumbered his 8-to-1. An experienced intelligence officer, Baden-Powell had already written a military manual for reconnaissance troops operating independently behind enemy lines, his Aids to Scouting. He and his staff put these principles to use in organizing the underage British boys of Mafeking into the Mafeking Cadet Corps, assigned to duties (such as delivering messages and assisting in hospitals) that would free up fighting troops. Baden-Powell’s success in defending Mafeking (the siege lasted 217 days) marked the turning point of the Boer War, and made Baden-Powell a national hero.
Baden-Powell’s experiences with the Mafeking Cadet Corps left him convinced that his principles of Scouting had a strong positive impact on the boys, and this gave him an abiding interest in youth organizations. Back in England as a lieutenant general, he found that youth groups and schools were using his Aids to Scouting as a teaching resource. Baden-Powell began collaborating with other youth group organizers to develop a new approach to youth training, tentatively called Boy Patrols. In 1907 he was ready to put his ideas to the test.
Of course, the van Raaltes were enthusiastic about hosting Baden-Powell’s experimental camp on Brownsea Island. Baden-Powell chose an open site on the shore near the abandoned pottery; the hard, dry fields reminded him of the veldt. He recruited 10 working-class boys from Poole, and 10 boys from the exclusive private schools known as “public schools,” and mixed them together into four patrols—the organization used at Mafeking, and part of his military recon methods. The eight-day encampment would spend a day on each of the six principles of Scouting: campaigning (living in the outdoors), observation, woodcraft, chivalry, saving life and patriotism.
During this time, all activities from breakfast to campfires were wholly organized and directed by the patrols under their boy leaders and with nearly no adult help; at the end, the patrols put on a demonstration for their parents, the islanders and the van Raaltes. This was the core of Baden-Powell’s Scouting method; not merely woodcraft and camping, but self-directed, independent action toward a common goal. It was successful beyond Baden-Powell’s expectation.
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WEIDER HISTORY GROUP ARCHIVE
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Cached
©TOPFOTO/TOPFOTO.CO.UK
The Baden-Powell House on London’s Queen’s Gate has served as a hostel, conference center and Scout headquarters since its opening by the Queen in 1961.[/caption] He went on to write Scouting for Boys and to found the Scouting movement. Three years later, 10,000 Scouts from 21 nations met at London’s Crystal Palace for the first Scout rally. Baden-Powell and his sister Agnes organized the Girl Guides (Girl Scouts outside Britain) that same year.
With the death of the van Raaltes, Brownsea Island was sold to an eccentric widow, Mary Bonham-Christie, who quickly expelled all the islanders, abandoned the gardens and farms, and lived as a hermit in one of the estate cottages until her death at age 98 in 1961. The National Trust purchased it in 1962, opening it to the public and creating the present Scout camp at the site of the original encampment. Much of the restoration money came from the John Lewis Partnership, owners of the Waitrose supermarket chain; as part of the bargain, they get exclusive use of the beautifully restored Brownsea Castle, which they reserve for their employees.
Meanwhile, Brownsea Island is gearing up for the 100th anniversary of the birth of Scouting, with special events throughout 2007. On August 1, the World Organization of the Scout Movement will take over Brownsea Island to commemorate the Sunrise of Scouting—100 years to the minute after the Hero of Mafeking opened the first Scout camp with a blast from his kudu horn.
YOU WILL FIND the National Trust’s Brownsea Island Web site at www.nationaltrust.org.uk/brownsea/. It’s a bit sketchy; if you want information on the Centenary of Scouting, you’ll need to go to special sites set up by the World Organization of the Scout Movement, eng.scouting2007.org/ and eng.brownsea2007.org/.
A visit to Brownsea Island requires a ferry trip from either Sandbanks (a la Marconi) or from Poole’s beautiful and historic quay. The National Trust Web site has links to the various private ferry services. You will have to pay for a ferry ticket, plus an admissions ticket. The National Trust has a decent cafe on the island.
And finally, to find out more about the Marconi connection, go to the Marconi Company’s excellent Web site at www.marconicalling.com/introsting.htm, and type “Sandbanks” into the search box.