The Warwick Gun

Shearers who “tally” more than 400 sheep per day when shearing crossbreds, or around 200 for finer wool sheep such as merino, are known as “gun shearers.” Gun shearers using blade shears are usually shearers that have shorn at least 200 sheep in a day.

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“His big hand could grasp the animal in a way that has never been excelled, and his shears, propelled with a mighty wrist, made no mistakes.”

— Contemporary description of record-holding sheep-shearer Jackie Howe

Had breakfast on Wednesday morning with Allan Godsiff, to present him with the copy of The Unvanquished that he won in the Frontier Partisans Patreon drawing. Allan is from New Zealand; he and his wife Kathryn manage a local ranch — but Allan’s lifelong profession has been as a sheep-shearer.

We spent considerable time talking about the demands of that work, and passing the torch on to a younger generation. Sheep-shearing is hard, physically demanding work. In the 19th and early 20th Century, it was an iconic form of masculine labor in Australia and New Zealand. For much of that time, it was done with hand shears — and Allan tells me that in some places in New Zealand, that is still done.

This, of course, sent me off down a short side trail, where I found the legendary Jackie Howe.

From the State Library of Queensland:

The 10th of October 1892 marks the anniversary of the day the legend of shearer Jackie Howe was born. On this day Howe sheared a record 321 sheep in 7 hours and 40 mins at Alice Downs Station in Blackall. This feat is even more amazing considering the fact that he used blade shears (hand shears), not machine shears. In the previous week he also achieved a new weekly record of 1437 sheep in 44 hours and 30 mins. Jackie Howe was to become a household name for generations to come.

So how physically challenging is it to shear sheep? An article published in the Sunday Mail back in 2000 looked at a study conducted by the National Occupational Health and Safety Commission which found that shearing sheep is one of the most physically demanding jobs as far as stress to the human body. The study, which measured the heart rate, oxygen consumption and fluid loss found that one shearer working in 47 degree heat lost 9 litres of sweat in 2 hours.

Jack Howe has been variously described as an “extraordinary physical specimen” and “one of the best physically built men in Australia” with “a hand the size of a small tennis racket.” He is recorded to have been 5ft 10 inches tall, his chest measuring 50 inches (127 cm) and his biceps 17.5 inches (44.45 cms). His weight has been given variously in different sources as 14 stone, 15 stone and 18 stone (between 89-114 kg). Apart from being a champion shearer, Jack was also quite an athlete. He reputedly ran 100 yards on a grass track in bare feet (or possibly wearing socks) in 11 seconds. He was also a good dancer; once at a sports event in Warwick he won the Irish Jig and the Sailor Hornpipe dancing competitions .

The late 19th and early 20th Century saw an explosion of  popular media, and with it a celebration of heroic labor. John Henry drove his steel till his heart exploded; Sandy Gray gave his life to break a log jam — the stuff of folk songs

Of course, there’s a ballad for Jackie Howe, the Warwick Gun:

Nowadays, our physical culture is mostly in the gym, on the bike and suchlike. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but it ain’t the same thing. Nevertheless, I think I put a little extra volume into the KBs and the trap-bar deadlifts yesterday, inspired by those iron men of old.