Rowing at Oxford

THE beginning of the ’Varsity year in October brings with it its new consignment of Freshmen. Of these, some have already, while at school, made a name either as oars, or cricketers, or in one of the two kinds of football. By means of this bias the choice of many is soon decided, though of course one sport need not exclude entirely another during a man’s ’Varsity career. The river is always sure of its supply of recruits, for two reasons: first, setting aside those who have already had experience in oarsmanship, a small frame or light weight is perhaps less a disadvantage in rowing than in any other sport ; and second, the large amount of practice and coaching which the river recruit will receive gives small-statured skill a chance of differentiating itself from big-bodied stolidity. For rowing preëminently among sports demands the exercise, and consequently favors the development, of intellectual and moral qualities.

Let us suppose, then, that there have come down to the college barge in October thirty Freshmen. From this material are selected all those who are likely to benefit by practice under the eye of careful coaches. Crews are arranged to row in heavy tub fours, and are taken daily in the afternoon a couple of journeys down to Iffley and back, making for the afternoon’s exercise an average of about five miles’ rowing. Besides this, individual faults, which in the tyro are legion, are corrected either between or after journeys in a tub pair. This kind of work is carried on for four or five out of the eight weeks of the October term, and at the end of this period the racing capacities of the men are first put to the test. According to the mettle now displayed will be the brief and inglorious, or the long and illustrious, rowing careers of the several oars. These races are the concern of college clubs only, and are managed after the traditional system of each particular college. Thus, while some clubs prefer to have the trial fours rowed in heats of two boats starting abreast, others arrange two or three boats in a heat, at a given distance behind each other, corresponding to the distance separating their respective flags at the winning posts. With the latter method, when the stern of a boat has passed its flag at the end of the course, a pistol is fired, and the decision is given by the reports. But in either case the rowing and sporting sets of a college run along the towing path, encouraging the crews with bells and rattles and yells. Good fours generally augur successes on the river for the ensuing year. Pots are given to the winning crew, and perhaps a challenge oar or cup, to be held, in the first case, by each member of the crew, or, in the second, by the stroke.

About three weeks now remain of the October term. After a few days’ rest, those in authority set about selecting the best men from the fours to represent their colleges in the torpid eight-oared races, which will be rowed in the middle of the next or Easter term. The change from a slow and heavy tub four to a moderately heavy eight is a great one, and the novice at first is surprised at the rate of traveling and the small amount of energy he is able to expend on each stroke. This experience proves that his oarsmanship will necessarily, in future, be of a finer quality, and the greatest attention will have to be paid to the admonitions of the coach, who now runs or rides along the bank each journey to instruct and polish his crew. The coxswain, too, requires some little skill and a considerable voice, to manipulate a long eight through the narrow and tortuous “ gut.” Something like the probable crew is put together by the end of the term. A six weeks’ vacation follows, and when the men reassemble work commences in real earnest. It is no slight or maiden’s task that the oarsman undertakes who engages to row in his college torpid. For, to begin with, this is the first occasion on which strong feeling attends the results of the racing, it being the first intercollegiate competition. It must be remembered that the status of any one of the colleges or halls, of which there are about two dozen, depends as much on its position on the river as on its class lists in the schools. Again, the weather between January and March is, as a rule, the reverse of gentle : strong east winds, rain, hail, snow, and ice have been known to make the thinly clad oarsman wish he had never put his hand to the plough. What is more, before he can row he must become a member of the University Boat Club ; and the privilege of membership is not to be bought at a price less than £3 10s., which sum paid, however, he is a member for life. Lastly, it is not one day’s racing he is to train for, but six afternoons’, broken only by the Sunday rest. There is no turning backward, so one thinks twice before one rows in his “ togger.” A healthy mind, however, finds a difficulty nothing but an opportunity, and accepts the hardship which his ambition entails. Imagine, then, that I am chosen as one of the eight who are to undergo three weeks’ training and one week of racing.

Thus sings Spenser in The Faëry Queene concerning the spiritual training of the Red Cross Knight, and his words not inaptly describe the effect of rowing discipline.

We train, briefly, as follows : Rising at half past seven, we take a brisk run of a quarter of a mile in meadow or park as a breather and to induce a gentle sweat, which we dispel by means of a cold tub and rough towels. This operation in cold weather is followed by a tingling and glowing sensation and a general readiness for breakfast, which the crew eat together, under the presidency of a coach, at 8.30. Fish and fowls, chops and steaks, dry toast and butter, marmalade and green food ad lib., washed down with strictly limited weak tea, constitute a satisfying repast. Lunch, at one, is a light meal, consisting of a little cold meat and a half pint of beer. Between two and five o’clock is done the rowing exercise for the day, and at seven we dine, again with a certain recognized training menu, and go to bed at 10.30. There is no pleasant indulgence in afternoon tea; but after a particularly hard day’s work, such as a course rowed over, and during the racing week, a glass or two of port or claret is permitted after the evening meal, to make blood and prevent staleness, which is apt to overtake us during training.

The first day of the racing week is always a Thursday. As there are too many boats to row simultaneously, they are divided into two divisions : the first dozen, let us say, rowing at three o’clock, and the lower half at five. In order to make it possible for a boat to rise from one to the other division, the first of the lower division boats (which row first) is entitled to row again on the same afternoon as last of the upper division. It is then called the “ sandwich boat.” The system of a bumping race is as follows : The boats start at Iffley from their punts, which have previously been fixed at equal distances (one hundred and twenty feet) below one another. The race is rowed up stream over a course about a mile long. A gun on the bank is fired at five minutes before the start as a warning, a second gun four minutes afterwards, and a third for the start. A dozen boats instantly burst away in a long line divided by the stated interval. But before half the course is rowed the relative positions of the crews are greatly altered. Take, for example, the fortune of the fourth boat. It gradually lessens its distance from the third, at the same time increasing that between itself and the fifth. Presently its bows overlap the stern of number three, and in a moment more it has grazed the boat well up alongside of the coxswain, who holds up his hand in recognition of the “ bump,” while both three and four lose no time in falling out of the line toward either bank, to allow those below to continue their race. This is on Thursday. On Friday boat four starts third, and boat three fourth; and so in six nights a boat may normally rise or fall six places, but seven, if it pass through the position of sandwich boat, in which it may bump or be bumped twice on the same day. A position among the first half dozen boats is much prized, and it requires sustained excellence of coaching and rowing to maintain the headship more than a single year.

But there are two boats representing a given college. Its torpid may be fifth, its “eight” tenth, on the river. Who then compose the “ eight,” and when are the eights rowed ? The eight consists of the best oars in college, and is generally recruited from the torpid. It is the representative boat, and no man who has rowed in it may row subsequently in the torpid. These crews race in the third or summer term, generally in May. The boats are lighter, and the oarsman is for the first time introduced to a sliding-seat, but he trains in much the same fashion as for the torpid. With the eights the year’s routine is at an end. If a Freshman finds his way into the eight by the end of his first year, he has done exceptionally well. Those eightsmen who continue in residence for the following year manage the college clubs and coach its boats in the manner we have already described. There are distinguishing badges for the status of foursman, toggerman, or eightsman, consisting of caps or blazers, varying in colors or trimming.

With fours, torpids, and eights the oarsman’s career is completed so far as his particular college is concerned. If his ambition looks still higher, he must now try to represent the ’Varsity in the inter-’Varsity race at Putney. Paulo majora canamus. This contest is the means of adding two further grades of distinction to the three already mentioned. In October, while colleges are selecting fours, the university president and committee are carefully searching for eligible material among the last year’s eightsmen. From these are finally chosen sixteen men to form two trial eights, who row over a longer course at Moulsford. The trial eightsman is further distinguished by a white cap with black oars crossed in front, and from such sixteen the vacant thwarts in the ’Varsity boat are filled up each year. But neither trial eightsmen or “ Blues,” as such, are prohibited from rowing in their college eights in May.

So then we have reached the highest rung of the five-stepped ladder if, in January or early February, we are selected to row for Oxford against Cambridge over the Putney course. The efforts required are naturally proportionate to the distinction to be won. If he has not before passed the ordeal, each man must at this stage be medically examined, and certified fit to stand the strain of six weeks’ training and the twenty minutes’ row from Putney to Mortlake. The “ Blue ” has attained all that is attainable with the oar, especially if he happen to be a member of a winning boat. “ The force of nature could no further go.” Still, for the yet undamped enthusiast there are fresh laurels to be won at Henley, or new obstacles for his energy to overcome in the effort to raise a college boat on the river, either by coaching or rowing ; and for a rowing god, who has already won his way to celestial citadels, to look down on the struggling mortality of a college eight is indeed proof of pure, disinterested esprit de corps.

Such is the main cursus honorum in the ’Varsity rowing world, and it is substantially similar in both the sister seats of learning. But there are also sidelights of greater or less importance which serve to encourage and to improve the public performances, or to bring out the relative worth of individuals. Rowing is nothing if not coöperative ; it exhibits the most perfect system of socialism imaginable, and the individual is lost in oblivion. Hence the excellence of the moral training which is on all sides claimed for this form of sport.

Competition between individuals, however, is not studiously avoided. The ’Varsity challenge sculls are rowed after the eights in the summer term, and a better opportunity for displaying " grit ” and dogged determination and courage, to say nothing of judgment, is perhaps never afforded. It is among ’Varsity scullers that we expect to find the amateur champion; that is, the winner of the Diamond Sculls at Henley.

Another competition open to the whole university is the pair-oar (coxswainless) races. This, the most difficult form of rowing, requires, besides strength and neatness, a very exact balance of weight and similarity of style between the two men rowing together.

Once a man has rowed in his eight, his rowing powers are taxed, in the ordinary course of things, only once a year, for the short period of the summer races. To prevent his sinews and muscles degenerating into fat, and his wrists and arms losing their pliancy, there are two sets of intercollegiate races for fours, one rowed in light, the other in clinker-built ships. Great store is set by the carrying off of the trophy for either event by any particular college.

The several colleges, too, have their own established annual competitions in sculling and pair-oar rowing. At the close of the year, in the warm afternoons of June, are held the college regattas off the barges, in which all the rowing interest of each society makes sport for itself and amusement for spectators on the banks with forms of watermanship which are lighter and more pleasant, but still require considerable skill and dexterity, such as punting, canoeing, cockle-rowing, etc.

This is the ordinary year’s aquatic programme. A few words about the management of this elaborate system. Each college has its own club, with captain, secretary or treasurer, and committee, through which it controls funds and the general working of the boats. There is also the University Boat Club, with its barge and boat-house for headquarters, likewise under a chairman, president, secretary, and committee. As was said above, a member of a college torpid becomes ipso facto a member of the University Club by paying his subscription. This club is responsible for the management of matters of general concern, and especially the funds of the inter-'Varsity race at Putney.

Such is the system of river sport that has gradually developed at Oxford during the present century, admirable alike in its hierarchy of clearly defined gradations, its centralization, and its working results.

S. E. Winbolt.