THE SPORT OF ROWING In the year after 1836, Cambridge adopted the technique they had seen in London. The London Style, the nascent long-swing English Orthodox Technique, migrated to Cambridge. The next year the Light Blues were anxious to test their new approach against an outside opponent. When they found they could not arrange a race with Oxford, they turned around and challenged London’s Leander Club to a race on the Tideway. Treherne & Goldie: “The Cantabs astonished the sporting world by boldly throwing down the gauntlet to the Leander. “In those days the Leander Club, whose scarlet ribbon had earned them the sobriquet of the ‘Brilliants,’ were the leaders of amateur style on the Thames. “The London talent, amateur and professional alike, thought that the vaulting ambition of the Cam had overleaped itself. The Leander men were not in their premièr jeunesse. They were on the average well on the shady side of thirty summers; but their prestige made them favourites in the betting. “Westminster to Putney was the course. Watermen steered each crew, and the odds were upset by Cambridge, who showed that rowing was becoming a science at the Universities by winning by seven seconds.”322 Lehmann: “Cambridge seem to have taken the criticism of the experts to heart and mended their style.”323 Professionals as Coxswains The 1837 race was notable in that both In prior years, both sides employed professional watermen as their coxswain. Universities had employed waterman coaches and steerers, but in the Boat Race itself, by this time held only twice, Oxford and Cambridge had eschewed waterman 322 Treherne & Goldie, p. 136 323 Lehmann, pp. 13, 26 324 Qtd. by Lehmann, p. 13 325 Ibid, p. 12 326 Ibid, p. 10 coxswains. At least since 1836, Cambridge had been coached by a student member of its crew, their coxswain T.S. Egan. But Leander insisted. W.F. Macmichael, The Oxford and Cambridge Boat Races: “It was agreed at the wish of Leander that the coxswains should be watermen. At this period, it was the custom on the London water to allow ‘fouling,’ that is, to let one boat impede the other whenever it chose and was able to do so. This, of course, made the office of coxswain one of far greater importance than it is now; and at this time there were two London watermen, Parish and Noulton, who were celebrated rivals in this part of a coxswain’s work. “As, however, the object of the Cambridge men in challenging was to discover which crew was best, they made it an express stipulation that no fouling was to be lawful.”324 Lehmann: “For many years, professional coxswains continued to exercise a large amount of authority over the rowing of amateurs, not on the Isis or the Cam, but on Metropolitan and other waters.”325 James Parish, the Leander coxswain for the 1837 race, had a seventeen-year relationship with that club.326 Cambridge employed well-known London waterman William Noulton, winner of the Doggett’s Coat and Badge in 1822, to replace Egan for the Leander race. Among the many races in which Noulton had participated during his career, he had steered Leander against Oxford in 1831 and Westminster against Eton in 1836. 94
