THE BIRTH OF ENGLISH ORTHODOXY they had meantime received from Noulton [!] and other London watermen.”332 Bell’s Life also reported the substantial change: “The Cambridge men pulled like a piece of mechanism, so beautifully did they work together. Their stroke was really terrific; one of the severest we ever saw. It was as long as the men could stretch forward, and at the same time tremendously swift. “[The Oxonians’] style is not to our liking.”333 Lehmann: “Jones, a London waterman, had coached Oxford for this race. Cambridge had been looked after by T.S. Egan, their coxswain. I gather from Bell’s comment that Cambridge had by this time not only mastered the London style, but had improved upon it.”334 Treherne: “Oxford were by no means well together, and rowed too much in a sea- going style, jerky, with arm-work as if they were snatching at the waves of the sea [i.e., the waterman’s stroke with ferryman’s finish]; while Cambridge used their bodies and swung fore and aft more in the river style of rowing [the nascent English Orthodox Technique]. “The race was as hollow as it well could be: from start to finish Oxford were never in it, and Cambridge won the ‘rubber’ match that had been rowed up to this date in a common canter by upwards of a minute and a half.”335 Rowe & Pitman: “It was the general impression that the science and style of Cambridge were so much superior to those of Oxford that the latter could never hope to win again.”336 332 Treherne & Goldie, p. 137 333 Qtd. by Lehmann, p. 26 334 Lehmann, pp. 26-7 335 Treherne & Goldie, p. 137 336 Rowe & Pitman, p. 111 Thomas Selby Egan Several rowing histories, including Rowe & Pitman,337 gave the credit for the improvement in Cambridge technique to E.S. Stanley of Jesus College,338 Egan’s stroke-oar on the 1839 crew. Treherne & Goldie: “The stroke of Stanley remained a household word for style and effect for many a later year.”339 Stanley was by all accounts a superb oar, Captain of the Boats at Eton in 1835, but in his day, Eton was still rowing the traditional waterman’s stroke, and he had joined the Cambridge Eight only in 1838. Just one man made the full journey from the 1836 Cambridge Crew which had rowed the traditional stroke through 1837 and 1838 against Leander to the 1839 Boat Race Crew which had fully converted to the new English Orthodox Technique. That one man was Thomas Selby Egan (1814-1893), the man in charge. British rowing historians Peter Haig- Thomas & Archie Nicholson:340 “In 1836, T.S. Egan coached for the long swing and a sharp catch of the water with the blade at the beginning, and may thus be claimed as the originator of the ‘amateur’ style.”341 Tom Egan was of Irish stock and came to rowing in 1833 upon his arrival at Gonville & Caius342 College, Cambridge at the age of 18. At 9 st. (126 lb. 57 kg), he was a natural coxswain. He eventually received his Bachelor of Arts in 1838 and a Master of Arts in 1842. 337 Rowe & Pitman, p. 15 338 another of the constituent colleges of Cambridge. They row with black blades tipped with a stripe alternating diagonal black and red. See Chapter 14. 339 Treherne & Goldie, p. 137 340 See Chapter 15. 341 Haig-Thomas & Nicholson, p. 30 342 pronounced “keys.” They row with black blades with a narrow band of Cambridge blue near the tip. 97
