THE BIRTH OF ENGLISH ORTHODOXY But perhaps Alfred Shadwell’s greatest contribution to rowing history was to introduce his younger brother, Arthur, to his coach, Tom Egan. Arthur T.W. Shadwell The second of the Shadwell brothers348 at Eton was Arthur Thomas Whitmore Shadwell (1820-1893). Arthur coxed the Eton Eight in 1837, and despite weighing under 10 stone (under 140 lb. 64 kg), he placed first in School Pulling that year. From Eton, he followed his father and older brother to St. John’s College, Cambridge. He rowed 3 in the Lady Margaret Lents boat of 1839 with his brother, Alfred, at stroke. He soon “came across Tom Egan of Caius,”349 his brother’s Blue Boat coach. Arthur and Tom would be linked as friends, competitors and collaborators for the next two decades. During his years at Cambridge, Arthur Shadwell became a protégé of Egan’s, absorbing the innovative new English Orthodox Technique that the latter was perfecting. As coxswains, the two must have had a lot in common, including, it would turn out, a disdain for the coaching and steering of professional watermen. Arthur also continued to pursue his rowing. Despite his small size, he won the Colquhoun Challenge Sculls, the premier singles event at Cambridge, in both 1840 and 1841. In 1840, Shadwell joined his 1837 Eton Champion School Pulling partner, I.J.I. Pocock, who had just rowed 2 in the 1840 Oxford Dark Blue Boat, the one which had given Cambridge such a good race. Together, Pocock and Shadwell rowed the 348 The third and fourth brothers finished their studies at Eton in 1839 and 1840, both rowing in the Monarch in the Procession of Boats, but otherwise not excelling. 349 Dodd, Oxford & Cambridge, p. 91 bow-pair in the Oxford Etonian Club Eight that raced and lost to Eton on July 4 of that year. Late in his life, while decrying the tendency to make boats lighter and lighter, Arthur Shadwell seemed to be describing himself during his Cambridge days when he wrote: “Then also it would be unnecessary to put on the after-thwart a young gentleman not strong enough to have rowed with a full- sized oar; but each crew might, without disadvantage, have a matured oarsman thoroughly understanding his business for coxswain – one who has brains as well as body, strong enough to have rowed bow or two in a racing eight, and skilful enough to win the Silver Oars350 or the University Challenge Sculls; one, in short, who is a waterman, with practice, judgment and presence of mind, acquired by habituation to such contests. In such qualities, of a certainty, would be found more than a counterpoise against his possible two extra stones.”351 Migration to Oxford Meanwhile, the seeds were being sown at Oxford for a revolution in rowing to equal that which had so recently occurred at Cambridge. Fletcher N. Menzies had been at Oxford since 1838 and had won the University Pairs competition with his brother, Robert Menzies, in 1839.352 In 1841, he stroked his University College353 Eight to Head of the River, but twice he refused to join the Oxford Boat Race crew, in retrospect probably because they were 350 Magdalene Silver Oars, the Cambridge coxless-pairs championship. 351 Treherne & Goldie, pp. 258-9 352 Dodd, Oxford & Cambridge, p. 90 353 They row with navy blue blades with a yellow Greek cross. 99
