THE SPORT OF ROWING in 2 and T.S. Egan coxing. Arthur Shadwell was coxing Oxford. Menzies had been sick through the heats, during which Oxford had beaten First Trinity, Cambridge and the Oxford Etonians in succession.366 According to Treherne & Goldie, on the day of the final, Menzies “was preparing to take his seat in the boat, almost reeling from giddiness, when he fainted clean away. The crew laid him on a sofa and bore him in procession to their hotel. “[There being a rule against substitutions,] Oxford then held a council of war and decided to do their best with seven oars. No. 7 moved to stroke, and bow to 7, bow’s seat being vacant. “Oxford had the outside station, the wind blowing fresh off the Bucks shore.367 They started; before they reached Remenham Gate368 it was a very open question to all spectators whether the Oxford Seven were not as good as the Cambridge Eight. “And so they proved, and even better. Off Fawley Court they began to lead, and drew away steadily. Below Poplar Point369 they were clear, and by taking their opponents’ water, went in winners by nearly a length’s daylight, amidst such an uproar as has probably never been heard at Henley. “The boat in which they rowed was in later years purchased by Mr. Alderman Randall, and he in 1867 invited the seven, 366 Treherne & Goldie, p. 143 367 This was before log-boom course boundaries had been installed, and it was still possible to hug the Bucks shore in the protection of the bushes when the wind was blowing from that side. 368 For details of the landmarks on the Henley course, see Chapter 5. 369 The very earliest Henley course ended at the Red Lion Hotel near the Henley Bridge. The course made a left turn at Poplar Point. Today the course ends at Poplar Point. with their quondam stroke, to a banquet at Oxford, at which all but one of the crew and most of the leading oarsmen at Oxford attended. He then presented to the O.U.B.C. a chair the back of which is composed of that part of the boat which contained the coxswain’s seat.”370 The chair has been the O.U.B.C. President’s Chair ever since. Migration to Eton In 1847, Shadwell returned to Eton College to teach them the new technique371 and train them for their race with Westminster. Egan was umpire. Eton won by a minute and a half. In retrospect, none of late 19th or early 20th Century historians seemed to have completely appreciated the full path of migration of the long-reach innovation that started with London amateur clubs in the 1820s, then moved to Cambridge via T.S. Egan after 1836, then to Oxford via Shadwell between 1841 and 1842, and then on to Eton via Shadwell in 1847. Nevertheless, almost with the speed of a meteor strike, the original short, choppy waterman’s stroke became extinct as a dinosaur, dead as a dodo, except along the commercial quays up and down the River Thames. Revolutionary boundary. The end of the Age of Watermen and the beginning of the Age of English Orthodoxy, echoes of which as I write this still resonate from Rafts at Eton to the 2012 Olympic Games on Dorney Lake. Shadwell was awarded an Oxford B.A. in 1843 and an M.A. in 1844.372 He only raced in the Boat Race that one time in 1842 370 Terherne, p. 144 371 Byrne & Churchill, p. 174 372 Joseph Foster, op.cit., p. 1278 102
