ENGLISH ORTHODOX MEETS CLASSICAL TECHNIQUE traditionalism which he had imbibed at Cambridge. “Two years later, in 1879, Steve’s second brother, Charles, returned in like circumstances, having rowed 6 in the winning Cambridge crew of that year and 4 in the Jesus crew which won the Grand.”667 When Charles, too, was converted, Steve never forgot. When he later followed in the footsteps of his brothers to England, he was predisposed to be skeptical of the English Orthodox rowing he would find there. Fairbairn: “In my last year at [Geelong], I coached the school boat from stroke, and we won the Public Schools of Victoria Boatrace. This is a big event.”668 In the fall of 1881, he became the fifth of six brothers to enroll at Jesus College.669 Steve in Britain Here was the state of English rowing as Steve Fairbairn arrived: Sliding seats had been introduced into the Boat Race only eight years earlier. Slides were still quite short, and they were neither well understood nor appreciated at the Universities. Thames Rowing Club670 and London Rowing Club had adapted quickly to longer slides and a more natural, less rigid approach to technique. At Henley, the Metropolitan crews were dominating the more Orthodox crews from Oxford and Cambridge. In London on November 15, 1880, Canadian Ned Hanlan had wrested the World Professional Singles Championship from Australian Edward Trickett.671 667 Fairbairn On Rowing, p. 19 668 Ibid, p. 236 669 Mendenhall, Ch. XVI, p. 1 670 They row with black blades with a single stripe of red and white dashes near the tip. 671 See Chapter 11. World Rowing Magazine: “Pro- fessional racing [in Australia] flourished to the extent that it became a matter of national pride. When Trickett lost to Hanlan in 1880, the result was considered to be a national calamity, such was the importance of the sport.”672 Hanlan then defended his title against another Australian, Elias Laycock, in London on February 14, 1881. Metropolitan amateur and professional rowers were carefully watching Hanlan as he rowed his revolutionary Classical Technique on the longest slides yet seen. Steve Fairbairn did not arrive in time to see either of these matches, nor is it likely that he was present when Hanlan defeated Englishman Robert W. Boyd in Newcastle- Upon-Tyne in the north of England on April 3, 1882, just two days after Steve’s first appearance in the Boat Race, but it seems reasonable to speculate that Steve, an enthusiastic 19-year-old Australian rower transplanted to Cambridge, might have made the effort to get to London to join the massive throngs watching his fellow Australian Trickett try to regain the World title from Hanlan less than a month later on Monday, May 1, 1882. The date was a week before the start of the May Bumps. The Times of London: “No doubt the cause of the enormous attendance was the desire to see the perfection of sculling as exhibited by Hanlan, who is without doubt the most accomplished sculler of this or any other age.”673 Sporting Life, London: “Hanlan’s sculling was worth travelling a hundred miles to see.”674 672 Melissa S. Bray, Racing for cash – the era of professional scullers, World Rowing Magazine, April, 2009, p. 4 673 The Sculling Championship, The Times of London, May 2, 1882, p. 12 674 Qtd. by Harding, p. 25 183
