BOAT RACE: History of the Boats 1829-1983

Artist's rendering of the first (?) Oxford boat, training for the
race against Cambridge, 1829. The boat uses wherry construction.

For the first Oxford-Cambridge race, Charles Merivale of Cambridge University wrote to Charles Wordsworth of Oxford University (a Harrow classmate) throwing down the gauntlet.

That historic letter has been lost to posterity, but we have two letters from Wordsworth.

The first is written two decades after the race. Now a bishop, and therefore someone whose veracity we can scarcely challenge, he claims credit for having provoked the challenge from Merivale - as he had the first Oxford-Cambridge cricket match two years before:

Not only was I one of the Oxford Crew in the first Inter-University Boat-Race in 1829, but the Race was entirely set up by me, owing to the fact that though I was myself at Christ Church, Oxford, my home was at Cambridge (my father being Master of Trinity), and I had a large acquaintance there, and some-times (especially in Easter vacations) was invited to pull in one of their boats, e. g. that of St John's, in which were the now Bishops, Selwyn and Tyrrell, and Charles Merivale the historian, all now vigorous and flourishing.

The second letter is Wordsworth's response to Merivale, which is datelined Cambridge because Wordsworth was staying with his father in Cambridge during his summer vacation. The letter is not as poetic as his uncle William would have crafted, but it does the job:

Cambridge, June 2nd [1829]   My dear Merivale, Thank you very much for your letter. Its impudence was unparalleled. I do not know which to admire most, its direct assertions or occult insinuations. The very supposition of my being in our boat here quite rejoiced you. Allow me to assure you of the truth of the report.But this is not the only bone I have to pick with you. The sufficiently candid manner in which you talk 'of lasting us out'(!!!) amuses me so much, that I am ready to die with laughter whenever I think of it. My dear fellow, you cannot possibly know our crew, or you would not write in such an indiscreet manner. Allow me to enlighten you: (8) Staniforth (Christ Church Boat): 4 feet across the shoulders and as many through the chest (διαμπάξ). (7) Moore (Christ Church Boat): 6 feet 1 inch; in all probability a relation of the giant whom the 'three rosy-cheeked schoolboys built up on the top of Helm Crag', so renowned for length and strength of limb.(6) Garnier (Worcester boat): splendid oar. (5) Toogood (Balliol Boat) - [Toogood] for you: but just the man for us. (4) Wordsworth (new oar): has neither words nor worth, action or utterance, etc. I only (row) right on; I tell you that that you yourselves do know. (3) Croft (Balliol Boat): no recommendation necessary. (2) Arbuthnot (Balliol Boat): strong as Bliss's best (Harrow beer). (1) Carter (St John's four-oar): 'potentior ictu fulmineo'. Thus far this letter was written three or four days ago in Popham's rooms, the infection of whose company must be my excuse for its saucy style. The fact is, our boat has been reduced to a considerable pickle, owing to some of our best oars not being able to pull, Stephen Davies's mismanagement, and one or two other minor considerations.We have at last, however, got under way with a fixed crew, and matters are proceeding rather more swimmingly. You will see by the above list that our stroke has been changed. Our days at Henley will be Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday and Monday. Our uniform - black straw hats, dark blue striped jerseys, and canvas trousers: you must not abuse it, as Garnier and I were chosen to decide upon it. ... Now I think of it, you wished to know our boat. It is the old Balliol, built by Stephen Davies. This I am sure will please you. However I am still ready to take two to one.With kind remembrance to all friends and brothers, Believe me, My dear Merivale, Sincerely yours,C. Wordsworth. In all probability there will be a four-oar at Henley, too happy to be manned by a limb of the victorious Cambridge crew - but we shall meet at Henley before the day of the race and then I will let you know all about it.

History of the Boats

In the early years of the race, the drawings indicate the boats were wherries, with the sides of the boats well above the waterline. These were only slightly better performing than the workaday wherries that plied the ports of New York and London and still ply the Thames.

The first innovation was to use outriggers, which were invented first in 1828 and were perfected in the 1930s by Henry Clasper of Newcastle. These outriggers were still on wherries with keels and high sides - and fixed seats.

As of 1841, the Oxford and Cambridge boats still seem from etchings to look like wherries. Even so, some observers said that the Oxford boat was too flat-bottomed for the Thames at that point in the river.

The keel was perceived to be a drag on the boats and in 1844 Henry Clasper, again, came up with a boat design that put a smooth shell around a frame that did not have a keel. His design was perfected with a thin wooden skin around the frame in 1854 by Matt Taylor, and in 1856 his boats beat the competition and became the boat of choice.

In the 1860s the more familiar shells, with sides that are only a few inches above the water line and oarlocks that are set off from the side of the boat, may be seen in the etchings of the race.

But the seats were still fixed. Not until 1869 did someone come up with the idea of a sliding seat, allowing a much longer sweep of the oars and more effective use of the legs rather than just the arms. In 1873, the sliding seats were standard in the Oxford-Cambridge boat race.

Starting in 1874, many new innovations were proposed, notably by Michael F. Davis of Portland, Maine, who took out many patents for his innovations. He invented a swivel row-lock; out-rigger connector castings so that steel tubing could be used instead of solid iron rod; the three-tube rigger instead of the four-tube type; reduced friction seats; sliding seat with rigger; a modern type oar button; a roller bearing oar collar, and steering foot-stretchers.

But the main features of today's shell were in place for the Oxford-Cambridge boat race in 1873. At least one innovation was quashed in 1983 by FISA, which governs rowing races - the sliding rigger. The seat would be fixed but the rig would move. FISA used an economic reason for the ban, namely that the boats would become too expensive. In fact, however, a sliding rig might save a lot of money on construction of the shell and could be stored separately from the shell, saving huge amounts of space in the boat houses.

The other major innovation in the 20th century was the replacement of a wood shell with composite (some form of fiber glass) starting in 1972. This had the practical benefit of reducing the weight of the shell from an average of 38 pounds per rower to 25 pounds - a huge relief for lighter weight rowers.

New boats for the second class of the five-year HBS-B
 in Amsterdam, April 1913. The arrow points to my second-cousin
 Tom de Booy in the middle boat, second from left, 
named Woelwater. It was a festive presentation with new flags.

The issue of the cost of shells is not trivial, especially for rowing in schools. As a point of reference, Dutch students were still rowing in eight-oared wherries in 1913. (See photo.) When the Dutch became serious about rowing in the 1930s, they invested heavily in the latest equipment and in 1936 during the year of the famous Olympic Games built a closed course, at Bosbaan outside of Amsterdam that has been used for many competitive races.

BOAT RACE: History

Memorial to Dr. Charles Merivale (1808-1893)
 in Ely Cathedral. "Caustic in wit".

The Original Challenge.  The BNY Mellon website on the Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race pins the origin of the Boat Race on a very personal story.

The founders of the boat race are two friends from Harrow named Charles:

• Charles Wordsworth, who had gone on to Oxford  (Christ Church) and
• Charles Merivale [sic, only one "r"], who went on to Cambridge (St John's College).

Charles Wordsworth was the nephew of the poet William Wordsworth (St. John's College, Cambridge, 1787-1791) and the son of Christopher Wordsworth (1774-1846), Master of Trinity College, Cambridge in 1820-1841.

Charles Merivale deserves most of the credit for the challenge. He actually rowed in the Cambridge boat at #4. The two Charleses met during the vacation in Cambridge and are said to have gone "rowing" on the Cam (they may have been punting).  The two Harrovians decided to organize an intercollegiate challenge.

Punting on the Cam. View looking south from the Garret Hostel
Bridge. Photo by JT Marlin, June 2014.

On February 10, 1829, according to the BNY Mellon site, a meeting of the Cambridge University Boat Club requested Mr. Snow of St John’s to write immediately to Mr. Staniforth of Christ Church with the message

The University of Cambridge hereby challenge the University of Oxford to row a match at or near London, each in an eight-oared boat during the ensuing Easter vacation.

Staniforth and Snow had been contemporary oarsmen at Eton.

However, a guide to Cambridge Colleges published by Pitkin Press, printed in 2014, says the boat race was started by Cambridge as a challenge from the Lady Margaret Boat Club at St. John's College. The Lady Margaret Boat Club is the oldest college boat club on the River Cam and is famed for the scarlet jackets worn by its rowers. This jacket is said to have been the origin of the word "Blazer" as applied to boat club jackets and later to any jackets of a formal nature.

The two stories can be reconciled if we speculate that Merivale took the matter of the challenge up with the Lady Margaret Boat Club and they in turn approached the CUBC.

What is broadly agreed is that the first race eventually took place on June 10, 1829 at Henley-on- Thames. Oxford won this first race easily. The fact that the next race was not until 1836 suggests both how much the initiative had come from Cambridge and how much the eagerness of the Cambridge oarsmen to test themselves may have been dampened by their initial defeat.

Their winning boat from the first race is on display at the River & Rowing Museum in Henley.

Since 1856 the annual event has been uninterrupted except during the two World Wars, although the actual race was interrupted in 2012 by an Australian protester who was subsequently convicted of a crime.

The Course. The 4.2 mile course on the Thames starts in Putney and ends in Mortlake, which also happen to be stations on the SouthWest Trains line, which originates in Waterloo Station. The train trip from Putney to Mortlake takes five minutes, about one-fourth the time it takes to travel on an Oxford or Cambridge boat–although only the cox is able to travel without doing any rowing. The cost of the train each way by is £1.90 or about $3.

The two boats are called "Blue Boats", although they are not in fact painted blue. Cambridge rowers wear shirts that are light blue or have light-blue highlights. Oxford wears dark blue or shirts with dark-blue highlights.

Each year approximately 250,000 people watch the race live from the banks of the Thames while millions watch on television. Cambridge has won 81 races and Oxford 78 races, with one tie.

Writer in 2012 at marker of the start
of the boat race, with Putney Bridge
in the background. UBR stands for
 "University Boat Race."

Boat Race training starts immediately with the beginning of the academic year in September.

The Wikipedia Boat Race entry has an exhaustive history of the boat race, including full coverage of two interesting disputes among the Oxford crew members that involved American rowers who found the Boat Race culture of the time more than they could take.

Several books have been written on the history of the boat race and the various disputes that occurred.

Some Famous Rowers. Investment bankers are said to favor Oxford and Cambridge rowers because they are presumed to be smart, fit and tall–except for the cox. )

The most famous cox may be Jim Rogers, the investment biker, who coxed the Oxford boat and recently donated a new shell to Balliol. Some famous rowers (lists of crews for most years may be found here):

1922-23 (Oxford) Andrew Irvine
1950 (Cambridge) Lord Snowdon
1977 (Oxford) Colin Moynihan
1978-83 (Oxford) Boris Rankov (whose long stint led to the Rankov Rule)
1980 (Cambridge) Hugh Laurie ("Dr. House")
1990-91, 1993 (Oxford) Olympic gold medalist Matthew Pinsent (his sharp comments on the 2012 race are famous)
1997 (Oxford) Olympic gold medalist Tim Foster
1997 (Oxford) Luka Grubber
1997-99 (Oxford) Andrew Lindsay
1998 (Oxford) Ed Coode
1999, 2001, 2006-07 (Cambridge) Kieran West
2010 (Oxford) The Winklevoss twins (who spoke at the 2012 NYC Boat Race Dinner)

Racing Rules. The race is governed by a Joint Understanding between the Oxford and Cambridge University Boat Clubs. Since 1983, no rower may row more than four times as an undergraduate and four times as a graduate.

To protect the status of the race as a student event, the Boat Race committee in July 2007 refused to award a blue to 2006-2007 Cambridge oarsman Thorsten Engelmann because he did not finish his year, returning to the German rowing team to prepare for the Beijing Olympics. One proposal is that only students in courses lasting two or more years should be allowed to row.

Organization. Like the British Constitution, the organization of the boat race is not written down in any one place because the agreements are private and have been changing. Oxford's official site includes a useful summary of the culture of the boat race and some information on the costs. The race costs "hundreds of thousands of pounds" for the rights to use the Thames for the race and an equal amount to prepare the two crews for the race.

So title sponsorships can be taken to be of this order of magnitude. The rules of the boat race are set by the Oxford and Cambridge rowing clubs, and they also appear to be in charge of hiring the management company, the Boat Race Company Limited (BRCL), that handles the details of the race. BRCL in turn obtains sponsorships and hires staff and contractors. One of its contractors is Professional Sports, based in Weybridge, which deals with media and addresses details relating to sponsorships. The boat race website also lists contractors who do web site design and updating.

Writer at Putney Pier, next to the start of the Boat Race.

Sponsors. Boat Race sponsors over the years have included Ladbrokes, Beefeater Gin, Aberdeen Asset Management, and until May 2012, as a "Title Partner", the business outsourcing company Xchanging, which has an office in Chicago but was not widely known in the United States.

The new "Title Partner" sponsor with a strong U.S. base has a five-year contract from 2013 to 2017, BNY Mellon. The boat race is called the BNY Mellon Boat Race. Sponsorships are governed by private agreements with BRCL.

BNY Mellon's Newton Asset Management group has already sponsored the women's boat race and starting in 2015 women's race will be given equal billing with the traditional men's race (for which women have been allowed to race in the coxswain spot). This is a long way from 1963, when Murray Edwards College's women's boat beat Oxford’s in what appears to be the first intercollegiate women's boat race.

Besides the title sponsor, the BRCL obtains other partners such as Hackett, Sharp's Doom Bar, Bollinger Champagne, and BBC Sport. It also lists "suppliers" including London Voyagers, Fattorini, Crew Room, Hunter and BT. The BRCL also lists an official charity, London Youth Rowing, which teaches rowing to young people who might never otherwise have a chance to learn to row and get a chance to compete.

Boat Race Dinners. More than 70 Oxford-Cambridge committees worldwide are dedicated to running boat race events - 15 in the United States, five in Canada, and more than 50 in the rest of the world. In addition, many university-specific Oxford and Cambridge alumni associations sponsor dinners at the time of the boat race, i.e., in the March-May period.

The largest Oxford-Cambridge dinner is usually held in New York City, attracting more than 200  people in years 2012-14, although in the first year of President Clinton's occupancy of the White House, more than 300 people signed up for the Washington Boat Race Dinner. (President Clinton did not appear, although many of his appointees did. I was at the dinner. After 1993, Washington BRD attendance fell.)

The 2014 and 2015 NYC BRDs are at the University Club. The NYC dinner is also the oldest continuous Oxford-Cambridge alumni event in the world, celebrating its 82nd uninterrupted annual dinner in 2015. The Vancouver BRD is the oldest, dating back at least to 1929, but it was not held in three of the next four years including 1933 and therefore loses by one year to NYC, which started in 1933 and had not missed a year.

Alumni Boat Races. Over the years a number of efforts to organize Oxford-Cambridge boat races have been made in the United States. Boston is continuing the tradition, with an alumni boat race before its Boat Race Dinner in May.

New York has had several successful launches, but none has endured as long as Boston's. Most recently races were held at the Saugatuck Rowing Club in Westport, Conn. Dr. Saman Majd was Race Director in  2006-2007. He spoke about the race at the 2007 NYC Oxford-Cambridge Alumni Boat Race. He has a degree in Physics from Oxford and a PhD in Finance from MIT. He rowed for St. Paul's School, London, and for Christ Church (Captain, 1977). He stroked the Isis crew that set a new course record in the race against Goldie. Since 2004, he has competed for the Saugatuck Rowing Club in the US and World Masters Championships and served as the Club's Commodore in 2006-7.