SUMMER EIGHTS: May 20-28, 2016 (Updated August 26, 2018)

Head of the River Pub (next to the Folly Bridge) –
a good place to observe the rowing scene.
All photos by JT Marlin.

The 2016 Summer Eights begin with trials starting May 20 and are followed by the Head of the River races, May 25-28. 

They bring out some 170 boats and 1,500 participants. 

At one time, the Summer Eights races took six full days.

The boats compete to be in first place, i.e., Head of the River. 

Brigid Marlin, artist, at Folly Bridge. She is the
 sister of two Oxonians (Randal and me), mother
 of a third (Chris), aunt of two others (Christine
and Kate). Photo by JT Marlin.

They compete in single file because the Thames–a.k.a. the Isis in the Oxford segment above Iffley Lock, can't accommodate very many boats abreast.

A boat advances one place in the long line by "bumping" the boat ahead. Colleges have "bump" suppers after the event to celebrate their advancement(s).

The event, sponsored by Neptune Investment Management, has its own website.

History of Summer VIIIs

Is your Oxford college blade
On this clever clock arrayed?
Is one of them your very own,
Of 36 blades that here are shown?

Recreational rowing at Oxford was under way in 1769. Students then used single wherries, which were designed for choppy seas and have keels and higher sides than than today's flat-bottomed single sculls.


For Isis use, the gunnels were lowered and then the keel was eliminated. A history of competitive-rowing boat design is here.

The first boat-racing clubs at Oxford were organized in 1815, when Brasenose and Jesus Colleges competed for Head of the River in eights, giving the event its name. 

Exeter claims to have been the fourth entrant and that seems to fit with available historical record.

Guide to markings of Oxford college oars.

The "eights" of course have eight oars but nine on board. 

The cox is the extra person in the back who steers and shouts the rowing rhythm. 

Since the cox is baggage, he (or she)  is preferably smaller than the others in the boat.

The cox needs good timing, a big voice, sharp eyes and cough drops.

Christ Church added itself as a competitor in 1817. Seven years on, when Exeter went Head of the River, the crews agreed not to bring in rowers from other colleges. This generated five new college boats – the fifth boat being Worcester in 1824 or 1825, Balliol and Univ (6th and 7th) in 1827, and Oriel and Trinity (8th and 9th) in 1828.

Location of the Boathouses

A visiting Cantabridgian has written a frank tour guide of the Oxford boathouses and he is mostly impressed.

A map of the locations of the boathouses is provided below. The links to the boat clubs don't work because this is a screen shot, but I have included after the screen shot some links that work. The Folly Bridge notations show Salter's and the Head of the River Public House, but are missing the new Folly Bridge restaurant and the attached boathouse that provides boats to visitors.

University and College Boat Club Websites 

Oxford University Boat Club . Oxford University Women's Boat Club
Oxford University Lightweight Rowing Club
Oxford University Women's Lightweight Rowing Club

Balliol
Brasenose
Christ Church
Corpus Christi
Exeter
Green Templeton
Hertford
Jesus
Keble

Lady Margaret Hall
Linacre
Lincoln
Magdalen
Mansfield
Merton
New
Oriel
Osler House (Med students)
Pembroke
Queen's
Regent's Park
Somerville
St Anne's
St Antony's
St Benet's
St Catherine's
St Edmund Hall

St Hilda's
St Hugh's
St John's
St Peter's
Trinity
University
Wadham
Wolfson
Worcester

Other Rowing Posts: Rowing Blazers . 2012 NYC Boat Race Dinner . Punting . Head of Charles . 2017 Summer Eights

BIRTH: May 1–Joseph Heller (St Catz)

Joseph Heller (1923-1999) of St Catz, Oxford

This day was born in 1923 Joseph Heller, in Brooklyn, NY. The title of his best-known work, Catch-22 (1961), described a Kafkaesque vicious circle in which the choices offered are absurd.

Catch-22 is about an American World War II bombardier named John Yossarian, who tries to get out of the Army but finds out slowly that his options are all bad.

Heller himself enlisted in the U.S. Army at 19 and was sent to Italy as a bombardier during World II, where he flew more than 60 missions. He kept a detailed diary, in which he wrote that war was "fun in the beginning" because you feel "something glorious about it," but  endured several harrowing episodes that he used in Catch-22.

After his discharge, he became a lifelong activist against war. He attended Columbia and Oxford (St Catz) on the GI Bill. He worked as a copywriter at Time and wrote short stories that appeared in The Atlantic, Esquire, and Cosmopolitan.

He said that the opening lines of his novel just came into his head one day:

It was love at first sight. The first time he saw the chaplain, [Yossarian] fell madly in love with him. 

The book was originally titled Catch-18, but Heller's editor, Robert Gottlieb, discovered that Leon Uris also had a war book coming out the same month as Heller's, entitled Mila 18. Gottlieb and Heller brainstormed which numbers sounded funnier: 11 or 14. They settled on 22.

The book initially received mixed reviews. As the virtues of the book became established, it eventually sold 10 million copies. It is now widely considered a classic of post-war literature.  "Yossarian Lives" bumper stickers appeared on cars and students against the draft wore Army field jackets with John Yossarian name tags. Catch-22 was made into a film (1970) by Mike Nichols and starred Jon Voigt, Orson Welles, and Alan Arkin. Heller also worked as an uncredited scriptwriter for the James Bond film Casino Royale (1967).

Heller took 13 years to write his second novel, Something Happened (1974), which one critic summarized as, "Nothing happens."

When an acquaintance told him in his later writing he had never matched the greatness of Catch-22, he immortally answered:

Who has?

Heller died in 1999. In anticipation of this event, he said once:

Everyone else seems to get through it all right, so it couldn't be too difficult for me.

Comment

I met Heller  couple of times before he died in 1999. He was a centered person who seemed at peace with himself. Not someone you think of as a 50-mission bomber.

In Catch 22 he went beyond the older Hobson's Choice in which the seeming choice turns out to be nonexistent, and painted a picture of a choice that was horrible sentence. It's a world that moves from Kant to Kafka:

• A Hobson's Choice is relatively benign. In one version the stabler offers you a choice of any horse in the stable, when there is only one left–one that everyone else has rejected. The choice is named after a Cambridge (naturally), England innkeeper. In another version of the Hobson's Choice story, the guest is instructed to take the horse "nearest the door".
• In Catch-22 the choice that one would most like is impossible to get. The possible outcomes are all bad. Relative to a Hobson's Choice, think of a situation where one pays in advance for a choice of horse, but instead of finding a horse, at the stable one is kidnapped or robbed.

Catch-22 is a Kafkaesque world where things don't make sense. Hobson's Choice is a simpler problem – we have no choice, if we know what's good for us. In that way, Kant's attempt to derive a  moral imperative from logical premises instead of divine revelation was an attempt to give the human race two avenues to the same horse, i.e., God.

OXFORD-CAMBRIDGE: 120K Views; Top Posts

Thank you for reading.

April 26, 2016–The Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race NYC blog has passed 120,000 page views.

Total page views for my Google blogs: 1.09 million.

Thank you for reading. Stay in touch.

Most-read posts for this blog in April 2016 were:

Entry

WW2: Why Wasn't Oxford Bombed? (Updated Mar. 27, 2... Jun 8, 2013, 2 comments

LORD NORTH: Apr. 15–Hey, I Just Did What Ben Said ... Apr 6, 2016

HERALDRY: St Catherine's College, Oxford (Updated ... Dec 16, 2015

HERALDRY: Douglas, Moray and de Vere Arms (Updated... Nov 23, 2014

HERALDRY: Oxford Stars (Updated Dec. 17, 2015) Nov 21, 2014, 1 comment

BOAT RACE: Dinners, 2016 (Updated Apr. 5, 2016) Dec 4, 2015

HERALDRY: Trinity College, Oxford (Updated Apr. 15... Dec 7, 2015

ROWING BLAZERS: Ralph Lauren Launch, Carlson's Boo... Sep 24, 2014

HERALDRY: The College of Arms and Windsor Herald Aug 15, 2015

TRINITY: Pitt Society lunch, 2015 Feb 7, 2015

BOAT RACE DINNER: Washington, D.C., 2016

THE 69th ANNUAL OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE DINNER

was held Thursday, April 7, 2016

at the National Press Club, 14^th and F Streets, N.W., Top Floor

Cocktails at 7 p.m., Dinner at 8 p.m. 

Moderator:

William W. Chip (Clare, Cambridge) Senior Counsel at Covington & Burling will preside. Bill studied economics at Clare as a Mellon Fellow, earning his law degree at Yale University after serving as a Marine Corps officer in the Pacific.  An international tax lawyer by day, in his spare time he authors (occasionally politically incorrect) articles in economic, political, and religious journals such as The National Interest, The American Conservative, and First Things.

Speakers:

Professor Angela E. Stent (Girton, Cambridge), Professor of Government and Director, Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies, Georgetown University.  She has served on the National Intelligence Council and the Office of Policy Planning, U.S. Department of State.  Her latest book, The Limits of Partnership: US-Russian Relations in the 21^st Century (2014), won the Douglas Dillon Prize of the American Academy of Diplomacy. Professor Stent will give the Toast to the Universities.

Professor Sir Drummond Bone, MA, FRSA, FRSE, Hon, LittD, Master of Balliol College and an acknowledged expert of the poetry of Byron and is President of the Scottish Byron Society.  He is the former President of Universities UK, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Liverpool, Principal of Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, University of London and Professor of English Literature and Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Glasgow.  Sir Drummond will give the response from the Universities.

THE OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE COMMITTEE of Washington, D.C. 

Steven Beller, Jesus, Cambridge Michael R. Beschloss, St. Antony’s, Oxford Nicholas Boyle, Emmanuel, Cambridge Esther Brimmer, New College, Oxford Patrick Brogan, King’s, Cambridge Jonathan Davidson, Pembroke, Cambridge E.J. Dionne Jr., Balliol, Oxford Lucie Morton Garrett, Manchester, Oxford Elliot F. Gerson, Magdalen, Oxford Thomas L. Hughes, Balliol, Oxford

George R. Keys, Jr., Balliol, Oxford, Chairman David B. Law, Christ Church, Oxford, Hon. Treas. Sarah Papineau Marshall, King’s, Cambridge  Janet Matricciani, Trinity, Cambridge  Amit Pandya, New College, Oxford  Victoria P. Rostow, King’s, Cambridge  George Stephanopoulos, Balliol, Oxford  Cynthia Walker, Girton, Cambridge  Carolyn H. Williams, Girton, Cambridge  Edwin M. Yoder, Jr., Jesus, Oxford

LORD NORTH: Apr. 15–Hey, I Just Did What Ben Said To (Updated May 13, 2016)

Benjamin Franklin.

On this day in 1774, a British newspaper published an open letter by autodidact (high school dropout) Benjamin Franklin to Britain’s prime minister–Oxonian Frederick, Lord North. 

The newspaper was published in England, in The Public Advertiser. Franklin signed himself "A Friend to Military Government". 

He wrote as from the Smyrna Coffee House on St. James Street in London; this was for decades a well-known meeting place of the liberal Whig party. North was the leader of the ruling Tory party.

Lord North.

Franklin’s sarcastic letter suggested to Lord North that King George should ASAP respond to the insolence of the  American colonial rebels as follows:

• Impose martial law in the colonies, i.e., closing the civil courts.
• Appoint a “King’s Viceroy of all North America" to keep order.
• Collect its taxes through whatever intimidation was required.
• Then sell to Spain the impoverished colonies and its colonists ("the soil and the people on it").

Did Lord North take the letter seriously? Based on his subsequent actions, it certainly seems as though he did...

• The next month, in May 1774, his government passed the Massachusetts Government Act, imposing martial law on Massachusetts, where the rebels were most vocal.
• General Thomas Gage was appointed to institute the military government.
• He was made the colony’s royal governor.

The response of the colonies was the Declaration of Independence, which followed in 1776. The colonies were no longer so easy to sell to Spain.

An Open Letter to Lord North

Smyrna Coffee-House, April 5. [1774]
For the Public Advertiser. [Published April 15, 1774]

To Lord North.

My Lord,

All your small Politicians, who are very numerous in the English Nation, from the patriotic Barber to the patriotic Peer, when big with their Schemes for the Good of poor Old England, imagine they have a Right to give Advice to the Minister, and condemn Administration if they do not adopt their Plan. I, my Lord, who have no mean Opinion of my Abilities, which is justified by the Attention that is paid to me when I harangue at the Smyrna and Old Slaughter’s, am willing to contribute my Mite to the public Welfare; and have a Proposal to make to your Lordship, which I flatter myself will be approved of by the Ministry, and if carried into Execution, will quiet all the Disturbances in America, procure a decent Revenue from our Colonies, make our royal Master (at least there) a King de facto, as well as de jure; and finally, as it may be managed, procure a round Sum towards discharging the national Debt.

My Scheme is, without Delay to introduce into North America a Government absolutely and entirely Military. The Opposition which some People suspect would be made by the Colonies, is a mere Bugbear: The Sight of a few Regiments of bold Britons, appearing with Ensigns displayed, and in all the Pomp of War, a Specimen of which may be seen every Summer at the Grand Review on Wimbledon Common, with that great Commander G——l G——e at their Head, accompanied with a Detachment from the Artillery, and Half a Dozen short Sixes, would so intimidate the Americans, that the General might march through the whole Continent of North America, and would have little else to do but to accept of the Submission of the several Towns as he passed. But as the Honour would be too great for one Man to reduce to absolute Subjection so great an Extent of Territory, I would propose that a separate Command be given to L——d G—— G——e, who by his animated Speeches in the House, and coinciding so entirely with your Lordship’s Opinion on the proper Methods for humbling America, deserves a Share in the Fame of such a grand Exploit. Let him have one half of the Army under his Direction, and march from New York to South Carolina. No one can object to the Nomination, as his Military Prowess is upon Record. 

The Regiments that are in America, with those who are about to embark, will be amply sufficient, without being at the Expence of sending more Troops. Those who served in America the last War, know that the Colonists are a dastardly Set of Poltroons; and though they are descended from British Ancestors, they are degenerated to such a Degree, that one born in Britain is equal to twenty Americans. The Yankey Doodles have a Phrase when they are not in a Humour for fighting, which is become proverbial, I don’t feel bould To-day. When they make this Declaration, there is no prevailing on them to attack the Enemy or defend themselves. If contrary to Expectation they should attempt an Opposition, procure Intelligence when it happens not to be their fighting Day, attack them and they will fly like Sheep pursued by a Wolf. 

When all North America have thus bent their Neck to the Yoke designed for them, I would propose that the Method made use of by the Planters in the West Indies may be adopted, who appoint what they call a Negro Driver, who is chosen from among the Slaves. It is observed that the little Authority that is given him over his Fellow Slaves, attaches him to his Master’s Interest, and his Cruelty would be without Bounds were he not restrained; but the Master is certain, that the utmost Exertion of Strength will be exacted by this cruel Task-Master for the Proprietor’s Emolument. Let all the Colonists be enrolled in the Militia, subject of course to Martial Law. Appoint a certain Number of Officers from among the conquered People, with good Pay, and other Military Emoluments; they will secure their Obedience in the District where they command.

Let no other Courts be allowed through the whole Continent but Courts Martial. An Inhabitant, who disobeys an Order, may by a Court Martial be sentenced to receive from One Hundred to a Thousand Lashes in a frosty Morning, according to the Nature of his Offence. Where Punishment is thus secure, this Advantage will accrue, that there will not be the same Necessity of hanging up so many poor Devils as in this free Country; by which Means the Service of many an able Man is lost to the Community. I humbly propose that the General and Commander in Chief be vested with the Power, and called by the Name of the King’s Viceroy of all North America. This will serve to impress the Americans with greater Respect for the first Magistrate, and have a Tendency to secure their Submission. All Orders issuing from this supreme Authority to have the Force of Laws.

After this happy Change of Government, how easy to collect what Taxes you please in North America. When the Colonists are drained of their last Shilling, suppose they should be sold to the best Bidder. As they lie convenient for France or Spain, it may be reasonably expected one of those little Powers would be a Purchaser. I think Spain is to be preferred, as their Power hath more of the Ready than France. I will venture a Conjecture, that the Ministry might get at least Two Millions for the Soil, and the People upon it. With such a Sum what glorious Things might he not achieve! Suppose it should be applied towards the Payment of one hundredth Part of the National Debt, I [it?] would give him an Opportunity of drawing down upon him the Blessing of the Poor by making him to take off the Halfpenny Duty on Porter. Considering the probable Stability of the present Ministry, this Honour may be reserved for your Lordship.

My Lord, excuse the Crudity of these indigested Hints, which your Wisdom is so capable of improving; and believe me, with infinite Respect, Your Lordship’s Most obedient Humble Servant,

A Friend To Military Government

(Bold face added by your blogger to show the main points of the letter.)

BIRTH: Mar. 19–Richard Burton (Trinity, Oxford)

Sir Richard Francis Burton, 1864.

Born Richard Francis Burton in 1821 in Torquay, Devonshire, England, he was the son of a prematurely retired army officer and had mixed English, Irish, and possibly French ancestry.

His father raised his two sons and daughter in France and Italy, where young Richard developed an unusual talent for languages.

Before entering Trinity College, Oxford, in 1840, he had become fluent in French, Italian, and the Béarnais and Neapolitan dialects, as well as having learned the requisite Greek and Latin.

But his continental upbringing left him ambivalent about his national identity. He complained that “England is the only country where I never feel at home.”

He didn't remember his time at Oxford with joy, but it was there that he, like later T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), learned Arabic. He went on to fight in the East India Company and learned Hindu, Persian, and local Indian languages. He wrote about his travels in Asia, Africa, and the Americas, and he often disguised himself in local clothing. He was the first European to discover Lake Tanganyika.

He first became famous when he published A Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Medinah and Meccah (1855), about disguising himself to make the Hajj to Mecca, forbidden for non-Muslims. He published 43 books on his explorations and almost 30 more books of translations.

He wrote the definitive English translation of A Thousand Nights and a Night, (usually referred to as The Arabian Nights), and introduced The Kama Sutra to Western audiences.

Sir Richard Burton died October 20, 1890 in Trieste, then Austria-Hungary and now Italy.

BOAT RACE DINNER | Washington, D.C., 1992

For other historical Oxford-Cambridge Dinner menus and photos, go here.