OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE ROWING. 155 



ascribed the Goodwin Sands to the building of the Re- 

 culvers. 



It has been said that the shallowness of the Cam affects 

 the style of Cambridge oarsmen. This seems to me a 

 fanciful theory. Occasionally in the course of a race close 

 steering round one or other of the sharper corners might 

 permit the oarsmen to * feel the bottom/ for two or three 

 strokes ; but during all the rest of the course the oars find 

 plenty of water to take good hold of. The Cam was 

 jndoubtedly growing shallower for some time after 1860 ; 

 and the change gave some degree of support to the theory 

 that the peculiarities of the Cambridge style were due to the 

 peculiarities of the Cambridge river. But I believe the 

 notion was a wholly mistaken one ; and I am confirmed in 

 this belief by noticing that the Cambridge style from 1860 to 

 1869 was in all essential respects, and especially in that feature 

 whirh I shall presently describe as its radical and fatal 

 defect, the same precisely as it had been in earlier times 

 when Cambridge was oftener successful than defeated. 



I have heard Cambridge men say, indeed, that after 

 rowing on the Cam they feel quite strange on Thames water. 

 They feel, they say, as if the boat were running away with 

 them. I have experienced the feeling myself, when rowing 

 on the Thames anywhere below Teddington ; but most 

 markedly below Kew. It is not due, however, to the mere 

 difference in the depth of the two streams, but mainly, if not 

 wholly, to the circumstance that the lower part of the 

 Thames is a tidal river. It is not noticeable above Ted- 

 dington, save (in a somewhat modified form) in those 

 portions of the river called * races/ where the stream runs 

 with unusual rapidity. I should suppose that Oxonians 

 felt the influence of this peculiarity fully as much as Cam- 

 bridge oarsmen do ; in fact, I know that this is the experi- 

 ence of some Oxonians, for they have told me as much. 



I believe that the principal disadvantage which the 

 narrowness of the Cam entailed upon boating-men at Cam- 

 bridge, lay in the circumstance that Cambridge men never, 



