This page needs to be proofread.
The Coxswain and Steering.
101

Bathing-place. It extinguished any chance which might have been left for Cambridge.

Tn the preceding year C. R. W. Tottenham immortalised himself by a great coup with a barge. She was tacking right across his course (Oxford had just gone ahead after having been led by a clear length through Hammersmith Bridge). ‘This was just below Barnes Bridge. Many a pilot would have tried te go round the bows of that barge. At the moment when she shaped her course to tack across tide there seemed to be ample room to pass in front of her. Tottenham never altered his course, and trusted to his own calculations. Presently the barge was broadside on to Oxford’s bows, and onlya few lengths ahead, Every one in the steamers astern stood aghast at what seemed to be an incvitable smash. The barge held on, and so did Oxferd, and the barge passed clear away just before Oxford came up. Even if she had hung a little, in a lull of wind, it would have been easy for Oxford to deflect a trifle and pass under her stern. Anything was better than attempting to go round her bows, which at first seemed to be the simplest course to spec- tators not expertsat pilotage. It must be admitted that so much nerve and judgment at a pinch have never before or since been displayed by any coxswain in a University match. ‘Tottenham had his opportunity and made the most of it, He steered thrice afterwards, but even if he had never steered again he had made his reputation by this one coup. In justice to other crack cox- swains, such as Shadwell and Egan of old, and, par excellence, G. L. Davis in the present day, we must assume that if they had been similarly tried they would have heen equally triumphant.