UNIVERSITY TRAINING.
Eight-oars had been manned at Eton before they found their way to Oxford. At Cambridge they appeared still later. At both Universities a plurality of eight-oars clubs had existed for some seasons before the first University match—1829.
Tn 1881, at the time when the ‘Jubilee’ dinner of University boat-racing was held, the writer took the opportunity of the presence in London of the Rev. T. Staniforth, the stroke of the first winning University eight, to inquire from him his recollections of college boat-racing in his undergraduate days.
Fortunately for posterity, Mr. Staniforth had. kept a diary during his Oxford career, and it had noted many a fact conneeted with aquatics. He kindly undertook to bring to London at his nest visit diaries of Oxford days. He met the writer, searched his diaries, and out of them recorded history which was taken down from his lips, and reduced to the following article, which appeared in ‘Land and Water’ of December 17, 1881.[1] It is now reproduced verbatim, by leave. ‘The writer regrets to say that, from various causes, he has been unable to pursue his researches beyond the dates when Mr. Staniforth’s diaries cease to record Oxford aquatics.
There must be many an old oarsman still alive who can recall historical facts between 1530 and 1836, and it is hoped that such memories may be reduced to writing for the benefit of posterity, and for the honour of the oarsmen of those years, before tempus edax rerum makes it too late.
The writer considers that he will do better thus to reproduce yerbatim his own former contribution to ‘Land and Water’ than to paraphrase it. The more so because much of the text of it is actually the έπεα πτερόεντα of the old Oxford stroke, taken down as uttered from his lips to the writer, and read over again
- ↑ See Appendix.
