Putney to Mortlake

A sight fair to an old Rowing Blue is the thronged four-mile S of the Thames between Putney Bridge and Mortlake Brewery on the day of an Oxford-Cambridge boat race. Last week's race, the 91st since 1829, was more exciting than ever, due to the possibility that Irish dynamiters might also attend. Guards were quadrupled on all the bridges; spectators were barred from the popular halfway vantage point, Hammersmith Bridge, which the Irish recently bombed. River police patrolled all morning.

The odds were 2-1 on Oxford to repeat its successes of the last two years. Tickled were most Britishers at the thought of four-foot-two. 71 1/2-lb. Coxswain Hart Massey, son of the Canadian High Commissioner, nephew of Actor Raymond Massey, urging eight Oxonian giants to great efforts with an electric-bell system instead of the traditional megaphone.

But at the gun Cambridge got off to a great racing start, got a quarter-length lead in the first 200 yards; at Craven Steps, about the three-quarter-mile mark, Cambridge had stretched its inside-track advantage to almost a length. At the Mile Post there was a half-length of open water, the Light Blue stroke had settled down to a steady 30, and Oxford was vainly trying to spurt. At Hammersmith Bridge, with nobody but the guards overhead to watch, Cambridge had a commanding two lengths. A bomb might have stopped them, but Oxford could not. Cambridge sailed by Mortlake sitting up; Oxford slumped in, all down but Coxs'n Massey, four lengths behind. The score, over 110 years: Cambridge 48; Oxford 42; one dead heat (1877).

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