The start of a boat race is always rather nervous work for the crews, but the start of a bumping race is worse in this respect than any. A spectator who cares to walk down the bank and look at the crews waiting at their posts for the start can not fail to notice that even the most experienced men look extremely uncomfortable.
The start is managed thus : at the starting-point of each boat a short wooden post is driven firmly into the ground. These posts are exactly 13o ft. apart, and to each is attached a thin rope 6o ft. long with a bung at the end, while by each post a punt is moored. About twenty minutes or a quarter of an hour before the appointed time, the crews start from their barges and paddle gently down to their respective starting-places, where they take up their positions alongside of the punts. Five minutes before the starting-time the first gun is fired as a sort of warning. These guns are fired punctually to the second, and by the first gun the men who are going to start the different crews set their stop-watches. The duty of these " starters " is to keep the crews informed of the exact time, by calling out, "One minute gone," "Two minutes gone," etc. The second gun goes one minute before the start, and as soon as it is fired, the waterman slowly pushes the boat out from the side of the punt by means of a long pole pressed against stroke's rigger, the coxswain holding the bung at arm's-length in his left hand, with the cord taut so as to counteract the pressure of the pole, and "bow " and "two " paddling very gently so as to keep the boat at the very furthest extension of the rope. " Thirty seconds more," calls the starter ; " fifteen," "ten," " five," " four," " three," " two," " look out "— Bang ! and, except for those who are doomed to be bumped, the worst is over till the next night. Directly a bump is made both the boat which has made the bump and the boat which is bumped draw to one side, and on the next night the boat which has made the bump starts in front of its victim of the preceding evening. The Eights are the last event of the season in which the colleges compete against one another on the river, and the interest and excitement of the college in the doings of its crew generally find their final outlet, in the case of a college which has made five or six bumps or finished head of the river, in a bump supper—an entertainment of a nature peculiar to Oxford and Cambridge, which is, perhaps, better left to the imagination than described in detail.
It is a curious fact that, although the ideal aimed at by each college is the same, different colleges seem to adhere, to a very considerable extent, year after year to the same merits and the same faults. One college gets the reputation
of not being able to row a fast-enough stroke ; another, of being ready to race a week before the races and of getting worse as the races proceed, and, try as hard as they like, they do not seem to be able to shake off the effect of the reputation of their predecessors. So, again, one college gets the reputation of rowing better in the races than could possibly be expected from their form in practice, or of always improving during the races. The most notable case of late years, perhaps, was the traditional pluck of Brasenose. For eleven years in the Torpids and for three years in the Eights their certain downfall was predicted, but year after year, sometimes by the skin of their teeth and sometimes with ease, they managed to get home. The best performances in the Eights, as a matter of mere paper record, are those of Trinity and Magdalen, who have each rowed head of the river for four years in succession, the former in i86r, 1862, 1863, and 1864, and the latter in 1892, 1893, 1894, and 1895. Magdalen can also boast of not having finished lower than third in the Eights for some fifteen years. Brasenose have finished head of the river fourteen times since the races were started in 1836 ; University nine times, and Magdalen seven times. The best performance in any one year is that of New College in the season 1895-96, when they com pletely swept the board, being head of the river in Eights and Torpids, and winning the University Fours, Pairs, and Sculls. The only other college race besides those I have described is the Fours. This race is rowed in coxswainless racing-ships during the fourth week of the October Term. It is a " time" race, the crews, which row two in a heat, starting eighty yards apart, the finishing posts being, of course, divided by the same distance. A time race is a very unsatisfactory affair compared with an ordinary "breast" race, but it is rendered necessary by the narrow winding river, for there is not room between Iffley and Oxford for two boats to row abreast. Oxford College crews, undoubtedly excellent though they often are, have been singularly unsuccessful at Henley. The Grand Challenge Cup has only been won by a college crew from Oxford twice within the memory of the present generation (i.e. by Exeter, in 1882, and by New College in the present year). Wadham, it is true, won it in almost prehistoric times (1849), and the tradition is handed down that they took the light blue in their colours from those of the crew which they defeated — a tradition which I need hardly say the members of the sister University always meet with a most emphatic denial.