Eights on the Isis:
Women's Rowing in Oxford
By Elizabeth Angell
I never intended to become the captain of an Oxford college women's boat club.
In fact, I found my way to rowing almost by mistake. In autumn 2002, I left my hometown
Seattle and moved to an eight-hundred-year-old Oxford college to study for master's degrees
in History and Middle Eastern Studies, and among my fellow graduate students met a new,
international crop of friends. One day, two of them—experienced sportswomen both—dragged
me along, despite my protests, to a "boat club drinks" meeting—"just to see what it's about,"
they said. The following Saturday found us all on the river in the rain, shivering in an old
wooden eight with seven other novices, thoroughly miserable. I was underdressed, frozen, wet,
and completely at a loss about what to do with the oar in my hands. But I was hooked.
Rowing in Oxford, like Oxford academic life in general, is steeped in tradition. The Isis, the small two-kilometer length of the Thames where Oxford crews row, has been home to the sport since its infancy. It was here, in 1846, that outriggers were first introduced for boats, revolutionizing the sport. By then, the "Summer Eights" races were already a generation old, the first recorded competition having taken place in 1815. The famed Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race on the Thames in London had begun in 1827, and like the Summer Eights, has taken place every year since then, except during the two World Wars. Women's rowing, though less long-standing than its male counterpart, is also a venerable tradition: the first "Ladies Boat Race" was held on the Isis in 1927—including not only a timed race, but a "style" contest. Since then, the admission of women to former male-only colleges has fostered the development of a widespread and powerful women's rowing presence in Oxford.
Merton, my first college, was notable for its women's boat club, which ranked far higher than its men's. Rowing in Oxford mirrors the structure of the University itself: Oxford is divided into 39 colleges and halls, and intramural rowing in Oxford is the most popular form of athletic competition among the colleges. Above the college system exists the University athletic teams, known as the Blues, whose members are drawn from all the colleges, but who train and compete in the university's name. The Blues are the elite; however, the vast majority of the thousands of students who train, row, and race every year in Oxford compete primarily at the college level. As a result, experiences and resources vary dramatically between college boat clubs. Merton is a wealthy college, and its boat club is well-equipped with coaches, kit, and equipment. As an undergraduate college with a substantial graduate population, it never lacked for willing coxswains or novice rowers—and somewhat unusually, at the time I was there, it fielded more women's boats than men's in the annual races.
Photo by Amy Wilton
That first rainy autumn, we rose before dawn three days a week for the late-November Christ Church Regatta, in which the new novice boats of each college compete. We learned the course of the Isis, with its strange geographical lingo—Donny Bridge, Haystacks, the Gut (a narrowed passage, where near-collisions between racing boats are common), the Greenbank, Longbridges, Boathouse Island, the Head. But our mornings in the mist were for all for nothing: the English rain poured down, the river flooded, the regatta was cancelled, and we turned our minds and bodies to the prospect of the next term's bumps regatta instead. Bumps racing is a peculiar sort of organized madness. The major intramural rowing events at Oxford, Torpids in early spring, and Summer Eights in May, feature this form of racing, which is unique to Oxford, Cambridge, and English private schools such as Eton. Bumps racing evolved as a way to race large numbers of boats simultaneously on narrow stretches of water. In the Oxford version, each racing division consists of thirteen Eights all lined up in a row parallel to the riverbank, with the stern of each boat exactly 1 1/2 boat lengths behind the bow of the next. The cox of each boat holds a wooden disk connected to a line of rope attached to the bank—the "bungline." A minute before the start, thirteen boatmen push the eights into start positions angled away from the bank. When the gun goes off, the coxes let go of the bunglines, and all thirteen boats make their starts simultaneously. The object is to catch up to and physically "bump" the boat in front—or overtake them—before being caught and bumped by the boat behind you. If a bump cannot be achieved, you hope to "row over," finishing the course (which is slightly less than 2k) without being caught. Racing takes place over four days; each subsequent day the boats on either side of a bump switch places, and the racing starts again with the new order. The goal of a boat is to bump up as many places as possible—if a boat bumps four days in row without being bumped, it wins the coveted "blades." The boat that bumps up to or maintains the top place in the first division wins the title "Head of the River," and its rowers celebrate by burning an old wooden boat in the quadrangle of their college.
What makes the spectacle particularly
exciting is that all the finishers in top three divisions (a total of thirty-six boats for each gender) retain
their places from year to year, so that a boat's final place on the last day of Eights one spring is it starting
place the first day of Eights the next year—even though the rowers may all be different. This results in a
lot of movement up and down: my first year, I rowed in Merton's women's second Eight, which—due to the excellence
of the women's boat club at the time—was the highest-ranked second Eight on the river, and bumped four other
college's first boats to win blades. The following year, due to an exodus of graduating rowers, I was the only
holdover from the previous year. With a last-minute crew composed partly of rugby players who'd never rowed
before that term, we promptly were bumped down four places, winning the mocking opposite of blades—wooden kitchen
"spoons."
Bumps racing is a peculiar sort of organized madness. The major intramural rowing events at Oxford,
Torpids in early spring, and Summer Eights in May, feature this form of racing, which is unique to Oxford,
Cambridge, and English private schools such as Eton. Bumps racing evolved as a way to race large numbers
of boats simultaneously on narrow stretches of water. In the Oxford version, each racing division consists
of thirteen Eights all lined up in a row parallel to the riverbank, with the stern of each boat exactly 1
1/2 boat lengths behind the bow of the next. The cox of each boat holds a wooden disk connected to a line
of rope attached to the bank—the "bungline." A minute before the start, thirteen boatmen push the eights
into start positions angled away from the bank. When the gun goes off, the coxes let go of the bunglines,
and all thirteen boats make their starts simultaneously. The object is to catch up to and physically "bump"
the boat in front—or overtake them—before being caught and bumped by the boat behind you. If a bump cannot
be achieved, you hope to "row over," finishing the course (which is slightly less than 2k) without being caught.
Racing takes place over four days; each subsequent day the boats on either side of a bump switch places, and
the racing starts again with the new order. The goal of a boat is to bump up as many places as possible—if
a boat bumps four days in row without being bumped, it wins the coveted "blades." The boat that bumps up to
or maintains the top place in the first division wins the title "Head of the River," and its rowers celebrate
by burning an old wooden boat in the quadrangle of their college.
What makes the spectacle particularly
exciting is that all the finishers in top three divisions (a total of thirty-six boats for each gender) retain
their places from year to year, so that a boat's final place on the last day of Eights one spring is it starting
place the first day of Eights the next year—even though the rowers may all be different. This results in a
lot of movement up and down: my first year, I rowed in Merton's women's second Eight, which—due to the excellence
of the women's boat club at the time—was the highest-ranked second Eight on the river, and bumped four other
college's first boats to win blades. The following year, due to an exodus of graduating rowers, I was the only
holdover from the previous year. With a last-minute crew composed partly of rugby players who'd never rowed
before that term, we promptly were bumped down four places, winning the mocking opposite of blades—wooden kitchen
"spoons."
My final year, I transferred to St. Antony's, a small graduate-only international studies college.
We had a small but determined boat club that had performed well in previous years despite a lack of funds,
limited equipment, and the bane of graduate rowing—a high turnover of students in short-term masters degrees.
That year the situation was particularly desperate: every single female rower from the previous year had left,
and so I—new to the college, but acquainted with Oxford rowing—found myself elected women's captain in an
emergency boat club meeting. We proceeded —recruiting a team of novices (and some experienced substitutes
for occasional backup) that included rowers from Britain, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Pakistan,
Brazil, Italy, and Spain. The novices were talented scholars of international relations, development
economics, and political theory, none of whom had ever set foot in a boat before. Yet somehow, despite
flooded rivers and a shortage of coxes, and having at one point to share the college's single boat—a men's
heavyweight—among three separate crews, we succeeded in entering two women's eights in the Christ Church
Regatta and Torpids that year, and a strong women's first Eight in Summer Eights. We held our own against
more experienced crews from better equipped, more established colleges—and it was a point of pride that
during our pre-race warm-up exercises, we counted reps to ten in a different language for every rower,
and an extra one for the cox.
That year, some 584 women competed in the races for Summer Eights, and probably nearly a hundred more rowed in boats that failed to qualify for places in the six women's divisions. The great potential of the rowing tradition in Oxford is that it makes the sport accessible to so many people at a novice level, and gives people the chance to explore rowing as a hobby, as well a competitive sport. For every university, national or Olympic athlete representing Oxford in rowing, there are hundreds more pursuing the sport at the college level—and many are left with a life-long interest in rowing that will endure long after they have left Oxford's college spires and riverbanks behind. Wherever I go in the future—even in the arid Middle East — I'll be keeping an eye out for a stretch of water with a crew stroking across it.
That year, some 584 women competed in the races for Summer Eights, and probably nearly a hundred more rowed in boats that failed to qualify for places in the six women's divisions. The great potential of the rowing tradition in Oxford is that it makes the sport accessible to so many people at a novice level, and gives people the chance to explore rowing as a hobby, as well a competitive sport. For every university, national or Olympic athlete representing Oxford in rowing, there are hundreds more pursuing the sport at the college level—and many are left with a life-long interest in rowing that will endure long after they have left Oxford's college spires and riverbanks behind. Wherever I go in the future—even in the arid Middle East — I'll be keeping an eye out for a stretch of water with a crew stroking across it.