3-021-067 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Boathouse at Putney: the Cambridge crew going out for practice, 1868. The annual boat race between rowers from Oxford and Cambridge Universities takes place on the River Thames in London, between Putney Bridge and Mortlake. The teams compete over a 4.2-mile (6.8 km) course. Members of both crews are traditionally known as blues, with Cambridge in light blue and Oxford in dark blue. 'Past Chiswick the Oxonians were rowing forty strokes, and the Cambridge thirty-eight, as before. The latter made a gallant struggle up to Barnes Bridge, but without effect, as the dark blues drew farther away, and won, amid profound silence, by six lengths. Cambridge had been gradually dying off, and a hundred yards from home they virtually gave up pulling. Sympathy for their repeated defeats made the crowd forget the fine rowing of the winners, and the light blues received nearly all the cheers as they paddled back'. From "Illustrated London News", 1868.