3-021-447 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Cam River improvements: dredging at St. John's Bridge, Cambridge, 1869. Illustration of works '...for the improvement of the narrow and shallow river at Cambridge, with a view to the exercise of rowing. The often-repeated failure of the crew of this University in its annual contest with Oxford upon the Thames at Putney is justly ascribed in a great measure to the extreme disadvantages of its own water for practice. With a breadth in general not much exceeding twenty yards, and with several awkward comers in the length of one mile and three quarters below the railway bridge, to which the racing-boats are now confined, the available depth of the Cam has been diminished, in some places to less than two feet, by the deposit of mud, three or four feet thick, upon its proper bed of gravel; and this process has been going on more rapidly since the current has become more sluggish, and the water has been stirred up less freely, because the traffic of barges to and from the town has been much reduced...It is therefore intended...in execution of the designs kindly furnished by Mr. Hawkshaw, to dredge the river thoroughly for three miles and a half below Cambridge, so as to restore the channel to its former depth and width'. From "Illustrated London News", 1869.