3-039-126 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The First of April: a sketch at the Boat-Race, 1871. 'The...annual boat-race on the Thames from Putney to Mortlake, between the champion crews of the Oxford and Cambridge Universities...Upon the low little islets or "aits" of the river near Chiswick...were assembled not a few spectators who had been landed there by the cunning boatmen, ferrying them over from the safe path for the small fee of sixpence a head. As the tide was coming up fast and full...and causing a formidable swell, these patches of marshy ground, if not actually overflowed, were presently so washed by the waves as to make unpleasant standing-places. The boats lay still alongside, and the disgusted sightseers impatiently demanded to be taken back to the shore from which they had come. But the boatmen...were much too wise not to take advantage of their situation...the jolly young waterman...when he has got his customers into such a mess on the swampy aits..., will release them for 2s. 6d. apiece...The terrified, or vexed and enraged party on the half-submerged mud-bank feel no inclination to hear the end of this argument...Upon the islet stand, or sink to the ankles in cold slush, those...who have not yet made up their minds to pay the sum exacted for their deliverance'. From "Illustrated London News", 1871.