Toast to Oxford 2006
by Robert M. Dawson
MR. PRESIDENT, HONORED GUESTS, and members of the two Universities:
IT would seem that we narrowly missed an outcome in which Cambridge University had, temporarily, one more navigable submarine than the Canadian Navy. There is no doubt that the rowing was hard - and as a result, the race, at 18 minutes and 26 seconds, was the slowest in sixteen years. Not nearly as slow as the 36 minute race over the same course in 1836 -- and indeed better than any time recorded before the 86th race in 1934 -- but slow for modern times.
But I need not point out, of course, that the Oxford boat had to row through exactly the same headwind, the “stinging, ringing, spindrift”, and the haystack waves. And they did so while keeping the water on the side of the hull that it was designed to go on. This says hopeful things about the advancement of hydraulic engineering at the senior university in the twenty-first century.
Light Blue grousing about the conditions on the river, then, must be understood as implicit praise of those who met those conditions head-on - and won. In this spirit, then, I would like to offer for your entertainment tonight a short verse.
*****
A Tideway Ode
Go, for they call you, Cantab, to the port;
Go, Cantab, toast the victors of the race.
Some years the toast is of a different sort,
But try to give the bloody thing with grace.
At Surrey bend I strike my weeping lyre
Where gentle Thames transformed itself to be
No river, but, as wind and wave rose higher,
The rolling billows of a deep blue sea.
I strike my weeping lyre at Surrey bend;
Where, meeting choppy waves, the Cambridge boat
Was swamped (or as we say in Cambridge, “fenned”)
And only stayed precariously afloat.
And where, alas, the crew upon that day
Fearing no wave, nor yet precipitation,
Had left behind the pump (or as we say,
The apparatus for de-fen-estration)
Where the grave Light Blue coxswain, from astern
Descried at Hammersmith his submerging prow;
And as he fell back, hardly had to turn
The fringes of a westward-facing brow
To see the merry cox of the dark blue,
The young light-hearted masters of the waves,
Snatch at his rudder and urge on his crew
And leave the rival boat to watery graves;
Yes, leave the Light Blues thinking on the folly
Of bidding seven spades without a trump,
Or walking out in spring without a brolly,
Or leaving Putney Bridge without a pump.
Five lengths behind, and under windy skies
And very nearly under water too.
Full fathom five Light Blue ambition lies.
Oxford has won; a toast to the Dark Blue!
*****
Fellow Cantabrigensians, honored guests:
Please stand with me to drink a toast to the victors.
TO OXFORD!
[delivered by Robert M. Dawson (Corpus, 1982) at the Halifax Boat Race Dinner 5 May, 2006 during dessert]
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Cambridge takes on water, having no pump, 2006
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