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Principles of Rowing by Oarsmen, by T. S. Egan, with an introduction by John A. H. Freshfield. Printed in Cambridge by Deighton Bell, 1937. Cambridge University Library, Cam.c.937.6

Egan was born in 1815 and was admitted to the College in 1833, the same year as George Green, the noted mathematician. As with his near contemporary E. S. Kennedy, Egan’s academic life at Cambridge seems to have been leisurely; he did not take his BA until 1839. It would appear that rowing was his primary passion. In his obituary in the Caian for 1893 it is lamented that his death ‘removes one of the few remaining links that bind us to the great aquatic days of the early history of the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race’.

At his death Egan held the distinction of being one of just four Cambridge men who had coached a crew of the ‘rival University’. Oxford and Cambridge first met at Henley-on-Thames in 1829. They did not race again until 1836, the year in which Egan was first Cambridge University coxswain. The next encounter was 1839, at which Egan was both coxswain and coach; of this second victory the racing magazine Bell’s Life in London, and Sporting Chronicle remarked: ‘The Cambridge men pulled like a piece of mechanism, so beautifully did they work together’. Egan was again coxswain in 1840, but Oxford prevailed by a length. After his departure from Cambridge he continued to train. In 1852, following a dispute with Cambridge University Boat Club he went to the Other Place to train their winning crew, but Cambridge forgave him and in 1853 he was elected President of the Club.

Away from the river he was an accomplished translator of German poetry. He appears to have visited Germany frequently. In 1837, whilst on holiday with another undergraduate from Caius called Henry Slack, tragedy struck. The young men went swimming in the Rhine; Slack dived in first and his body was never seen again. Egan returned home alone. Later in life he became editor of Bell’s Life at a time when it faced stiff competition from magazines such as Sporting Life, by which it was eventually absorbed. Bell’s Life had started out as an anti-government newspaper, aimed at the working classes, printed on distinctive pink paper.

This little pamphlet is extremely scarce. It is a 1937 reprint of a work Egan wrote in 1846. The copy held by this Library went missing many years ago; it is recorded as such in the 1967 stock-check of the then Inner Library, now the location of the Fellows’ Dining Room. Unfortunately it has not been possible to obtain a replacement. For this exhibition we are grateful to the University Library for the use of its copy.

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