Page:Boating - Woodgate - 1888.pdf/112

 as they alleged, too rapid a stroke. A college meeting had to be called, and a new stroke to be ‘elected,’ before a change could be made in the order of the boat for the next night’s race! Mr. Godfrey was asked to resign his seat as stroke, which of course he did, and tock the seat of No, 6. His successor was thus elected captain, Much sympathy for Mr, Godfrey’s unfortunate statutory deposition from command was openly ex- pressed by out-college oarsmen, and the result was before long (hat a change was made in the code of the Queen’s College Boat Club, and its adaptation to that of the more advanced rules which found favour with the majority of the U.B.C.

However, just as a bowler at cricket is prone to be blind ta his own weaknesses, and to be imbued with ambition to do tao much with his own hands at moments when they have lost their cunning, so when a captain has claims, not superlative, to the afler-thwart, there is always some danger lest his eager- ness to do all he can may blind him as to the best choice for that seat, In some cases, as with (of late) Messrs. West and Pitman, respectively strokes and presidents of their U.B.C’.s, or in the cases ef such oarsmen as Messrs. W. Hoare, W. R. Griffiths, M, Brown, J. H. D. Goldie, R. Lesley, H. Rhodes, &c., all of whom had won their spurs as first-class strokes before they were elected to the presidency, the coincidence of stroke and captain has done no harm and has found the best man in the right place, Nevertheless, it is advisable to caution all captains on this score, and to suggest to them that, when they find themselves sharing a candidature for an important seat, they will do well to ask the advice of some impartial mentor, and abide by it.

At Eton the traditional law of identity of stroke and cap- tain held good, with natural Etonian conservatism, until a date even later than that of the previously related anecdote of Queen’s College. So far as we can recollect, the first instance in which an Eton eight was not stroked by its captain was in 1864. In that year Mr. (now Colonel) Seymour Corkran was captain of Eton. He was a sort of pocket Hercules, of great