First and Third Trinity Boat Club
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The First and Third Trinity Boat Club is the rowing club of Trinity College in Cambridge, England. The club formally came into existence in 1946 when the First Trinity Boat Club and the Third Trinity Boat Club merged. The first boat club associated with Trinity was formed in 1825 and came to be known as First Trinity in 1833 when the Third Trinity Boat Club was formed (a Second Trinity Boat Club was formed in 1831 but did not have a continuous existence until 1840). Membership of Third Trinity was originally confined to Old Etonians and Old Westminsters. Members of Third Trinity were allowed to also be members of First or Second Trinity and often were.
In the nineteenth century the various Trinity boat clubs were very strong and regularly won events in Cambridge, at various regattas around the country, notably the Henley Royal Regatta, and regularly contributed rowers to the Cambridge boat for the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race. Indeed in the 1849 Boat Race, all members of the crew were from Trinity, seven from Third Trinity and two, the cox included, from First Trinity. Boats from the three clubs could often be found at, or near, the top of the Bumps and they sometimes combined their resources in races against the rest of the University.
In 1876 Second Trinity was disbanded. A legend says that during the Bumps in that year, the rowers of Trinity's most vicious enemy, the St. John's College Boat Club, attached a sword to the front of one of their boats in such a way that if they would bump the boat in front of them, which was one of Second Trinity's, it would be punctured and caused to sink for dramatic effect. The plan supposedly worked in the sense that the boat did sink, but in the process the sword also hit and killed Second Trinity's cox, which of course wasn't intended. This, so the legend, is the reason why St. John's College no longer has a boat club under its own name, and also why the Second Trinity Boat Club was dissolved. Officially, however, the reason was simply a lack of support, even though its first boat was still quite strong and was still in the first division of the Bumps.
In the twentieth century the clubs remained competitive and continued to achieve success in various events. The joining of the clubs in 1946 was due to a difficulty in remaining competitive with the now larger boat clubs of other colleges. In the same year First and Third won the Visitors' Challenge Cup at the Henley Royal Regatta and the following year won the Ladies Plate. They repeated this feat by winning the Ladies Plate again in 1954 and 1967 which was the last year that a college crew from either Cambridge or Oxford has won the event. The difference in the standard of rowing between Oxbridge colleges and non-University clubs has changed greatly over the twentieth century, possibly due to standards within college clubs falling or to the quality of rowing in other clubs improving, but probably a combination of the two. For example First and Third, like all other Oxbridge college crews, now have difficulty achieving a standard of rowing to even qualify for events at the Henley Royal Regatta, let alone to win these events. In spite of this, rowing within Cambridge remains popular and the Bumps, the main inter-college event, see well over a thousand students competing, typically around a hundred from Trinity.
External links
- First and Third's Official Website (http://www.firstandthird.org/tables/frontpage/default.phtml)