24 March 2024
By Tim Koch
Tim Koch is not in camera.
Turning The Tide is the YouTube series that aims to tell the story of the Boat Race season that culminates in the Boat Race on 30 March 2024. Episode 1 is here and 2 is here. Episode 3 has just been released.
The history of filming the Boat Race and its crews is an interesting one. The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) is an online database of more than two and a half million feature films, shorts, documentaries, television programmes and video games and is one of the internet’s most visited websites. Its content includes films made in the earliest days of the cinema. When I put “Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race” into the IMDb search facility it listed eleven races that were filmed before the 1914-1918 War. They covered the years 1895, 1897 to 1905 and 1908. Unfortunately, few if any seem to have survived.
In their book, The Kinetoscope: A British History, authors Richard Brown and Barry Anthony note the importance of the 1895 Boat Race film.
The Wikipedia “Lost Media” page on the film states:
According to “Silent Era,” the film’s survival status was unknown by February 2007, while most other sources discussing the film do not elaborate on whether the work still exists or has become lost media. But considering that surviving films by Acres and Paul are widely available on platforms like YouTube and the British Film Institute Player, it can be safe to assume the production is lost.
However, a report in the Canadian Globe and Mail newspaper of 1 September 2000 concerning the sale of an Acres film of the Derby horse race quotes a Sotheby’s representative as implying that the Boat Race film existed but was “in fragments.” Dubious but interesting.
Further, the British Film Institute site has film of Cambridge in practice, allegedly in 1897. It states: This two-shot film is something of a hybrid. The first shot, showing (Cambridge) passing through crowds with their oars in hand, comes from an unidentified University Boat Race film, not 1897. The second, with a markedly different frame line, is believed to be of the Cambridge crew in practice, taken by Birt Acres, probably in March 1897, from the stern of the ‘Hibernia’. [Unfortunately, this 1897 film cannot be viewed outside the UK.]
This 1899 film taken at Henley gives an idea of how early productions looked though it is rather disappointing to modern eyes.
There is a film allegedly of the 1911 Boat Race online. The era is correct, but it must be from another year. The written records state that in that year, Oxford were a length up at Harrods, while the film shows Cambridge with a possible lead there. Further, the stations show Oxford on Middlesex and Cambridge on Surrey and this is not correct for 1911 (whatever the Wikipedia page for the race says). There is a high quality film of the 1914 Race on the British Film Institute site. Oxford get their first stroke in quickly/early but eventually lose by four-and-a-half lengths. [Unfortunately, this 1914 film cannot be viewed outside the UK.]