As captain of coxes at my college and coxswain for the women’s first boat for the past year, I’ve spent plenty of time on the Isis after adjusting my terminology. When I first arrived in Oxford after having coxed at school in the United States, such an adjustment was necessary, though didn’t take long; after shouting “weigh ‘nough” repeatedly and receiving only confused glances from the stroke seat in return, I quickly figured out that “easy there” was the appropriate call when I wanted everyone to stop.
The same went for direction; “starboard” and “port-side” didn’t elicit any manoeuvring, but “stroke-side” and “bow-side” did the trick. And so it went, through weeks of outing and head races, modifying my own vocabulary (and also slipping a few American-style calls into the jargon of the rowers in my boat). This semi-hybrid worked well – until my first Torpids came along.
The very notion of a bumps race didn’t exist back at school, or at any race that I’d ever attended on the other side of the Atlantic, for that matter. And as I quickly learned, it wasn’t exactly common over here either, but rather happened to be an Oxbridge-specific rowing highlight. For my college boat club, and for many others, Torpids and Summer Eights were the two most important events on the calendar. So it was essential to get with the program.
As it turned out, my novice status at bumps racing was the status quo, not an aberration. This was one instance in which speaking in the American tongue didn’t hinder me any more than my native counterparts. Bunglines, blades, and bashing other boats all blended into the bumps canon for me.
So as I head out again today to race, I’m prepared to shout as usual. After all, once everyone gets going, the chants, screams, and commands are indiscernible from one another anyway. No one can even hear my American accent. The only sound my boat listens to is that of cheers from the bank drowning out the splashing of their oars, as they wend their way furiously up the stream.
