3-052-504 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Oxford and Cambridge Boat-Race: the Press Boat in a fog on Saturday Morning, and the Race Postponed, 1880. 'The foggy weather on the Thames at eight o'clock on Saturday occasioned the postponement of the Boat-Race, which came off on Monday, at a somewhat later hour of the day...[Our] Engraving was taken on board the steam-boat assigned to the newspaper reporters and Special Artists on Saturday, and it shows that their view on the river was fatally limited by the obscurity of the atmosphere, which made it impossible, at Putney, to see half-way across. Many thousands of people assembled there and at Hammersmith, and at other parts of the course, were put to a disappointment the more severely felt after they had suffered the discomfort of waiting on the banks in such cheerless weather. A thick, dull, white, or dirty-white, mist, slowly drifting up with the east wind, covered the stream and both shores all the way to Mortlake...Cold and gloomy,...it was not at all the day for persons of feeble constitution to linger for hours by the riverside...it was announced, and was fully understood, that the race would not be rowed that day'. From "Illustrated London News", 1880.