1950: 96th BOAT RACE - Cambridge by 3½ lengths. Oxford 43, Cambridge 52. See Boat Races 1950s
1950: HEAD OF THE RIVER - New College

1951: 97th BOAT RACE - Cambridge by 12 lengths. Oxford 43, Cambridge 53. See Boat Races 1950s
In the first race Oxford sank.


Oxford sinking, 24th March 1951

They had waves breaking over their washboard when still on the stakeboat. They sank within a minute. The umpire stopped the race and it was re-rowed on the Monday.


Oxford 1951
Cambridge 1951

1951: HEAD OF THE RIVER - Merton

1952: 98th BOAT RACE - Oxford by a canvas. Oxford 44, Cambridge 53. See Boat Races 1950s
1952: HEAD OF THE RIVER - Balliol

1953: 99th BOAT RACE - Cambridge by 8 lengths. Oxford 44, Cambridge 54. See Boat Races 1950s
1953: HEAD OF THE RIVER - Magdalen

1954: 100th BOAT RACE - Oxford by 4½ lengths. Oxford 45, Cambridge 54. See Boat Races 1950s
The one hundredth Boat Race (First race 1829, and then intermittently until 1856, and then more or less annually except 1915-1919 and 1940-1945
1954: HEAD OF THE RIVER - Magdalen

1955: 101st BOAT RACE - Cambridge by 16 lengths. Oxford 45, Cambridge 55. See Boat Races 1950s
1955: HEAD OF THE RIVER - Balliol

1956: 102nd BOAT RACE - Cambridge by 1¼ lengths. Oxford 45, Cambridge 56. See Boat Races 1950s
1956: HEAD OF THE RIVER - Balliol


'The Eights, 1956; Balliol rowing Head' from Oxford Life Dacre Balsdon 1957 p.208

The magnificence of Eights is the Head of the River boat, out of all danger from its pursuer and cutting through the calm water with a dignity that even the swans concede as, with offended pride, they move out of its way; and the pathos of the Eights is a lonely boat at the bottom of the Fourth Division or the Fifth, churning its ugly and painful way up the long, long river with a great distortion of ineptitude. Ahead there is not a boat in sight; on the towpath a single flat-footed supporter runs, purposeless stop-watch in one hand, purposeless revolver in the other, and between heavy panting he shouts hoarsely,
"You’re going up; you’re going up, boys."

1957: 103rd BOAT RACE - Cambridge by 2 lengths. Oxford 45, Cambridge 57. See Boat Races 1950s
1957: HEAD OF THE RIVER - Queen's

1958: 104th BOAT RACE - Cambridge by 3½ lengths. Oxford 45, Cambridge 58. See Boat Races 1950s
1958: HEAD OF THE RIVER - Christ Church

1959: 105th BOAT RACE - Oxford by 6 lengths. Oxford 46, Cambridge 58. See Boat Races 1950s
1959: HEAD OF THE RIVER - St Edmund Hall

from Oxford by James Morris writing in 1953 -

Rowing is not so important as it used to be at Oxford, and college enthusiasm for the races is not so fervent.
Even so, in Eights Week the pleasures of Oxford are in their fullest bloom - possibly, like the evening of some splendid rose, getting a little blowzy.
The best vantage point is the deck of one of the college barges, moored at the bottom of Christ Church meadows, downstream from Folly Bridge.
These queer old craft, now mostly replaced by balconied boathouses, are descendants of the ceremonial barges once used by the Livery Companies of London on State occasions and Lord Mayors’ Shows, and are gloriously embellished with whirligigs, rosettes and figures of classical mythology (though some of the last to be built were made of concrete).
The first of them actually were old Company barges.
Thus the Skinners’ Company barge, built in 1738, was used by Queen’s College until 1900, and the Merchant Taylors’ barge was the first headquarters of the University Boat Club - it was built in 1800, of 'good sound seasoned English oak, free from Red Rot, sap and prejudicial knots', and the great crest from its stern, removed before the sale, still hangs in the Company’s hall in the City of London.
Later the colleges built their own barges, in Oxford boatyards, and today survivors are scattered over the city, sometimes as raffish dwelling-places, sometimes high and dry on water meadows, frequented only by rats and ducks.
Eight or nine still belong to colleges, and come gaudily into their own in Eights Week.
From their decks the Oxford of popular legend seems miraculously alive again.
This is not Hotspur’s Oxford, like the afternoon of the beagles: this is golden vicarage stuff, a dreamy Edwardian Oxford, all on a summer afternoon.
All around you are summer frocks, proud mothers, experienced fathers and public-school accents - rowing being a sport cultivated especially at the independent schools, it has been more impervious than most Oxford pleasures to social change.
The river flutters with pennants and bright colours.
A noisy crowd of undergraduates seethes up and down the towpath, threaded by earnest rowing coaches carrying megaphones on bicycles.
Wherever you look there are colours, blazers and white flannels, straw hats with ribbons, lemonade bottles and crested caps.
A ferryman conveys a crew from one bank to the other, its oars standing upright in the punt like lances in a Spanish painting.
A hired motor launch chugs self-consciously past, like a shopper who, looking for Inexpensive Hats, finds she has to run the gauntlet of Model Dresses.
On the other side of the river you may see a cow in a field, and some cricketers statuesque against the green.
The splendid trees of Christ Church meadows look vast and motherly.
The traffic crossing Folly Bridge seems altogether remote and silent; and presently, almost as an afterthought, the boats come by.
There go the two officials of the Thames Conservancy, grandly in yachting caps and an old varnished motor boat, and soon there advances upstream a wave of sound, as the college enthusiasts on the bank run beside their boat shouting encouragement - 'You're going up, Balliol!' - 'Come on, The House!'—‘* - 'Teddy Hall! Teddy Hall!'
A flash of oars you see first, with the drip of the water off their painted blades, and then the first of the racing shells comes sweeping to the finishing line - eight very English young men, with the wiry little coxswain bawling at them from the stern, and a raggle-taggle party of supporters still staggering breathless along the bank; and the girl beside you turns to her brother and asks vacuously which boat it is, and the father says testily that it’s all on the race card anyway, and the mother tidies her back hair and murmurs well Susan only asked, after all it is only a sort of game, and presently the whole affair bursts into strawberries, cool drinks, the splashing of coxswains thrown into the water, and happy little groups of people white and blue and polka-dotted, strolling through the meadow back to college.

In 1959, after one hundred and five boat races, the overall tally was: Oxford 46, Cambridge 58 (and one dead heat)
Leadership in Overall Tally of Boat Race Wins:

18291959