The early '60s were hard years for CUWBC and in 1963 there was also a very hard winter and the Cam froze over, so much so that there was skating on it, and so the women had very few opportunites to row races, although they did manage one against Bedford Ladies in November 1963. Their wonderfully supportive  coach, Canon Duckworth of Churchill College, came to their aid and included two 'sturdy sisters' (CUWBC members) in a mixed coxes crew for the Fairbairns at 2, and cox and the crew moved up two places! The good canon told the press that he felt there was no reason why a woman should not cox the Boat Race the next year. (In fact it took nearly 20 years, Sue Brown being chosen as cox for OUBC in 1981)! Faced with this threat the president and some members of CUBC subsequently tried to ban women's crews from rowing in the bumps as they had been doing for a couple of years. The dispute about this rumbled on in the Cambridge and national press, and there was a big meeting of the rowing community to vote on the issue, at which the Canon outflanked the president and the women continued to take part in the bumping races. It had been reported in Rowing magazine that the feisty cox of CUWBC, 'a delectable Canadian barrister steering the Amazon Barge', Ruth Kidd, was ready to register CUWBC under the Liberian flag of convenience if that was what it took to be able to row in the Mays. In that case they would be allowed ‘the use without let or hindrance of any waters in the world’.

In 1964 CUWBC was surprised after nearly a decade to receive a challenge once again from Oxford for a boat race between the women of the two universities. This took place in March at Oxford on an extremely wet day and it was won by Cambridge. The press and tv covered the event with much reporting of what the two crews were wearing. According to the Guardian ‘Oxford wore elegant shorts, supplied by a London textile firm. Cambridge, in cerulean pullovers had a Canadian cox...who wore black ski pants and a white anorak with a white fur border. She looked like a Christmas number cover for McCall’s and was the only one who was not sodden by the time the two crews had paddled down to the start.’ Ruth Kidd certainly attracted a lot of attention.

From this point, when racing against Oxford started again the women's boat club went from strength to strength. By 1969 they had made their first bump- against a men's crew - and the enthusiasic shouts of 'Bellissima' echoed along the banks of the Cam. The women hoisted a flag of victory over the boat house they boated from - only to find it had been removed by the next morning and draped over Caius' boathouse. From 1964 to 1975 Cambridge won every boat race against Oxford and by the end of the '60s Beatrice Scorer and Liz Pickering had been approached to see if they would train for internationals. To have reached this point in a decade, starting from near extinction, was quite an achievement for CUWBC.

To find out more about the history of the women's boat race, go to www.cuwbchistory.org.

- by Jane Kingsbury