Peterhouse Boat Club is the rowing club for members of Peterhouse, Cambridge. It was founded on 29 April 1828 as St Peter's College Boat Club, but was renamed in 1873 to its present name. Alumni of Peterhouse Boat Club are eligible to join the Cross Keys Boat Club.
While Peterhouse is the smallest of all of the colleges of Cambridge University which regularly admit both undergraduates and graduates, its crews have often performed very well, including taking the headship of the May Bumps on 28 February 1842 and that of the Lent Bumps in 1956. In the early days of the Lent and May Bumps, the Peterhouse 1st men's VIII were in the lower half of the 2nd, or even in the 3rd division, but from about 1920 rose to lie in the bottom-half of the 1st division or top-half of the 2nd division. Peterhouse performed very well in the Lent Bumps from 1950, not being bumped until 1957, and taking the headship in 1956, a year in which they also won the Ladies' Challenge Plate at Henley Royal Regatta. Since then, the Peterhouse 1st men's VIII have spent most of their time in the top-half of the 2nd division or bottom-half of the 1st division in both events.
A women's crew did not appear until 1986 and has remained in the 2nd division for most of the time since then in both the Lent and May Bumps, although the 1st women's VIII did succeed in breaking into the 1st division in the May Bumps in 2002 for the first time. Peterhouse 1st Women managed the only quadruple-overbump ever in the history of bumps racing in the May Bumps in 1986 when they managed to catch Clare III to rise 9 positions in a single day.
Famous alumni of the Peterhouse Boat Club include James Mason, Lord Kelvin and Tom Askwith.
Read more about Peterhouse Boat Club: Boathouse, Recent Form
Famous quotes containing the words boat and/or club:
“Casting me adrift, 3500 miles from a port of call. You’re sending me to my doom, eh? Well, you’re wrong, Christian! I’ll take this boat as she floats to England if I must. I’ll live to see you—all of you—hanging from the highest yardarms in the British fleet.”
—Talbot Jennings (1896–1985)
“The barriers of conventionality have been raised so high, and so strangely cemented by long existence, that the only hope of overthrowing them exists in the union of numbers linked together by common opinion and effort ... the united watchword of thousands would strike at the foundation of the false system and annihilate it.”
—Mme. Ellen Louise Demorest 1824–1898, U.S. women’s magazine editor and woman’s club movement pioneer. Demorest’s Illustrated Monthly and Mirror of Fashions, p. 203 (January 1870)