Lives in Cricket No 51 - Rev ES Carter

opportunity to sail to warmer climes and putting aside university studies, and presumably, being told that he could extend his time at Oxford by an additional year, he set sail for Australia in November 1868. The pleurisy arose in these circumstances recounted in his conversations with Old Ebor (A.W.Pullin) published as Talks with Old Yorkshire Cricketers : “It was early in June 1868. I was in for the ‘Varsity pairs’ with R.G. Marsden who had rowed stroke in 1867 and number four in 1868 in the University ‘eight’. We started for a practice at eleven in the morning (cutting lectures to do it), as I was engaged in the afternoon. We rowed twice over the course, 1.5 miles long - making six miles rowing, including paddling to the starting place at Iffley. This over, I trotted to the College Cricket Ground on Cowley Marsh, two miles where my College (Worcester) was playing Pembroke. We went into the field, and I bowled all through the first innings, taking seven wickets. During my innings a tremendous thunderstorm came on when I had made 105 runs, and as I was engaged to row in our College Scratch Four that evening I had only just time to get back to the river for the start of the first heat … I at once ran down, as no conveyance had yet arrived, and got thoroughly soaked on the way. I arrived just in time to take my place in the boat. We won our first heat and had to row a second the same evening both close races. On the way back to College I got wet through again with a repetition of the heavy thunder-rain. I was already suffering from a chest cold caught a few days before through having a long wait in a cold mist at the start for the College eights. Next morning I could not draw a long breath without pain, and the doctor whom I consulted pronounced it a case of pleurisy, and sent me back to my rooms, and there I remained for some weeks into the long vacation – thus missing my third year in the University eleven and eight, but thus gaining my voyage to Australia by doctor’s orders ... Not a bad day’s work on the whole!” His journey out, and later back, was on the S.S.Agamemnon, one of the first successful long-distance screw steamers. The vessel Family 22