CHAPTER III.
TOM CANNON, “THE GREAT GUN OF WINDSOR” (CHAMPION)—1824–1827.
For a short time the name of the hardy Tom Cannon was a word of strength in the annals of the ring. Tom, however, came out too late in life as a public exhibitor of the art pugilistic; his first great victory being over Josh. Hudson, in June, 1824, his last a defeat by Ned Neale, in February, 1827; a career of little more than two-and-a-half years, throwing out his victory over Dolly Smith, in 1817.
Eton, renowned for its College and the classic memories which surround it, gave birth to our hero, but it does not appear that Master Tommy profited much in the literæ humaniores by the accident of his birth under the shadows of the pinnacles of “Henry’s Sacred Fane.” On the contrary, the son of a “Windsor Bargee,” he grew up an athletic uncultivated young colt, distinguished for his speed as a runner, his activity as a jumper, his strength as a wrestler, and was known as “a lad who could box a bit.” The only parts of Gray’s “Ode” which could apply to the young Cannon being, that he could—
“Ply the oar,
And urge the flying ball.”
Indeed, his rowing and cricketing qualifications endeared him to the youngsters who practised on the silver Thames and verdant Brocas; as a quoit thrower and a single-stick player, at “the Revel” in Bachelor’s Acre, young Cannon distinguished himself, and was known throughout the neighbourhood as “good at any game.” Tom followed alternately the calling of a fisherman and a “bargee,” or rather mixed them both, more majorum suum, and “the Merry Wives of Windsor” often relied on Tom’s net or tackle for the delicacies of speckled trout, glittering umber, or slippery eel, from “Thames’ silvery flood.” Apropos of this, we find from contemporary records that Tom, acting in the spirit of Charles Dibdin’s song,
TOM CANNON (“The Great Gun of Windsor”).
From a Portrait by Wageman.
“I be a jolly fisherman, I takes all I can get,