Rowing Part 1

Rowing.

by Rudolf Chambers Lehmann.

PREFACE.

My thanks are due to the proprietors of the _Daily News_ and of the _English Ill.u.s.trated Magazine_ for permission to include in this book the substance of articles originally contributed to their columns. I have not added to the Appendix any lists of winning crews, as these are to be found very fully and accurately set out in the Rowing Almanack, published every year at the office of the _Field_.

For the rest, I have endeavoured to make the rowing instructions which will be found in this book as concise as was compatible with perfect clearness, a.s.suming at all times that I was addressing myself first of all to the novice. No doubt other oarsmen will differ here and there from my conclusions. Absolute unanimity on every detail of rowing is not to be expected.

All I can do is to a.s.sure my readers that nothing has been set down here the truth and accuracy of which I have not proved--at least, to my own satisfaction.

_The ill.u.s.trations are reproduced from photographs by Messrs. Stearn, of Cambridge; Messrs. Gillman, of Oxford; Messrs. Marsh, of Henley-on-Thames; Messrs. Hills and Saunders, of Eton; Messrs. Pach Brothers, of Cambridge (Ma.s.s.); and Mr. J. G. Williams, of East Molesey._

R. C. L.

_October, 1897._

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.

My object in the following pages will be not merely to give such hints to the novice as may enable him, so far as book-learning can effect the purpose, to master the rudiments of oarsmanship, but also to commend to him the sport of rowing from the point of view of those enthusiasts who regard it as a n.o.ble open-air exercise, fruitful in lessons of strength, courage, discipline, and endurance, and as an art which requires on the part of its votaries a sense of rhythm, a perfect balance and symmetry of bodily effort, and the graceful control and repose which lend an appearance of ease to the application of the highest muscular energy.

Much has to be suffered and many difficulties have to be overcome before the raw tiro, whose fantastic contortions in a tub-pair excite the derision of the spectators, can approach to the power, effectiveness and grace of a Crum or a Gold; but, given a healthy frame and sound organs inured to fatigue by the sports of English boyhood, given also an alert intelligence, there is no reason in the nature of things why oarsmanship should not eventually become both an exercise and a pleasure. And when I speak of oarsmanship, I mean the combined form of it in pairs, in fours, and in eight-oared racing boats.

Of sculling I do not presume to speak, but those who are curious on this point may be referred to the remarks of Mr. Guy Nickalls in a later chapter. But of rowing I can speak, if not with authority, at any rate with experience, for during twenty-three years of my life I have not only rowed in a constant succession of boat-races, amounting now to about two hundred, but I have watched rowing wherever it was to be seen, and have, year after year, been privileged to utter words of instruction to innumerable crews on the Cam, the Isis, and the Thames. If, then, the novice will commit himself for a time to my guidance, I will endeavour to initiate him into the art and mystery of rowing. If he decides afterwards to join the fraternity of its votaries, I can promise him that his reward will not be small. He may not win fame, and he will certainly not increase his store of wealth, but when his time of action is past and he joins the great army of "have-beens," he will find, as he looks back upon his career, that his hours of leisure have been spent in an exercise which has enlarged his frame and strengthened his limbs, that he has drunk delight of battle with his peers in many a hard-fought race, that he has learnt what it means to be in perfect health and condition, with every sinew strung, and all his manly energies braced for contests of strength and endurance, and that he has bound to himself by the strongest possible ties a body of staunch and loyal friends whose worth has been proved under all sorts of conditions, through many days of united effort.

It has often been objected to rowing, either by those who have never rowed, or by those who having rowed have allowed themselves to sink prematurely into sloth and decay, that the sport in the case of most men can last only for a very few years, and that having warred, not without glory, up to the age of about twenty-five, they must then hang their oars upon the wall and pa.s.s the remainder of their lives in an envious contemplation of the exploits of old but unwearied cricketers. Judging merely by my own personal experience, I am ent.i.tled to p.r.o.nounce these lamentations baseless and misleading, for I have been able to row with pleasure even in racing boats during the whole period of nineteen years that has elapsed since I took my degree at Cambridge. But I can refer to higher examples, for I have seen the Grand Challenge Cup and the Stewards' Cup at Henley Regatta either rowed for with credit, or won by men whose age cannot have been far, if at all, short of forty years, and of men who won big races when they were thirty years old the examples are innumerable. But putting actual racing aside, there is in skilled rowing a peculiar pleasure (even though the craft rowed in be merely a fixed seat gig) which, as it seems to me, puts it on a higher plane than most other exercises. The watermanship which enables a party of veterans to steer their boat deftly in and out of a lock, to swing her easily along the reaches, while unskilled youths are toiling and panting astern, is, after all, no mean accomplishment. And in recent years rowing has taken a leaf out of the book of cricket. Scattered up and down the banks of the Thames are many pleasant houses in which, during the summer, men who can row are favoured guests, either with a view to their forming crews to take part in local regattas, or merely for the purpose of pleasure-rowing in scenes remote from the dust and turmoil of the city. Let no one, therefore, be repelled from oarsmanship because he thinks that the sport will last him through only a few years of his life. If he marries and settles down and becomes a busy man, he will enjoy his holiday on the Thames fully as much as his cricketing brothers enjoy theirs on some country cricket field.

Of the early history of boats and boat-racing it is not necessary to say very much. It is enough to know that the written Cambridge records date back to 1827, though it is certain that racing must have begun some years previously; that Oxford can point to 1822 as one of the earliest years of their College races; that the two Universities raced against one another for the first time in 1829; and that Henley Regatta was established in 1839, when the Grand Challenge Cup was won by First Trinity, Cambridge. Opposite is a facsimile copy of the programme of this memorable regatta.

Those who desire to go still further back, have the authority of Virgil for stating that the Trojans under aeneas could organize and carry through what Professor Conington, in his version of the "aeneid," calls "a rivalry of naval speed." The account of this famous regatta is given with a spirit and a richness of detail that put to shame even the most modern historians of aquatic prowess. After reading how Gyas, the captain and coach of the _Chimaera_--

"Huge bulk, a city scarce so large, With Dardan rowers in triple bank, The tiers ascending rank o'er rank"

--how Gyas, as I say, justly indignant at the inept.i.tude and cowardice of his c.o.xswain, hurled him from the vessel, and himself a.s.sumed the helm at a critical point of the race, it is a mere paltering with the emotions to be told, for instance, that "Mr. Pech.e.l.l, who owes much to the teaching of Goosey Driver, steered a very good course," or that he "began to make the shoot for Barnes Bridge a trifle too soon." How, too, can the statement that "both crews started simultaneously, Cambridge, if anything, striking the water first," compare with the pa.s.sage which tells us (I quote again from Professor Conington) how

"at the trumpet's piercing sound, All from their barriers onward bound, Upsoars to heaven the oarsman's shout, The upturned billows froth and spout; In level lines they plough the deep-- All ocean yawns as on they sweep."

It may be noted in pa.s.sing that no one else seems to have felt in the least inclined to yawn, for

"With plaudits loud and clamorous zeal Echoes the woodland round; The pent sh.o.r.es roll the thunder peal-- The stricken rocks rebound;"

which seems, if the criticism may be permitted, a curious proceeding even for a stricken rock during the progress of a boat-race. Finally, a touch of religious romance is added when we learn that the final result was due, not to the unaided efforts of the straining crew, but to the intervention of Portunus, the Harbour G.o.d, who, moved by the prayer of Cloanthus, captain of the _Scylla_, pushed that barque along and carried her triumphantly first into the haven--invidious conduct which does not appear to have caused the least complaint amongst the defeated crews, or to have prevented Cloanthus from being proclaimed the victor of the day.

Only on one occasion (in 1859) has Father Thames similarly exerted himself to the advantage of one of the University crews, for during the boat-race of that year he swamped the Cambridge ship beneath his mighty waves, and sped Oxford safely to Mortlake. Lord Justice A. L. Smith, amongst others, still lives, though he was unable to swim, to tell the exciting tale.

Before I take leave of this Virgilian race, I may perhaps, even at this late date, be permitted as a brother coach to commiserate the impulsive but unfortunate Gyas on the difficulties he must have encountered in coaching the crew of a trireme. Not less do I pity his oarsmen, of whom the two lower ranks must have suffered seriously as to their backs from the feet of those placed above them, while the length and weight of the oars used by the top rank must have made good form and accurate time almost impossible. A Cambridge poet, Mr. R. H. Forster, has sung the woes of the Athenian triremists and their instructor--

"Just imagine a crew of a hundred or two Shoved three deep in a kind of a barge, Like a cargo of kegs, with no room for their legs, And oars inconveniently large.

Quoth he, 'pa?te? p??s?' and they try to do so.

At the sight the poor coach's brains addle; So muttering '????,' he shouts out '?t????,'

And whatever the Greek is for 'paddle.'

Now do look alive, number ninety and five, You're 'sugaring,' work seems to bore you; You are late, you are late, number twenty and eight, Keep your eyes on the man that's before you."

So much for the trireme. But neither the Greeks nor any other race thought of adapting their boats merely to purposes of racing until the English, with their inveterate pa.s.sion for open-air exercise, took the matter in hand. African war-canoes have been known to race, but their primary object is still the destruction of rival canoes together with their dusky freight. In Venice the gondoliers are matched annually against one another, but both the gondola and the sandolo remain what they always have been--mere vessels for the conveyance of pa.s.sengers and goods. The man who would make war in a racing ship would justly be relegated to Hanwell, and to carry pa.s.sengers, or even one "pa.s.senger,"

in such a boat is generally looked upon as a certain presage of defeat.

Consider for a moment. The modern racing ship (eight, four, pair, or single) is a frail, elongated, graceful piece of cabinet work, held together by thin stays, small bolts, and copper nails, and separating you from the water in which it floats by an eighth of an inch of Mexican cedar. The whole weight of the sculling-boat, built by Jack Clasper, in which Harding won the Searle Memorial Cup, was only nineteen pounds, _i.e._ about 112 pounds lighter than the man it carried. Considering the amount of labour and trained skill that go towards the construction of these beautiful machines, the price cannot be said to be heavy. Most builders will turn you out a sculling-boat for from 12 to 15, a pair for about 20, a four for 33, and an eight for 55. But the development of the racing type to its present perfection has taken many years.

Little did the undergraduates who, in 1829, drove their ponderous man-of-war's galleys from Hambledon Lock to Henley Bridge, while the stricken hills of the Thames Valley rebounded to the shouts of the spectators--little did they imagine that their successors, rowing on movable seats and with rowlocks projecting far beyond the side would speed in delicate barques, of arrowy shape and almost arrowy swiftness, from Putney to Mortlake--in barques so light and "crank" that, built as they are without a keel, they would overturn in a moment if the balance of the oars were removed. The improvements were very gradual. In 1846 the University race was rowed for the first time in boats with outriggers. That innovation had, however, been creeping in for some years before that. Mr. Hugh Hammersley, who rowed in the Oriel boat which started head of the river at Oxford in 1843, has told me that in that year the University College boat, stroked by the famous Fletcher Menzies, was fitted with outriggers at stroke and bow; and the b.u.mp by which University displaced Oriel was generally ascribed to the new invention.

In 1857 the University race was rowed in boats without a keel, and oars with a round loom were used for the first time by both crews. At the Henley Regatta of the preceding year the Royal Chester Rowing Club had entered a crew rowing in this novel style of keelless boat for the Grand Challenge and the Ladies' Cups. Her length was only fifty-four feet, and her builder was Mat Taylor, a name celebrated in the annals of boat-building, for it is to him, in the first instance, that our present type of racing-boat owes its existence. "The Chester men," Mr. W. B.

Woodgate tells us in his Badminton book on boating, "could not sit their boat in the least; they flopped their blades along the water on the recovery in a manner which few junior crews at minor regattas would now be guilty of; but they rowed well away from their opponents, who were only College crews." They won, as a matter of fact, both the events for which they entered.

One might have thought that with this invention improvements would have ceased. But in course of time the practical experience of rowing men suggested to them that if they slid on their seats, both the length and power of their stroke through the water would be increased. At first they greased their fixed seats, and slid on those. But it was found that the strain caused by this method exhausted a crew. In 1871 a crew of professionals used a seat that slid on the thwarts, and beat a crew that was generally held to be superior, and from that moment slides, as we now know them, came into general use. In 1873 the University crews rowed on sliding seats for the first time. Since then the length of the slide has been increased from about nine inches to fifteen inches, or even more, a change which has made the task of the boat-builder in providing floating capacity more difficult; but in all essentials the type of boat remains the same. It ought to be added that the Americans, to a large extent, use boats moulded out of _papier mache_, but this variation has never obtained favour in England, though boats built in this manner by the well-known Waters of Troy (U.S.A.) have been seen on English rivers. The Columbia College crew won the Visitors' Cup at Henley in 1878 in a paper boat, and she was afterwards bought by First Trinity, Cambridge, but she never won a race again.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE FIRST HENLEY REGATTA.]

HENLEY REGATTA _June 14th_, 1839.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

_Entrances for the_ GRAND CHALLENGE CUP.

OXFORD.--BRASEN NOSE COLLEGE,--Blue Cap, with Gold Ta.s.sel; Rosette, yellow, purple, and crimson.

CAMBRIDGE.--TRINITY BOAT CLUB,--Blue stripe Jersey and Trowsers; Rosette, French blue.

OXFORD.--ETONIAN CLUB,--White Jersey, with pale blue facings; Rosette, sky blue.

OXFORD.--WADHAM COLLEGE,--White Jersey, with narrow blue stripes, dark blue cap, with light blue velvet band, and light blue scarf.

_Entrances for the_

TOWN CHALLENGE CUP.

WAVE.--White Jersey, pale blue facings.

DREADNOUGHT.--Blue Striped Shirt, blue Cap

ALBION.--Blue Striped Jersey, crimson scarf.

TURN OVER.