Notes on the Stroke.The moment the oar touches the body, drop the hands smartly straight down, then turn the wrists sharply and at once shoot out the hands in a straight line to the front, inclining the body forward from the thigh-joints, and simultaneously bring up the slider, regulating the time by the swing forward of the body according to the stroke. Let the chest and stomach come well forward, the shoulders be kept back; the inside arm be straightened, the inside wrist a little raised, the oar grasped in the hands, but not pressed upon more than is necessary to maintain the blade in its proper straight line as it goes back; the head kept up, the eyes fixed on the outside shoulder of the man before you. As the body and arms come forward to their full extent, the wrists having been quickly turned, the hands must be raised sharply, and the blade of the oar brought to its full depth at once. At that moment, without the loss of a thousandth part of a second, the whole weight of the body must be thrown on to the oar and the stretcher, by the body springing back, so that the oar may catch hold of the water sharply, and be driven through it by a force unwavering and uniform. As soon as the oar has got hold of the water, and the beginning of the stroke has been effected as described, flatten the knees, and so, using the muscles of the legs, keep up the pressure of the beginning uniform through the backward motion of the body. Let the arms be rigid at the beginning of the stroke. When the body reaches the perpendicular, let the elbows be bent and dropped close past the sides to the rear—theshoulders dropping and disclosing the chest to the front; the back, if anything, curved inwards rather than outwards, but not strained in any way. The body, in fact, should assume a natural upright sitting posture, with the shoulders well thrown back. In this position the oar should come to it and the feather commence.N.B.—It is important to remember that the body should never stop still. In its motion backwards and forwards it should imitate the pendulum of a clock. When it has ceased to go forward it has begun to go back.There are, it will appear, from consideration of the directions, about twenty-seven distinct points,articulias it were, of the stroke. No one should attempt to coach a crew without striving to obtain a practical insight into their nature and order of succession. Let a coxswain also remember that, in teaching men to row, his object should be to teach them to economise theirstrengthby using properly theirweight. Their weight is always in the boat along with them; their strength, if misapplied, very soon evaporates.
The moment the oar touches the body, drop the hands smartly straight down, then turn the wrists sharply and at once shoot out the hands in a straight line to the front, inclining the body forward from the thigh-joints, and simultaneously bring up the slider, regulating the time by the swing forward of the body according to the stroke. Let the chest and stomach come well forward, the shoulders be kept back; the inside arm be straightened, the inside wrist a little raised, the oar grasped in the hands, but not pressed upon more than is necessary to maintain the blade in its proper straight line as it goes back; the head kept up, the eyes fixed on the outside shoulder of the man before you. As the body and arms come forward to their full extent, the wrists having been quickly turned, the hands must be raised sharply, and the blade of the oar brought to its full depth at once. At that moment, without the loss of a thousandth part of a second, the whole weight of the body must be thrown on to the oar and the stretcher, by the body springing back, so that the oar may catch hold of the water sharply, and be driven through it by a force unwavering and uniform. As soon as the oar has got hold of the water, and the beginning of the stroke has been effected as described, flatten the knees, and so, using the muscles of the legs, keep up the pressure of the beginning uniform through the backward motion of the body. Let the arms be rigid at the beginning of the stroke. When the body reaches the perpendicular, let the elbows be bent and dropped close past the sides to the rear—theshoulders dropping and disclosing the chest to the front; the back, if anything, curved inwards rather than outwards, but not strained in any way. The body, in fact, should assume a natural upright sitting posture, with the shoulders well thrown back. In this position the oar should come to it and the feather commence.
N.B.—It is important to remember that the body should never stop still. In its motion backwards and forwards it should imitate the pendulum of a clock. When it has ceased to go forward it has begun to go back.
There are, it will appear, from consideration of the directions, about twenty-seven distinct points,articulias it were, of the stroke. No one should attempt to coach a crew without striving to obtain a practical insight into their nature and order of succession. Let a coxswain also remember that, in teaching men to row, his object should be to teach them to economise theirstrengthby using properly theirweight. Their weight is always in the boat along with them; their strength, if misapplied, very soon evaporates.
View of Marlow river frontMARLOW.
MARLOW.
For reasons which were set forth at the commencement of the chapter onscientific oarsmanship, the very best oar may fail to see his own faults. For this reason, in dealing with the methods for detecting and curing faults, it seems more to the point to write as addressing the tutor rather than the pupil. The latter will improve faster under any adequate verbal instruction than by perusing pages of bookwork upon the science of oarsmanship.
A coach may often know much more than he can himself perform; he may be with his own muscles but a mediocre exponent of his art, and yet be towards the top of the tree as regards knowledge and power of instruction.
A coach, like his pupils, often becomes too ‘mechanical’; he sees some salient fault in his crew, he sets himself to eradicateit, and meanwhile it is possible that he may overlook some other great fault which is gradually developing itself among one or more of the men. And yet if he were asked to coach some other crew for the day, in which crew this same fault existed, he would be almost certain to note it, and to set to work to cure it.
For this reason, although it does not do to have too many mentors at work from day to day upon one crew, nevertheless the best of coaches may often gain a hint by taking some one else into his counsels for an hour or two, and by comparing notes.
We have said that it is not absolutely necessary that a good coach should always be in his own person a finished oarsman; but if he is all the better, and for one very important reason. More than half the faults which oarsmen contract are to be traced in the first instance to some irregularity in the machinery with which they are working. That irregularity may be of two sorts, direct or indirect—direct when the boat, oar, rowlock, or stretcher is improperly constructed, so that an oarsman cannot work fairly and squarely; indirect when some other oarsman is perpetrating some fault which puts others out of gear.
If a coach is a good oarsman on his own account (by ‘good’ we mean scientific rather than merely powerful), he can and should test and try or inspect the seat and oar of each man whom he coaches, especially if he finds a man painstaking and yet unable to cure some special fault. Boatbuilders are very careless in laying out work. A rowlock may be too high or too low; it may rake one way or other, and so spoil the plane of the oar in the water. An oar may be hog-backed (or sprung), or too long in loom, or too short; the straps of a stretcher may be fixed too high, so as to grip only the tip of a great-toe, and the place for the feet may not be straight to the seat, or a rowlock may be too narrow, and so may jam the oar when forward.
These are samples of mechanical discomfort which may spoilany man’s rowing, and against which it may be difficult for the most painstaking pupil to contend successfully. If the coach is good in practice as well as in theory of oarsmanship, he can materially simplify his own labours and those of his pupils by inspecting and trying the ‘work’ of each man in turn.
He should bear in mind that if a young oar is thrown out of shape in his early career by bad mechanical appliances, the faults of shape often cling to him unconsciously later on, even when he is at last furnished with proper tools. If a child were taught to walk with one boot an inch thicker in the sole than the other, the uneven gait thereby produced might cling to him long after he had been properly shod.
Young oarsmen in a club are too often relegated to practise in cast-off boats with cast-off oars, none of which are really fit for use. Nothing does more to spoil the standard of junior oarsmanship in a club than neglect of this nature.
Having ascertained that all his pupils are properly equipped and are properly seated, fair and square to stretchers suitable for the length of leg of each, the next care of a coach should be to endeavour to trace thecauseof each fault which he may detect. This is more difficult than to see that a fault exists. At the same time, if the coach cannot trace the cause, it is hardly reasonable to expect the pupil to do so. So many varied causes may produce some one generic fault that it may drive a pupil from one error to another to tell him nothing more than that he is doing something wrong without at the same time explaining to him how and why he is at fault.
For instance, suppose a man gets late into the water. This lateness may arise from a variety of causes, for example:
1. He may be hanging with arms or body, or both, when he has finished the stroke, and so he may be late in starting to go forward; or
2. He may be correct until he has attained his forward reach, and then, may be, he hangs before dropping his oar into the water; or
3. He may begin to drop his oar at the right time, but to doso in a ‘clipping’ manner, not dropping the oar perpendicularly, but bringing it for some distance back in the air before it touches the water.
People running alongside University crewCOACHING UNIVERSITY CREW
COACHING UNIVERSITY CREW
Now to tell a batch of men—all late, and all late from different causes as above—simply that each one is ‘late’ does little good. The cure which will set the one right will only vary, or even exaggerate, the mischief with the others.
Hence a coach should, before he animadverts upon a fault, of which he observes the effect, watch carefully until he detects the exact cause, and then seek to eradicate it.
Another sample of cause and effect in faults may be cited for illustration. Suppose a man holds his oar in his fist instead of his fingers. The effect of this probably will be a want of accuracy in ‘governing’ the blade. He may thereby row too deep; also only half feather; also find a difficulty in bending his wrists laterally, and therefore fail to bring his elbows neatly past his sides. The consequent further effect may well be that he dog’s-ears his elbows and gets a cramped finish. This will tend to make his hands come slow off the chest for the recovery; and this again may tend to make his body heavy on the return swing.
Here is a pretty, and quite possible, concatenation of faults all bearing on each other in sequence, more or less. To be scolded for each such fault in turn may well bewilder a pupil. He will be taken aback at the plurality of defects which he is told to cure. But if the coach should spot the faulty grip, and cure that by some careful coaching in a tub-gig, he may in a few days find the other faults gradually melt away when the one primary awkwardness has been eradicated.
These two illustrations of faults and their origins by no means exhaust the category of errors which a coach has to detect and to cure.
Sundry other common faults may be specified, and the best mode of dealing with them by coaches supplied.
Over-reach of shoulders.—This weakens the catch of the water, and also tends to cripple the finish when the time comesto row the oar home. The shoulders should be braced well back. The extra inch or less of forward reach which the over-reach obtains is not worth having at the cost of weakening the catch and cramping the finish. The fault is best cured by gig-coaching and by demonstrating in person the correct and the wrong poses of the shoulders.
Meeting the oar.—This may come from more than one cause. If the legs leave off supporting the body before the oar-handle comes to the chest, the body droops to the strain from want of due support; or if the oarsman tries to row the stroke home with arms only, ceasing the swing back; and still more, if he tries to finish with biceps instead of by shoulder muscles, he is not unlikely to row deep, because he feels the strain of rowing the oar home in time, with less power behind it than that employed by others in the boat. He finds the oar come home easier if it is slightly deflected, and so unconsciously he begins to row rather deep (or light) at the finish, in order to get his oar home at the right instant.
Swing.—faults of may be various. There may be a hang, or conversely a hurry, in the swing; and, as shown above, the causes of these errors in swing may often be beneath the surface, and be connected with faulty hold of an oar, or a loose or badly placed strap, or a stretcher of wrong length, or from faulty finish of the preceding stroke. Lateness in swing may ariseper se, and so may a ‘bucket,’ but as often as not they are linked with other faults, which have to be corrected at least simultaneously, and often antecedently.
Screwingeither arises from mechanical fault at the moment or from former habits of rowing under difficulties occasionally with bad appliances. If a man sits square, with correct oar, rowlock, and stretcher, he does not naturally screw. If the habit seems to have grown upon him, a change of side will often do more than anything else to cure him. He is screwing because he is working his limbs and loins unevenly; hence the obvious policy of making him change the side on which he puts the greater pressure.
Feather under water.—The fault is one of the most common, the remedy simple. The pupil should be shown the difference between turning the oar-handle before he drops it (as he is doing) and of dropping it before he turns it as he ought to do; and it should be impressed upon him that the root of the thumb, and not his knuckles, should touch his chest when the oar comes home, and should be donebefore, and not after, he has dropped his handle to elevate the blade from the water.
If a crew feather much under water, it is a good plan to seat them in a row on a bench, and give each man a stick to handle as an oar. Then make them very slowly follow the actions of the coach, or a fugleman. 1. Hands up to the chest, root of thumb touching chest. 2. Drop the hands. 3. Turn them (as for feather) sharply. 4. Shoot them out, &c.
Having got them to perform each motion slowly and distinctly, then gradually accelerate the actions, until they are done as an entirety, with rapidity andin proper consecution. The desideratum is to ensure motion, No. 3 being performed in its due order, andnot beforeNo. 2.
Five minutes’ drill of this sort daily before the rowing, for a week or two, will do much to cure feather under water even with hardened sinners.
Swing across the boat.—This is an insidious fault. The oarsman sits square, while his oar-handle moves in an arc of a circle. He has an instinctive tendency to endeavour to keep his chest square to his oar during the revolution of the latter. A No. 7 who has to take time from the stroke by the side of him is more prone than others to fall into this fault. The answer is, let the arms follow the action of the oar, and give way to it, and endeavour to keep the body straight and square. Keep the head well away from the oar, and its bias will tend to balance the swing.
Bending the armsprematurely is a common fault. Sometimes even high-class oars fall into it after a time. Tiros are prone to it, because they at first instinctively endeavour to work with arms rather than with body. Older oars adopt the trick inthe endeavour to catch the water sharply at the beginning. Of course they lose power by doing so; but they do not realise their loss, because, feeling a greater strain on their arms, they imagine that they must therefore be doing more work.
Lessons in a tub-gig are the best remedies for this fault.
‘Paddling’ is an art which is of much importance in order to bring a crew to perfection, and at the same time it is too often done in a slovenly manner compared with hard rowing.
The writer admits that his own views as to how paddling should be performed differ somewhat from those of sundry good judges and successful coaches. Some of these are of opinion that paddling should consist of rowing gently, comparatively speaking, with less force and catch at the beginning of the stroke and with less reach than when rowing hard, but with blade always covered to regulation depth. When the order is given to ‘Row,’ then the full length should be attained and the full ‘catch’ administered.
The writer’s own version of paddling differs as follows. He is of opinion that the difference between paddling and rowing should be produced by working with a ‘light’—only partially covered—blade when paddling. The effect of this is to ease the whole work of the stroke; but at the same time the swing, reach, and catch should be just the same as if the blade were covered. Then, when the order comes to ‘Row,’ all the oarsman has to do is so to govern his blade that he now immerses the whole of it, and at the same time to increase his force to the amount necessary to row the stroke of the full blade throughout the required time.
Those good judges who differ from him as aforesaid base their objections to his method chiefly on the ground that it requires rather a higher standard of watermanship to enable an oarsman so to govern his blade that he can immerse it more or less at will, and yet maintain the same outward action of body, only with more or less force employed, according to amount of blade immersed.
The writer admits that his process does entail the acquisitionof a somewhat higher standard of watermanship than the other system. But he is none the less of opinion that this admission should not be accepted as a ground for teaching the other style.
In the first place, it would seem to him better to try to raise the standard of watermanship to the system than to lower the system to meet the requirements of inferior skill. In the second, there seems to be even greater drawbacks to the system preferred by his friends who differ from him. For instance, under the alternative system the oarsman is taught toalterhis style of body when paddling, but to maintain a uniform depth of blade. He is taught to apply less sharpness of catch, and less reach forward. To do so may tend to take the edge off catch, and to shorten reach, when hard rowing has to be recommenced.
It is plain that paddling cannot be all round the same as rowing; there must be an alternative prescribed. The writer says, in effect: ‘Alter only the blade (and so the amount of force required), and maintain outward action of body as before.’
Those who take the other view say, in effect: ‘Maintain the same blade, and alter the action of the body.’
It must be admitted that those who differ from the writer are entitled, from their own performances as oarsmen and coaches, to every possible respect; and the writer, while failing to agree with them, hesitates to assert that for that reason he must be right and they wrong.
One further reason in favour of paddling with a light blade may be added. When an oarsman is exhausted in a race, it is of supreme importance that, though unable to do his full share of work, he should not mar the swing and style of the rest. Now if such an oarsman, when nature fails him, can row lighter and so ease his toil, he can maintain swing and style with the rest. But if, on the other hand, he keeps his blade covered to the full, and seeks relief by rowing shorter and with less dash, he alters his style and tends to spoil the uniformity of the crew.
Watermanship is a quality which can hardly be coached;it may, therefore, seem out of place to deal with it under the head of coaching. Yet in one sense it pertains to coaching, because a mentor takes into calculation the capacity of an oarsman for exercising watermanship when making a selection of a crew.
Watermanship, as a technical term, may be said to consist in adapting oneself to circumstances and exigencies during the progress of a boat. A good waterman keeps time with facility, a bad one only after much painstaking—if at all. A good waterman adapts himself to every roll of the boat, sits tight to his seat, anticipates an incipient roll, and rights the craft so far as he can by altering his centre of gravity while yet plying his oar. A bad waterman is more or less helpless when a boat is off its keel, or when he encounters rough water. So long as the boat is level, he may be able to do even more work than the good waterman, but when the boat rolls he cannot help himself, still less can he right the ship and so help others to work, as can the good waterman.
Good watermen can jump into a racing boat and sit her off-hand; bad watermen will be unsteady in a keelless boat even after days of practice.
One or two good watermen are the making of a crew, especially when time is short for practice. They will raise the standard of rowing of all their colleagues, simply by keeping the balance of the boat. Sculling and pair-oar practice tend to teach watermanship. They induce a man to make use of his own back and beam in order to keep the boat on an even keel. We do not for this reason say that every tiro should be put to take lessons of watermanship in sculling-boats and light pairs: far from it. He will be likely in such craft to contract feather under water, and possibly screwing, in the efforts to obtain work on an even keel, after his own uneven action has conduced to rolling.
University men produce far fewer good watermen than the tideway clubs, and with good reason. The career on the river at Oxford or Cambridge is brief, and many a man goes out ofresidence while he is only on the threshold of aquatic science, both in practice and theory; although, on account of his big frame, he may have been taught artificially to ply an oar, and with good effect, in a practised eight. Watermanship, like skating, cannot be acquired in a day, and the younger a man takes to aquatics the more likely is he to acquire it. There is hardly a bad waterman to be seen as a rule in a grand challenge crew of London R.C. or Thames R.C. men. Among University oars, watermanship is oftenest found in those who have rowed as schoolboys.
Eight in actionA SCRATCH EIGHT (‘PEAL OF BELLS’).
A SCRATCH EIGHT (‘PEAL OF BELLS’).
To coaches generally of the present and of future generations we may say that there is nothing like having a tenacity of purpose, and declining to listen to the shoals of excuses which pupils are inclined to propound in order to explain their shortcomings.There should be no such thing as ‘I can’t’ from a pupil. On the other hand, the coach should do his best to render the excuse untenable by ensuring proper ‘work’ at each thwart. A coach should not be carried away by every whisper of criticism by outsiders; and yet at the same time he should realise as said at thebeginningof this chapter, that, however able he may be, he has a natural tendency to become blind to faults which are being daily perpetrated under his nose—the more so if he has been specially of late devoting his attention to some different class of fault in his men. For this reason he should not decline to listen to suggestions from mentors who otherwise may be his inferiors in the art, and to give them all attention before he decides how to deal with them.
In dealing with the selection of men for a crew he has to consider various points. He has to calculate for what seats such and such an oarsman will be available, as regards weight and capacity generally for the seat. He has to bear in mind the date of the race for which he is preparing his men; many an oarsman may be admittedly unfit for a seat if the race were rowed to-morrow, and yet he may show promise of being fit for it six months hence. A may be better than B to-day; but A may be an old stager hardened in certain faults, and of whom no hope can now be entertained that he will suddenly reform. B may be as green as a gooseberry, and yet the recollection of what he was two or three weeks ago, compared to what he is now, may warrant the assumption that by the day of the race, some time hence, B will have become the better man of the two.
A coach who takes a crew in hand halfway through their preparation should be prepared to hear evidence as to what was the standard of merit of certain men some time back, compared with their present form; otherwise he may delude himself as to the relative merits and prospects of the material which he has to mould into shape.
Just as orators are said to learn at the expense of their audience, so coaches do undoubtedly learn much at the expense of the crews which they manage. Many a coach will agree thathe has often felt in later years that, if he had his time over again with this or that oarsman or crew, he would now form a different judgment from what he formerly did.
In concluding this chapter we cannot do better than extract from Dr. Warre’s treatise on Athletics certain aphorisms for the benefit of coaches, which he has tersely compiled under the head of ‘Notes on Coaching’:
Notes on Coaching.In teaching a crew you have to deal with—A. Crew collectively.B. Crew individually.A.Collective.1.Time.—a.Oars in and out together.b.Feather, same height; keep it down.c.Stroke, same depth; cover the blades, but not above the blue.2.Swing.—a.Bodies forward and back together.b.Sliders together.c.Eyes in the boat.3.Work.—a.Beginning—together, sharp, hard.b.Turns of the wrist—on and off of the feather, sharp, but not too soon.c.Rise of the hands—sharp, just before stroke begins.d.Drop of the hands—sharp, just after it ends.General Exhortations.—’Time!’ ‘Beginning!’ ‘Smite!’ ‘Keep it long!’ and the like—to be given at the right moment, not used as mere parrot cries.B.Individual.1. Faults of position.2. Faults of movement.N.B.—These concern body, hands, arms, legs, and sometimes head and neck.1. Point out when you easy, or when you come in, or best of all, in a gig. Show as well as say what is wrong and what is right.N.B.—Mind you are right.Decipit exemplar vitiis imitabile.2. To be pointed out during the row and corrected. Apply the principles taught in ‘E. W.’s’ paper on the stroke, beginning with bow and working to stroke, interposing exhortations (A) at the proper time.N.B.—Never hammer at any one individual. If one or twoadmonitions don’t bring him right, wait a bit and then try again. For coaching purposes, not too fast a stroke and not too slow. About thirty per minute is right. Before you start, see that your men have got their stretchers right and are sitting straight to their work.He teaches best who, while he is teaching, remembers that he has much to learn.
In teaching a crew you have to deal with—
1.Time.—a.Oars in and out together.b.Feather, same height; keep it down.c.Stroke, same depth; cover the blades, but not above the blue.
2.Swing.—a.Bodies forward and back together.b.Sliders together.c.Eyes in the boat.
3.Work.—a.Beginning—together, sharp, hard.b.Turns of the wrist—on and off of the feather, sharp, but not too soon.c.Rise of the hands—sharp, just before stroke begins.d.Drop of the hands—sharp, just after it ends.
General Exhortations.—’Time!’ ‘Beginning!’ ‘Smite!’ ‘Keep it long!’ and the like—to be given at the right moment, not used as mere parrot cries.
1. Faults of position.
2. Faults of movement.
N.B.—These concern body, hands, arms, legs, and sometimes head and neck.
1. Point out when you easy, or when you come in, or best of all, in a gig. Show as well as say what is wrong and what is right.
N.B.—Mind you are right.Decipit exemplar vitiis imitabile.
2. To be pointed out during the row and corrected. Apply the principles taught in ‘E. W.’s’ paper on the stroke, beginning with bow and working to stroke, interposing exhortations (A) at the proper time.
N.B.—Never hammer at any one individual. If one or twoadmonitions don’t bring him right, wait a bit and then try again. For coaching purposes, not too fast a stroke and not too slow. About thirty per minute is right. Before you start, see that your men have got their stretchers right and are sitting straight to their work.
He teaches best who, while he is teaching, remembers that he has much to learn.
Medmenham AbbeyMEDMENHAM ABBEY.
MEDMENHAM ABBEY.
The captain of a boat club is the most important member of it, from a practical point of view. In some clubs, as with the Universities, he is nominally as well as practically supreme—is president as well as captain. In clubs on the Thames tideway, such as Leander, London, Thames, and as in the Kingston club higher up river, there is a president elected as the titular head of the club, but that functionary is chiefly ornamental, to add dignity to the society, and to instil sobriety into its councils. Such a president is usually some old oarsman of renown, long ago retired from active service, one whose name carries weight and influence, but who has neither time nor inclination to interfere with the oarsmanship of the members.
It is the captain who can make or mar a club. He is the general officer in command of the forces, while the president (when such an extra official exists) is more of a field-marshal enjoyingotium cum dignitateat home. The qualifications upon which a captain is, or should be, selected by his club are, in the first place, personal merit as an oarsman and knowledge of his craft; in the second, a due seniority, so that he may have proper influence, both socially and in an aquatic sense, over those whom he is appointed to command; thirdly, tact and common sense.
Deficiency in either one of these desiderata is often fatal to a captain’s chances of success in his office. If he is a bad oar, and lacking in practical knowledge compared with those under him, it will little avail him to be a person of senior standing in the crews and of social position. He will fail to carry with him that prestige and confidence which should be the attribute of all commanders who expect to lead men to victory. If, on the other hand, he is a good oar, even the best of his club, and yet is a fledgling in age, he will find it difficult to maintain his command over sundry jealous seniors, and will, more than all, require the third requisite of tact, which is less liable to be found in a mere lad than in a man of the world who has well passed his majority.
A captain should be self-reliant without being obstinate; he should be good-tempered but not facile; he should be firm but not tyrannical, energetic but not a busybody. A captain has usually a host of counsellors, and he too well realises the fallacy of the adage that in a multitude of counsels there is wisdom. If he were to pay attention to all the advice offered to him he would never be able to have a mind of his own. And yet he will do well not to run to the opposite extreme, nor to decline to listen to anyone who ventures to offer him a suggestion. If he is captain of a University crew he will find his bed anything but one of roses. The eyes of the sporting world are upon him from the commencement of Lent term. Daily he will receive letters from individuals of whom he has neverbefore heard, offering him advice and criticising his line of action. Many of his correspondents will be anonymous, and too many of them splenetic. He must not be surprised to see himself anonymously attacked in print for the selections which he is making for a crew to represent his club. He will be accused of partiality if he selects some man of his own college in preference to an out-college man. He will find himself abused if he decides to take an important oar in his own hands, such as stroke or No. 7. He will be inundated with speculative appeals from vendors of commodities who hope for gratuitous advertisement of their wares. One of them will send him a nondescript garment, and will assure him that if he will allow his crew to row in dress of that build he and they shall be robed gratis in it, and be assured of victory. Quack medicines will be proffered him, and photographers will pester him and his crew daily with requests to stand for an hour in a nor’-easter for their portraits.
Within the circle of his own club matters will not always run smoothly. Sometimes he finds himself in the unpleasant position of having, after due consideration and counsel, to dispense with the services of some old brother blue who has fallen off from his quondam form, or who, though good enough among an inferior crew of a preceding year, is not up to par compared with new oarsmen of merit who have come to the fore since the last spring.
Nevertheless, with all these drawbacks to office, a University president or captain of a college has perhaps an easier task in managing his crew than a captain of an elective club on the Thames that is preparing for Henley or some similar contest. In college life the brevity of career gives a special standing and prestige to seniority, and the president of a U.B.C. is not likely to be a very junior man.Esprit de corpsdoes much to keep College and University crews together, and there is less likelihood of mutiny in such clubs than in those which are purely elective, and which compete with each other for securing the best oarsmen of the day. A malcontent college oar cannotthrow himself, even if he will, into the arms of another college; still less can a dissatisfied candidate for one shade of blue ‘rat’ and desert to the enemy. But in tideway and other clubs on the Thames there is such a brisk competition for good oarsmen that a man who finds he is likely to lose his chance of selection in one club has opportunities for obtaining distinction under some rival flag, and very possibly he already belongs to more than one such club, and can put his services up to auction as it were. If he finds that he will be relegated to some comparatively unimportant seat in the club which has claims of longest standing upon him, he may, if he is unpatriotic and cantankerous, look out in some other club for a berth of greater distinction. Such men are not uncommon, and are thorns in the side of any captain. They tax his sixth sense of tact more than anything: if he gives way to them, he risks spoiling the arrangement of his crew; if he stands firm, he may send a valuable man over to the enemy. On the other hand, it must be said that many rival captains would decline to accept the services of a deserter of this sort, and would feel that if such an one would not be true to one flag, he could not be safely trusted for long to row under another.
Beside this sort of malcontent, whose ambition is to beaut Cæsar aut nullus, the captain has to contend with obstructives of other classes. There is the habitual grumbler, who is never happy unless he has a grievance. To-day he cannot row properly because the boat is always down on his oar. Yesterday he was complaining that his rowlock was too high, and he had leave to lower it accordingly. He may not be really bad-tempered, nor mutinous; even his growls have atriste bonhomieabout them; in one sense he is a sort of acquisition to the social element of the crew, for his grumblings make him a butt for jokes and rallies. But when this system of grumbling goes beyond a certain point it sorely tries a captain’s patience.
Another sort of incubus is the old hand, who has never risen beyond mediocrity, who has plenty of faults, but who can be relied upon for a certain amount of honest work, andwho fills a place better than some very backward oarsman. The old stager is case-hardened in his crimes; they are second nature to him, and, in spite of coaching, still he maunders on in the same old style, with the same set faults. He has a time-honoured screw, a dog’s-eared elbow, and yet he possesses what many of the better-finished oarsmen do not—watermanship—and can keep on at work in a rolling boat when many neater oarsmen are all abroad if the ship gets off her even keel. Not to coach his too obvious faults may make visitors fancy that the old screw is a pattern fugleman to be copied for style; and yet to spend objurgation on one so stiff-necked is disheartening waste of wind.
Rowing in rainstormPROSE.
PROSE.
Discipline is all-important in a crew, and it usually requires tact to maintain it. If the captain is a triton among minnows, he can better afford to hector; but, as a rule, he runs the risk of mutiny, or at least of producing sulkiness, if he treats his crew as if they were galley-slaves. If he is in the boat, working with them, sharing their toils and privations, his task becomes easier on this score; for the crew realise that, however irksome the orders for the day may be, they are felt just as much by the commander as by the rank and file. If a member of the crew openly defies a captain, the bad example is too dangerous to be tolerated. To expel a mutineer may ruin the chance of victory for an impending race, but it will be best for the club in the long run, and will be likely to save many a defeat.
The writer has in mind two such incidents which occurred to himself at different times while officiating as captain of a club. In each case the mutineer was the stroke, and thespes gregis. He resented being told to row slower, or faster, as the case might be, and presently flatly declined to be dictated to. In each case the boat was instantly ordered ashore, and the grumbler was asked to step out. His place was filled by some emergency man, he was left ashore, and was told at the end of the day that the captain regretted to be obliged to dispense with his services. In each case the rest of the crew buttonholed their late stroke, and put the screw upon him to beg pardon, and with success. The one stroke was reinstated at his old post; the other was also put back to the boat, but at No. 6. In both cases mutiny was stamped out once and for all. Of these two men it may be said that one eventually rose to be stroke of a winning University eight, and the other of a winning Grand Challenge crew. In each case they were great personal friends of the captain, and there was no interruption of social relations through the peremptory line of conduct pursued. Many old fellow-oarsmen of the writer will doubtless recognise these incidents, in which names are naturally omitted.
Punctuality is an important detail of discipline in a crew. It is a good system to order a fine to be levied by the secretaryupon anyone who exceeds a certain limit of grace from the hour fixed for practice. It is better that the secretary or treasurer should levy it than the captain, because thereby the captain in this detail places himself under the subordinate officer’s jurisdiction, and is himself fined if he is late. He can do this without loss of dignity, and in fact adds to his influence by submitting as a matter of course to the general regulation. It spoils the discipline of a crew if a captain takes French leave for himself, and keeps his men dancing attendance upon him, and yet rates them when one of them similarly delays the practice.
Getting into the boatEMBARKING.
EMBARKING.
In making up a crew a captain is often in an invidious position. It is said by cricketers that the danger of having a leading bowler for captain of an eleven is that he is often judicially blind as to the right moment for taking himself off. Similarly, for a stroke to be captain, or rather for a likely candidate for strokeship to be captain, may be productive of misunderstandings and mischief to the crew. In old days stroke and captain were synonyms. The ‘stroke’ was elected by the club. He was supposed to be the best all-round oar, and as such to be capable of setting the best stroke to the crew. His office attached itself to his seat. In sundry old college records of rowing we find the expression ‘a meeting of strokes,’ where in modern times we should speak of a ‘captains’ meeting.’ The U.B.C.’s departed from this tradition more than forty years ago. Since then captains have been found at all thwarts, even including that of the coxswain. Most college clubs followed the U.B.C. principle forthwith, but not all so. We can recall an incident to the contrary. At Queen’s College, Oxon, there remained a written rule that stroke should be captain as late as about 1862. In or about that year a Mr. Godfrey was rowing stroke of the Queen’s eight in the bumping races, and wasex-officiocaptain. He had previously stroked the Queen’s torpid, and with good success. One night during the summer races Queen’s got bumped (or failed to effect a bump). Some of the crew laid the blame of their failure upon their stroke, for having rowed,as they alleged, too rapid a stroke. A college meeting had to be called, and a new stroke to be ‘elected,’ before a change could be made in the order of the boat for the next night’s race! Mr. Godfrey was asked to resign his seat as stroke, which of course he did, and took the seat of No. 6. His successor was thus elected captain. Much sympathy for Mr. Godfrey’s unfortunate statutory deposition from command was openly expressed by out-college oarsmen, and the result was before long that a change was made in the code of the Queen’s College Boat Club, and its adaptation to that of the more advanced rules which found favour with the majority of the U.B.C.
However, just as a bowler at cricket is prone to be blind to his own weaknesses, and to be imbued with ambition to do too much with his own hands at moments when they have lost their cunning, so when a captain has claims, not superlative, to the after-thwart, there is always some danger lest his eagerness to do all he can may blind him as to the best choice for that seat. In some cases, as with (of late) Messrs. West and Pitman, respectively strokes and presidents of their U.B.C’.s, or in the cases of such oarsmen as Messrs. W. Hoare, W. R. Griffiths, M. Brown, J. H. D. Goldie, R. Lesley, H. Rhodes, &c., all of whom had won their spurs as first-class strokes before they were elected to the presidency, the coincidence of stroke and captain has done no harm and has found the best man in the right place. Nevertheless, it is advisable to caution all captains on this score, and to suggest to them that, when they find themselves sharing a candidature for an important seat, they will do well to ask the advice of some impartial mentor, and abide by it.
At Eton the traditional law of identity of stroke and captain held good, with natural Etonian conservatism, until a date even later than that of the previously related anecdote of Queen’s College. So far as we can recollect, the first instance in which an Eton eight was not stroked by its captain was in 1864. In that year Mr. (now Colonel) Seymour Corkran was captain of Eton. He was a sort of pocket Hercules, of greatbreadth and weight, scaling close upon 13 st. Eton crews were not then so heavy as in these days, and the wondrous old Eton ‘Mat-Taylor’ boat, which then was still in her prime, would not satisfactorily carry so heavy a weight in the stern. Mr. Corkran placed himself at No. 7, and installed a light-weight, Mr. Mossop, at stroke. In this year Eton won the Ladies’ Plate for the first time, University College leaving them to walk over for it, after University had had a severe losing race earlier in the day against the Kingston Rowing Club for the final heat of the Grand Challenge.
The duties of a captain are not confined to the mere selection of his racing crew for the moment, nor to the preservation of order andrégimein the matter of training. If he is to do his duty by the club, he should be on duty pretty well all through the season. He should keep his eyes open to note any raw oarsman who shows signs of talent, and mark him to be tried and coached into form hereafter. A captain of an elective club can do much to maintain the credit of his flag by looking up suitable recruits who have not yet joined a leading club, and by inducing them to put themselves under his care, and to submit themselves for election. One of the best oars that ever rowed at Henley, who became an amateur champion (Mr. W. Long), was secured for the L.R.C. by the prompt energy of the then captain of that club, on the occasion of Mr. Long’sdébutat Henley Regatta. On that occasion he came from Ipswich, to row for the pairs, with a partner much inferior to himself. They did not win, but Mr. Long’s hitherto unknown merits were at once seen, and his enlistment in the L.R.C. ranks had very much to do with the long series of victories, especially in Stewards’ Cup and other four-oar races, which for some seasons afterwards attended the fortunes of the L.R.C.
Per contra, to show how a good oarsman may be going begging, in 1867 Mr. F. Gulston was not asked to row either by London or Kingston; he went to Paris to row in a pair-oar, and still the L.R.C. overlooked him, though he was a memberof their club, and though the L.R.C. were entered for the international regatta on the Seine. Mr. Gulston was nearly, probably quite, as good an oarsman then as in his very best days; but his light, though not hid under a bushel, was openly disregarded by his club. Through the minor regattas of the summer he took refuge with an ‘Oscillators’ crew, and shoved three inferior men behind along at such a pace that next season it was impossible to ignore him. He became stroke of the L.R.C. Grand Challenge crew in 1868, and won the prize easily.
A president of a U.B.C. has not the responsibility of looking after recruits for his club. He has only to see that he does not overlook the merits of those who are in it, among the hundreds of young oarsmen who come out each season in the torpids, lower divisions, and college eights. The ‘trial eights’ of the winter term have to be made up by him. Each captain of a college crew is requested to send in the names of ten or more candidates for these trials; but it is not safe for a president to rely entirely upon the lists so furnished to him. He is morally bound to give a fair trial to all the candidates who are thus officially submitted to his notice; but he ought also on his own account to have taken stock during the summer races of the promising men of each college crew. The opinions of college captains as to who are likely to make the best candidates for University rowing must not always be relied upon. It has often happened that better men have been omitted than those whose names have been sent in to be tried.
We have known a watchful president ask of a college captain to this effect:
‘What has become of the man who rowed No. 6 in your torpid?’
‘He played cricket all the summer, and did not row in the summer eights.’
‘You have not sent in his name?’
‘No, I thought him too backward; he has never been in a light boat in his life, and he only began to row last October when he came up as a freshman.’
‘Can I see him to-morrow and try him?’ says the president; and eventually this cricketer of the torpids is hammered into shape, and subsequently wears a double blue.
The above is no exaggerated picture of what has been known to result from careful supervision by a president of the college rowing which comes under his notice. In 1862 Messrs. Jacobson and Wynne rowed in the Oxford crew; the writer believes, from the best of his recollection, that neither of these gentlemen was named in the two primary picked choices which had been sent in to represent Christ Church in the trial eights. But the then president, Mr. George Morrison, had observed them when they were rowing for their college earlier in the season, and took note of them as two strong men, who might be converted by coaching into University oars; and he proved to be correct.
A captain of a large club usually has his hands so full of duties connected with representative or picked crews that he can hardly be expected to find much time for systematically coaching juniors. This preliminary work he is obliged to depute to subordinates. In a London club there is usually a sort of subaltern, or sometimes an ex-captain, who undertakes to instruct junior crews or those who are competing for the Thames Cup at Henley. In a college club it is a common practice to elect a ‘captain of torpid,’ who is usually some one who has rowed in the college eight, but who has not the physique to compete for a seat in the University crew. At Cambridge a large college club puts on so many crews for the bumping races that it is necessary to find separate coaches for nearly each boat. Even when this occurs, a really energetic captain will endeavour to spare a day now and then to supervise the efforts of his subalterns. At Oxford it is, or used to be, customary for the five committee men of the O.U.B.C. to make a point of coaching in turn, when asked, those college eights which had no ‘blue,’ nor old oarsmen of experience, to instruct them. All these arrangements tend to raise the standard of rowing in various colleges, and so in the U.B.C. generally.
The time comes when a captain retires from office, but it is quite possible that he may find time to row again for his flag after he has laid down his bâton. In his newrôlehe can do, in another line, quite as much to preserve discipline as when he held the office in his own person. He should be the foremost to set an example of subordination and of strict observance of regulations and of training. Nothing does more to strengthen the hands of a new captain than the spectacle of his late chief serving loyally under him; and, on the other hand, nothing does more to weaken the new ruler’s authority than the example of an ex-captain self-sufficient and too proud to acknowledge the sway of his successor. The ex-captain does not lose caste by strict subordination; unless his successor is a man devoid of tact, he will freely take his predecessor into his counsels; and, on the other hand, the predecessor should be careful not to support anarchy by interfering until he is asked to advise. We have known the entiremoraleof a college crew upset because the ex-captain, a University oar, has taken French leave and ordered an extra half-glass of beer for himself (beyond the statutory allowance), without observing the formal etiquette of first asking the leave of his successor, whose standing was only that of college-eight oarsmanship. Such a proceeding at once made it more difficult than ever for the new captain to preserve discipline and strict attention to training orders among the thirsty souls with whom he had to deal. In some college boat clubs there is a rule that the captain must be resident in college. The object of this is to prevent the archives and trophies of the boat club, which are in custody of the captain, from passing outside the college gates, and so possibly getting astray in lodgings. Such a rule as this naturally prevents many a senior oarsman from holding the office (for after a certain standing undergraduates migrate from college walls to lodgings). In such cases those members of the college club who belong to the University eight constantly find themselves under the formal authority of one who does not pretend to equal their skill or knowledge of aquatics. As a rule these retired generals workharmoniously with their inferior but commanding in-college oarsman; but cases do occur where want of tact on the part of one or both parties has a very mischievous effect, and causes the club to take a lower place on the race-charts than it might have attained had all parties co-operated loyally for the support of the flag.
The position of captain of a club, whether rowing, cricket, or athletics, is a very useful school for any young man, if he uses his opportunity aright. It teaches him to be self-reliant; to avoid vacillation on the one hand and obstinacy on the other; to exercise tact and forbearance, and to set a good example on his own part of observance of standing orders. All these lessons serve him well in after-life. No man is the worse, when fighting the battle of the world, for having learnt both how to obey orders implicitly and also how to govern others with firmness and tact. He will look back to many a decision which he came to, and will perhaps be able to console himself by reflecting that at the time he acted according to the best of his lights; but none the less he will perceive that he was then in error, and that as he sees more of aquatics, or of any other branch of sport, he finds that he is only beginning to learn the best of it when the time comes for him to take his departure from the scene of actual conflict. If he will apply the analogy to his career in life, whatever that may be, he will prosper therein all the more by reason of the practical lessons which he gained when his arena was purely athletic.