_En pa.s.sant_ we may say of Chambers that, apart from grand physique and science as an oarsman, he displayed qualities throughout his career which would stamp him as a model for champions of the present day. He was always courteous, never puffed up with success, never overbearing, and yet at the same time always fondly confident in his own powers and stamina. A more honourable man never sat in a boat. The writer recalls a little incident as characteristic of Chambers. Just before the 1865 match against Kelley, he accosted Chambers at Putney and asked him if he wished to sell his boat after the match. (It was a common practice for Tyne scullers to do this, to save the cost of conveyance back to the Tyne.) Chambers replied, he would sell her. The writer asked if he might try her after the race. "Hoot mon," said Chambers, "try her noo, if ye like." Now the writer was known to be an ally of Kelley (who usually accompanied him when training on the tideway for sculling races). In these days we much doubt whether any championship candidate would allow a third person--whether amateur or professional--known to be in sympathy with his opponent, to set foot in his racing craft on the eve of a match. Nothing would be easier than to have an "accident" with her; and all scullers know that to have to adopt a strange boat on the day of a match would be a most serious drawback. That Chambers never for a moment harboured such suspicion of his rivals shows that he judged them by his own faultless standard of fair play.
Not that we suggest for an instant that amateurs of this or of former days were ever suspected of being p.r.o.ne to foul play, but none the less do we believe that in these days few scullers in such a position as Chambers would have made the gratuitous offer which he did upon the occasion referred to.
In the autumn of 1867, Kelley and his pupil, J. Sadler, fell out; the result was a Champion match between them. On the first essay Kelley came in first after having been led, and having fairly tired Sadler out. But a foul had occurred when Kelley was giving Sadler the go-by, and the referee was unable to decide which was in the wrong. He accordingly ordered them to row again next day. The articles of the match provided for a start by "mutual consent," and somehow Sadler did not "consent" at any moment when Kelley was ready. Strong opinions were expressed by several persons who watched the affair from the steamers, and eventually the referee ordered Kelley to row over the course. The stakes were awarded to Kelley by the referee, but Sadler brought an action against the stakeholder, M. J. Smith, then proprietor of the "Sportsman"
newspaper. The case became a _cause celebre_. The Court decided that the referee had acted _ultra vires_ in awarding the stakes to Kelley, inasmuch as he had not first taken the trouble to observe for himself Sadler"s man[oe]uvres at the starting post. He had formed his opinion from hearsay and separate statements. Eventually both parties withdrew their stakes.
In the year 1868 a new sculler of extraordinary merit came suddenly to the fore. The late Mr. J. G. Chambers, C.U.B.C., had got up a revived edition of the old Thames professional regattas, and with a liberal amount of added money. The sculls race brought out all the best men of the day, and among them Kelley; the distance was the full metropolitan course. Renforth, a Tyne sculler, electrified all by the ease with which he won. He was a heavier man than Kelley; he had a rather cramped finish at the chest, but a tremendous reach and grip forward. He slid on the seat to a considerable extent, especially when spurting.
Kelley was rather over weight at the time, and excuses were made for him on this score. As a matter of prestige he had to defend his t.i.tle to the championship in a match, and he met Renforth on November 17. He made a better fight on that day than in the regatta sculls, but the youth and strength of Renforth were too much for the old champion. Renforth remained in undisputed possession until his death, which took place under very tragic circ.u.mstances during a four-oared match between an English and Canadian crew in Canada. The Englishmen were well ahead, when Renforth, rowing stroke, faltered, fainted, and died shortly after reaching sh.o.r.e. Some attributed his death to poison, some to epilepsy.
The matter remains a mystery.
Sadler was now tacitly acknowledged to be the best sculler left in the kingdom (Kelley having retired). But Sadler could not claim the t.i.tle of champion without winning it in a match. At last, in 1874, a mediocre Tyne sculler named Bagnall was brought out to row him for the t.i.tle, and Sadler won easily enough.[17] Next year R. W. Boyd was the hope of the Tyne. He had a bad style for staying. He was all slide and no body swing; his body at the end of the stroke was unsupported by any leg work. So long as the piston action of his legs continued he went fast, but when the legs began to tire he stopped as if shot. His bad style was the result of his having taken to a slide before he had mastered the first principles of rowing upon a fixed seat, or had learned how to swing his body from the hips. Sadler, on the other hand, had been rowing for years on fixed seats before he ever saw a sliding seat; the veteran did not discard his old body swing when he took to the slide, but simply added slide to swing, whereas Boyd subst.i.tuted slide for swing. The difference in style between the two was most marked when they showed in the race. Boyd had youth and strength on his side. Sadler was getting old and stale, his hair was grey, and he was not nearly so good as when he had rowed Kelley in 1867 (save that the slide added mechanically to his powers for speed). Boyd darted away with a long lead; before a mile had been crossed his piston action began to flag and his boat to go slower. Sadler plodded on, and when once up to him left him as if standing still, led easily through Hammersmith Bridge, and won hands down. Boyd never seemed to profit by this lesson. He stuck to his bad style so long as he was on the water, else he might have made a good sculler.
[17] This was the first champion race rowed on sliding seats.
In 1876 Australia once more challenged England. Sadler was the holder of the championship, and Trickett was the crack of Australia. The Australian was a younger and bigger man than Sadler; he slid well, but he bent his arms much too early in the stroke. This would tend to tire them prematurely, and if the pace could be kept up, Trickett would soon have realised the effects of this salient fault of his. But Sadler was older, staler, and more grizzled than ever. He made a poor fight against Trickett, and a few weeks later in the Thames Regatta Sculls he came in nowhere, finishing even behind old "Jock" Anderson, who never had been more than a third-rate sculler. Enough was then seen to show that our best sculler, as to style, was hopelessly old and stale, and that our new men, even if faster than he, had no style to make them worthy to uphold the old country"s honours on the water. Trickett returned to Australia without trying conclusions with any other of our scullers for the championship. He made a match with Lumsden, a Tyne man, but the latter forfeited. If at the moment it had been known that the Sadler of 1876 was some ten lengths in the mile inferior to the Sadler of 1875, it is likely that Lumsden would have gone to the post, and that some other British sculler would also have endeavoured, while there was time, to arrange a match with the Australian.
The t.i.tle of Champion of the World had now left England. Sadler retired, and there was still an opening for candidature for his abandoned t.i.tle.
As regards the now purely local honours of the representatives of Britain in sculling, Mr. Charles Bush, a well-known supporter of professional sculling, had found a coal-heaver, by name Higgins, who had shown good form in a Thames regatta, and was looked upon as the rising man of the Thames. There was also a rising sculler of the name of Blackman, who had won the Thames Regatta Sculls. Higgins was matched for champion honours against Boyd, and the match came off on May 20, 1877, The wind blew a gale from S.W., and Boyd had the windward station. In such a cross wind station alone sufficed to decide the race, and Boyd won easily. The two met again on October 8 of the same year, and Higgins proved himself the better stayer of the two. He had a better idea of sliding than Boyd, and used his legs better and swung farther back. Boyd stuck to his piston action, and was rowed out in six minutes. They met a third time on the following January 11, this time on the Tyne, and once more Higgins won, after a foul. He was plainly the better man of the two for any distance beyond a mile.
In the succeeding summer a Durham pitman, one W. Elliott, came out as a Championship candidate. He was short and thick-set, and was decidedly clumsy at his first essay. He met Higgins, and was beaten easily. He improved rapidly and came out again the following September. The proprietors of the "Sportsman" had established a challenge cup, to be won by three successive victories, under certain conditions. Higgins, Boyd, and Elliott competed for it, and Elliott beat them both. The final heat was on September 17. In the following year, 1879, Elliott and Higgins met on the Tyne, on February 21, and once more Elliott held his own. He remained the representative of British professional sculling until the arrival of Edward Hanlan in this country.
Hanlan first attracted notice at the Philadelphia regatta of 1876. Mr.
R. H. Labat, of the Dublin University, London, and Thames Rowing Clubs, took part in that regatta, and entered into conversation with Hanlan.
He, as one of the L.R.C. men, lent Hanlan a pair of sculls for the occasion, and with them Hanlan won the Open Professional Sculling Prize.
He beat among others one Luke, who had beaten Higgins in a trial heat.
Higgins was at the moment suffering from exertions in a four-oared race earlier in the day, so that his defeat did not occasion much surprise; but Mr. Labat on his return to England told the writer of this chapter that in his opinion Hanlan was far and away the best sculler he had ever seen, and that even if Higgins had been fresh and fit, Hanlan would have been too good for him. At that date Hanlan had not made his great reputation, but the soundness of Mr. Labat"s estimate of his powers was fully verified subsequently.
In 1879 Hanlan, having beaten the best American scullers, came to England to row for the "Sportsman" Challenge Cup. He commenced his career in England by beating a second-rate northern sculler, in a sort of trial match; but this was only a feeler before trying conclusions with Elliott. The two met on the Tyne on June 16, and Elliott was simply "never in it." Hanlan led him, played with him, and beat him as he liked.
It did not require any very deep knowledge of oarsmanship to enable a spectator to observe the vast difference which existed between his style and that of such men as Boyd or Elliott. Hanlan used his slide concurrently with swing, carrying his body well back, with straight arms long past the perpendicular, before he attempted to row the stroke in by bending the arms. His superiority was manifest, and yet our British (professional) scullers seemed wedded to this vicious trick of premature slide and no swing, and doggedly declined to recognise the maxim
Fas est et ab hoste doceri.
At that rate the two best British scullers were, in the writer"s opinion, two amateurs--viz., Mr. Frank Playford, holder of the Wingfield Sculls, and Mr. T. C. Edwardes-Moss, twice winner of the Diamonds at Henley. Either of these gentlemen could have made a terrible example of the best British professionals, could amateur etiquette have admitted a match between the two cla.s.ses. The only time that these gentlemen met, Mr. Playford proved the winner, over the Wingfield course. A sort of line as to relative merit between amateur and professional talent is gained by recalling Mr. Edwardes-Moss"s victory for the Diamond Sculls in 1878. In that year he met an American, Lee, then self-styled an amateur, but who now openly practises as a professional, and who is quite in the first flight of that cla.s.s in America. He could probably beat any English professional of to-day, or at least make a close fight with our best man. When the two met at Henley Mr. Edwardes-Moss was by no means in trim to uphold the honour of British sculling. He had gone through three commemoration b.a.l.l.s at Oxford about ten days before the regatta. He had only an old sculling boat, somewhat screwed and limp. He had lent her freely to Eton and Windsor friends during the preceding summer, not antic.i.p.ating that he would need her to race in again; but when the regatta drew nigh he could find no boat to suit him, and had to make shift with the old boat. In the race he had to give Lee the inside, or Berks station; and all who have known Henley Regatta are well aware of the advantage of that side; it gives dead water for some hundreds of yards below Poplar Point, and still further gains on rounding the point.
Three lengths would fairly represent the minimum of the handicap between the two stations on a smooth day, such as that of the race. The two scullers raced round the point, Lee leading slightly; but the Oxonian caught him and just headed him on the post. Lee stopped one stroke too soon, whether from exhaustion or error is uncertain, but the performance plainly stamped the English amateur as his superior, half trained and badly boated as he was. Over a champion course, in a match, Lee would in his Henley form have been a score or more lengths behind the Oxonian.
Enough can be guessed from these calculations to show that there would have been a most interesting race, to say the least, if it could have been arranged for a trial of power between Mr. Playford and Hanlan. The latter sculler used to admit, so we always understood, that the London Rowing Club sculler was the only man he had seen whom he did not feel confident of being able to beat.
Hanlan"s style, good though it undoubtedly was, appeared to even greater advantage when seen alongside of the miserable form of our professionals. Hanlan was a well-made man, of middle height, and a thoroughly scientific sculler. He was the best exponent of sliding-seat sculling among professionals, only a long way so; but we, who can recall Kelley and Chambers in their best days, must hold to the opinion that the two latter were, _ceteris paribus_, as good professors of fixed-seat sculling as ever was Hanlan of the art on a slide. Had sliding seats been in vogue in 1860, and the next half-dozen years, we believe that Kelley and Chambers would have proved themselves capable of doing much the same that Hanlan did in his own generation. We have seen Kelley scull on a sliding seat. He was fat and short of wind, and never attempted to make a study of the leg-work of sliding; but, being simply an amateur at it, his style was a model for all our young school to copy. Like all old fixed-seat oarsmen who have attained merit in the old school, he stuck to his traditional body swing, and added the slide to it, as it were instinctively. There could hardly be a greater contrast of action than to see scullers like Boyd or Blackman kicking backwards and forwards, with piston action and helpless bodies doubled up at the finish, and to observe, paddling within sight of these, old stagers like Biffen and Kelley in a double-sculling boat fitted with slides. It was easy to see that until the new generation of British professionals could be taught first principles of rowing on a fixed seat, there was small chance of their ever acquiring the proper use of the slide as exemplified by Hanlan.
To return to Hanlan"s performances. The Championship of the "World"
still rested in Trickett, who had further maintained his t.i.tle (since he had beaten Sadler), by defeating Rush on the Paramatta, Sydney, on June 30, 1877. Rush had once been the Australian champion; Trickett had beaten him before tackling Sadler, and this was a new attempt by Rush to regain his lost honours. Technically, Trickett could have claimed to defend his t.i.tle in his own country; but plenty of money was forthcoming to recoup him for expenses of travel, and he a.s.sented to meet Hanlan on the Thames for the nominal trophy of the "Sportsman" Challenge Cup, but really for the wider honour of champion of the world. The match came off on November 16, 1880, and Trickett was defeated with even greater ease than Elliott on the Tyne.
Just about this date a sculling regatta, open to the world, was organised on the Thames. It was got up purely for commercial purposes by a company called the "Hop Bitters," who required to advertise their wares. Nevertheless, it produced good sport. Hanlan did not compete in it. It came off only two days after his match with Trickett. Our British scullers took part in it, and with most humiliating results. Not one of them could gain a place in the final heat, for which four prizes were awarded to the four winners of trial heats. The four winners of the contest were one and all either colonials or Americans, and the winner was one Elias Layc.o.c.k, also a Sydney man, and undoubtedly a better sculler than Trickett, although the latter was the nominal champion of Australia at the time. Layc.o.c.k sculled in good style, so far as leg-work and finish of the stroke; his body action was not cramped, but he had not so long a swing as should, if possible, be displayed by a man of his size. He scaled rather above twelve stone. Wallace Ross, who finished second to him, after leading him some distance, had been the favourite, and had been reputed as only a trifle inferior to Hanlan. The forward reach and first part of Ross"s stroke was as good as could be wished, but he had a cramped, tiring, and ugly finish with his arms and shoulders. When Layc.o.c.k succeeded in beating him a furore was created; Layc.o.c.k"s staying powers were unmistakable, and many who saw him fancied that his stamina would enable him to give Hanlan trouble before the end of four miles. Layc.o.c.k himself was not endued with so high an opinion of his own merits; but he was too game a man to shirk a contest when it was proposed to him, and the result was that he was soon matched to scull Hanlan.
The match came off on the following February 14, 1881, over the Thames course. Layc.o.c.k stuck to his work all the way, but was never in it for speed. Hanlan led from start to finish, and won easily. A year later Hanlan was back in England to row Boyd on the Tyne. Boyd"s friends fondly fancied that he had developed some improvement, but it was a delusion. Never was an oarsman more wedded to vicious style and wanton waste of strength than the pet of the Tyne. The race came off on April 3, 1882, and was, of course, an easy paddle for Hanlan. The knowledge that Hanlan was going to be again on English waters, brought about a return match between him and Trickett. This was rowed on the Thames on May 1 following, and once more the Canadian won easily.
No one in Britain thought fit to challenge Hanlan again, after the decisive manner in which he had disposed of all his opponents; but in his own country he twice defended his t.i.tle, in 1883. On May 31 in that year he rowed J. L. Kennedy, a comparatively new man, in Ma.s.sachusetts, and beat him; and on the following July 18 he once more met his old opponent, Wallace Ross, on the St. Lawrence, and beat him, though after a closer race than heretofore.
In England about this time sculling had sunk even lower among professionals than in the days when Boyd and Elliott were the professors of the science. These men had retired; there were sundry second and third cla.s.s compet.i.tors for champion honours, among them one Largan, who had been to Australia to scull a match or two, and one Perkins, and one Bubear. The latter at first was inferior to Perkins, and was a man of delicate health and somewhat difficult to train. He often disappointed his backers by going amiss just before a match was due, but he took rather more pains with his style than other British scullers had done of late, and eventually he succeeded in surpa.s.sing them, and in becoming the representative (such as it was) of British professional oarsmanship.
We should mention that in 1881 the brothers Messrs. Walter and Harry Chinnery most generously made an expensive attempt to raise the lost standard of British sculling, by giving 1000_l._ in prizes for a series of years, to be sculled for. These two gentlemen were well-known leading amateur athletes in their day. The elder had been a champion amateur long-distance runner; the younger had won the amateur boxing championship, and had rowed a good oar at Henley regattas and elsewhere.
It may be invidious to look a gift horse in the mouth, but we feel that this generous subsidy of the Messrs. Chinnery was practically wasted for want of being fettered with a certain condition. That condition should have been, that the compet.i.tions for the Chinnery prizes should be on fixed seats. One reason why professional racing has fallen off of late so much, compared to amateur performances, may be found in the fact that amateurs are taught, and are willing to be taught, from first principles: whereas our professionals nowadays are little better than self-taught. Rowing and sculling require scientific instruction more than ever on slides. In old days the main business of a professional oarsman was to carry pa.s.sengers in his boat; the calling produced a large following, and out of these some few were good oarsmen and took to boat-racing as well as to mere plying for hire. Here there was a natural nursery for professional racing oarsmen. The disuse of the wherry for locomotion destroyed this nursery; we have already shown that our later professionals are as a rule neither London watermen nor Tyne keelmen.
They are a medley lot by trade; a chimney-sweep, a collier, a coal-heaver, a miner, a cabman, &c., all swell the ranks. Such men as these take to the water simply for what they can make out of it, by racing on it. Their one ambition is to race, and to run before they can decently walk. Hence they do not go through the school of fixed-seat rowing before they graduate on sliders, and they have no instructors, nor will they listen to advice.
Amateurs, on the other hand, belong as a rule to clubs; and all clubs of any prestige coach their juniors carefully, and lay down rules for their improvement. Two very usual club rules are, that juniors shall not begin by racing in keelless crank boats, but in steady "tub"-built craft. No such control exists over junior professionals; if a bricklayer"s apprentice takes to the water in spare hours, and begins to fancy himself as an oarsman, he will probably find friends who will back him for a small stake against some brother hobbledehoy. Each of these aspirants will thus endeavour to use the speediest boat and appliances that he can obtain. Unfortunately it so happens that sliding seats give so much extra power that even bad sliding _a la_ Boyd produces more pace than good fixed-seat rowing. The result of this is, that, however little a tiro may know of rowing, he will, in a day or two, get more pace on a slide than if he adhered to a fixed seat. So the two cripples race each other on slides, before they have acquired the barest rudiments of swing, and as a natural result they can never be expected hereafter to progress beyond mediocrity.
Now, if there were prizes offered for rising professionals, subject to the condition that sliding seats should not be used, these tiros would have some chance of being induced to study the art of using the body for swing, and of mastering this all-important feature in oarsmanship, before they ventured to fly so high as to race upon slides.
Twenty and more years ago there was a cla.s.s of match-making on the Thames which is now obsolete. This was to row in what were called "old-fashioned" wager boats, i.e. the lightest form of wherry which used to be built before H. Clasper established outriggers. The keelless boat requires a sharp catch up at the beginning to get the best pace out of it, and it also requires more "sitting" to keep it on an even keel. (If it is not on an even keel, the hands do not grip the water evenly, and power thereby is wasted.) It was because this fact used to be realised in those days better than now, that so many rough scullers were matched in "old-fashioned" boats, rather than in "best and best" boats, as the fastest built craft were usually styled in the articles of matches. It would do good if this quondam practice of matching duffers on even terms in steady old-fashioned craft could be re-introduced on the Thames.
Another incident has tended greatly to the deterioration of professional rowing, and this is the lapse of professional regattas. Certain gentlemen connected with the University and the leading Thames boat clubs used formerly to get up an annual summer regatta for the benefit of professional oarsmen. In the "forties" a somewhat similar regatta had also existed for a time, but it had consisted of amateur compet.i.tions as well as of professional. This earlier regatta faded away when its chief trophy, the "Gold Cup" for amateur eight oars, was won thrice in succession by, and became the property of, the "Thames Club." (That Thames Club is now extinct, and must not be confounded with the well-known "Thames _Rowing_ Club" of the present day.) Some of the members of the Thames crew that won this "Gold Cup" in the forties are still to be found, the most notable of them being Messrs. Frank Playford, senr. (amateur champion in 1849); and Rhodes Cobb, the president of the Kingston Rowing Club. (The sons of each of these old athletes have similarly made their mark in aquatics of the present generation.) Owing to the action of the chairman of a steamboat company and other gentlemen who had other interests than those of boating to serve, these regattas have lapsed.
To resume--as to Thames regattas. The Thames Subscription Club, between 1861 and 1866, got up a Thames regatta, which annually produced fine sport between Thames and Tyne men, and once or twice good Glasgow crews joined in the compet.i.tion. In 1866 the amateur element was introduced as a mixture. This was the last year of the series.
Meantime the late Mr. H. H. Playford had for three years laboured to form a sort of "nursery" regatta for professionals. It was styled the "Sons of the Thames" regatta, and it had the effect of bringing out several good men, such as the Biffens, Wise, Tagg, &c., who afterwards distinguished themselves in the greater regattas on the Thames, which were open to the world. Never was professional rowing at higher flood than just at this date, thanks to the gentleman referred to.
In 1867 there was no regatta; but in 1868 a new series was founded. The late Messrs. J. G. Chambers, George Morrison, Allan Morrison, Rev. R. W.
Risley, the Playfords, Brickwood and other prominent amateurs, gave money and labour to aid the scheme, and it flourished right well for nine seasons. It produced, like the preceding series, fine rowing, and many a subsequent sculling or four-oar match arose out of the regatta contests. So far these regattas had been promoted solely for sport, and in pure unselfishness. In 1876 a steamboat company originated the idea of a Thames regatta, and advertised a scheme. Subscriptions were obtained from several of the City sources which had formerly subscribed to _bona fide_ Thames regatta, and thus the funds of the old-established meeting were sapped. The latter came off all the same that year, there thus being two Thames regattas for one season. But there were not funds to carry on two such meetings, and the amateur promoters of the old established regatta retired next year in favour of the speculative promoters. The speculative regatta lived just one year more, and then its promoters gave up, and left our British professionals with no regatta at all to encourage them.
And this was just at a time when our champion honours had been wrested from us, and when we needed more than ever some disinterested a.s.sistance, in order to revive and encourage the falling fortunes of professional oarsmanship! It was too late to revive the old regatta; the hand of Death was busy among the old amateurs who had founded the second series, and the four or five gentlemen whose names headed the list of promoters (_supra_) have pa.s.sed rapidly away, from one cause or another, in the prime of life. Whether hereafter any combination of later amateurs will once more come to the rescue, as did the late Messrs.
Chambers, H. Playford, the Morrisons, and Risley, remains to be seen. If they do so, we hope they will found something, at first, more on the lines of the Playford series of "Sons of the Thames" regatta, to bring out new blood; and that they will insist upon _no slides_ being used in any race of the meeting, for at least two seasons. Slides are not allowed in the public schools fours (lately rowed for at Henley, and now competed for at Marlow), nor in Oxford torpids, nor in Cambridge lower division races. Nor do the leading amateur tideway clubs allow their juniors to race on them in club matches. If we are to educate a new generation of professional talent, we must do so on the same general principle that we teach our junior amateurs in rowing clubs.
Since the date of Hanlan"s invasion of Britain, British scullers have not been in the hunt for champion compet.i.tions. Such champion racing as has taken place has been confined to Canadians, Americans, or Australians. In 1884, May 22, Layc.o.c.k was once more brought out to row Hanlan on the Nepean river, New South Wales, and Hanlan again held his own. Meantime an emigrant (in childhood) from Chertsey, one William Beach, had been rapidly improving his style in New South Wales. He took hints from his conquerors until, when he was about forty, a time when most scullers are past their prime, he could beat all comers in his own colony. Hanlan was persuaded to visit Australia to row him, and the first match between them came off August 16, 1884, on the Paramatta. To the surprise of all, Beach went as fast as Hanlan, and outstayed him.
Excuses were made for this reverse to one who had been reckoned invincible: Hanlan had been unfairly washed by a steamer, and some fancied he had held Beach too cheap, and was not fully trained. Another match was made for March 28, 1885. Meantime Beach easily beat, on February 28 of that year, another colonial challenger, T. Clifford. In his return match with Hanlan he fairly tired the Canadian out. Beach scales a trifle over twelve stone, and proves the truth of the old saying that a good big one is better than a good little one.
In December of 1885 Hanlan beat Neil Matterson, a young and rising Australian candidate for the championship.
In the summer of 1886, a large amount was subscribed for a series of sculling prizes on the Thames. Beach was in England, training for a match against Gaudaur of St. Louis, U.S., who had lately beaten the best American scullers. Gaudaur did not row in this regatta of scullers, but Beach did.
The trial heats of this regatta were rowed in stretches of about three miles each, following the tide over different parts of the tideway. In the first heat Neil Matterson beat Ross. In the second, Teemer, U.S., beat Perkins, a London sculler. Bubear rowed over for the third heat, and the fourth was won by Beach beating Lee, U.S. (once a pseudo amateur and an unsuccessful compet.i.tor for the Diamond Sculls of Henley!) Next day Beach beat Bubear, and Teemer beat Matterson. The final heat took place over the regulation course of Putney to Mortlake. Beach won as he liked, on a tide that was not first cla.s.s, in 22 min. 16 secs. The racing occupied August 31, and September 1 and 2.
On September 18, Beach met Gaudaur for the championship over the Putney course. Beach was, as the race showed, a little "off;" apparently he had been indulging; for to look at Gaudaur few would have expected him to make such a close fit of the race as he did. The stakes were 500_l._ a side. The tide was a good one, and the water was smooth beyond Hammersmith. Beach led, and seemed to have the race safe off Chiswick.
Then he began to lose ground, Gaudaur came up to him, and Beach stopped, apparently rowed out. Possibly he had "st.i.tch," as the sequel shows.
Gaudaur got just in front of Beach, and could not get away. Beach stopped again, and still Gaudaur could do little better than paddle.
Half way up Horse Reach Beach seemed to recover, and once more came up with his man. He led by a few feet at Barnes Bridge, and after that drew steadily away, winning by three lengths in the exceptionally good time of 22 min. 30 secs. or 22 min. 29 secs.
A week later Beach did a much finer performance, for time. He rowed Wallace Ross for the championship, over the usual course, and beat him in a common paddle, without being extended, and with wind foul, on a _neap_ tide, in 23 min. 5 secs. The pace of this tide, let alone foul wind, must have been about a minute to a minute and a quarter (if not more) slower than the tide on which Beach and Gaudaur had sculled some days before. Those who know the effect of tides on pace, will admit that this last performance, all things considered, is Beach"s best, and is also the best ever accomplished by any sculler over the Thames tideway course. Had Beach been on a spring tide that day, and been doing his best, he would probably have done a good deal faster than 21 min. 30 secs. over our champion course. All factors considered, we believe that the present champion sculler is the fastest that the world has yet produced, better than even Hanlan at his best. To compare him with the best old fixed-seat champions would be invidious to all parties. Each in his day made the best of the mechanical appliances at his disposal, and was A1 in style for their use.
[Ill.u.s.tration: A FOUL.]
CHAPTER XVII.
LAWS OF BOAT-RACING (THEIR HISTORY, AND RULES OF THE ROAD).