FIRST LESSONS ON SLIDING SEATS Let me assume (I am still addressing my imaginary novice) that you have passed through the first few stages of your novitiate. If you are an Oxford or a Cambridge freshman you will have been carefully drilled in a tub-pair, promoted later to a freshmen's four or eight, and during the next term may have been included in the Torpid or Lent-Boat of your College. At any rate, I am assuming that you have by now rowed in a race or a series of races for eight-oared crews on fixed seats. But I prefer to leave the general subject of combined rowing, whether in eights or fours, to a later chapter, while I attempt to explain the mysteries and difficulties of the sliding seat.
The slide may be described as a contrivance for increasing the length of the stroke (i.e. of the period during which, the oar-blade remaining covered in the water, power is applied to the propulsion of the boat), and for giving greater effect to the driving force of the oarsman's legs. Long before the actual sliding seat had been invented professional oars men and scullers had discovered that if they slid on their fixed thwarts they increased the pace of their boats, and even amongst amateurs this prac tice was not unknown. Mr. R. H. Labat has told me that so far back as 1870 he and his colleagues fitted their rowing trousers with leather, greased their thwarts, and so slid on them. In 1872 slides were used at Henley Regatta, and in 1873 the Oxford and Cambridge crews for the first time rowed their race on slides, Cambridge winning in 19 mins. 35 secs., which remained as record time until 1892. This performance, though it was undoubtedly helped by good conditions of tide and wind, served to establish slides firmly in popular favour, and from that time onwards fixed seats were practically retained only for the coach ing of novices and, in eights, for the Torpids and Lent Races at Oxford and Cambridge. Now, proceeding on the principle that rowing is meant to be an exercise of grace, symmetry, and skill, as well as of strength and endurance, I think I may lay it down as an essential rule that it is necessary on slides to observe those instructions which made fixed-seat rowing in the old days a pleasure to the eye. In the very early days of slides, while men were still groping for correct principles, this important axiom was too often neglected. It was imagined that swing was no longer necessary, and accordingly the rivers were filled with contorted oarsmen shuffling and tumbling and screwing on their slides. Veteran oars and coaches, to whom " form " was as the apple of their eye, were horror-struck, and gave vent to loud lamentations, utterly condemning this horrible innovation, which, as they thought, had reduced oarsmanship to the level of a rough and tumble fight. " If both Universities," wrote the
Rev. A. T. W. Shadwell in his " Notes on Boat building," published in the " Record of the University Boat Race" in 1881, "would con descend to ask Dr. Warre to construct for them, and if their crews would also either learn to use the sliding apparatus effectively, or to discard it as pernicious and as an enemy to real oarsmanship when not thoroughly mastered, then we should be treated again to the welcome spectacle of boats travelling instead of dragging, riding over the water instead of the water washing over the canvas, com bined with that still more-to-be-desired spectacle of faultless form and faultless time—eight men ground into one perfect machine. Nothing short of that result will satisfy those who know what eight-oared rowing ought to be, and lament its decadence." Yet Cambridge had produced the 1876 crew, Oxford the 1878 crew, both of them models of style, unison and strength, and Leander both in 1875 and in 188o had won the Grand Challenge Cup with admirable crews composed exclusively of University men. It would seem, therefore, as if Mr. Shadwell's strictures were unde served, at least by the better class of University oars. The fact is that by that time, and for some years before that time, the true principles of sliding had been acquired, and the more serious defects of form had once more become the cherished possession of inferior college crews. But then, even in the glorious old fixed-seat days, College crews were not always remarkable for the beauty and correctness of their form. I am not going to deny that the difficulty of teaching good style has been increased by the addition of the sliding seat ; but there have been innumerable examples during the last quarter of a century to prove that this difficulty can be faced and entirely overcome. Four crews I have already mentioned. I may add to them, not as exhausting the list of good crews, but as being splendid examples of combined style and power, the London Rowing Club crew of 1881, which won the final of the Grand from the outside station against Leander and Twickenham ; the Oxford crews of 1892, 1896 and 1897 ; the crews of Trinity Hall, the Oxford Etonians, and the Thames Rowing Club in 1886 and 1887 ; the Cambridge crew and the Thames Rowing Club crew of 1888 ; the London Rowing Club crew of 1890 ; the Leander crews of 1891, 1893, 1894 and 1896 ; and the New College and Leander crews of the present year. It is fortunate that this should be so, for, the proof of the pudding being in the eating, it is hardly likely that crews will abandon a device which, while it has actually increased pace over the Henley course by close on half a minute, has rendered skill and watermanship of higher value, and has given an additional effect to physical strength.