In 1857 the University race was rowed in boats without a keel, and oars with a round loom were used for the first time by both crews. At the Henley Regatta of the preceding year the Royal Chester Rowing Club had entered a crew rowing in this novel style of keelless boat for the Grand Chal lenge and the Ladies' Cups. Her length was only fifty-four feet, and her builder was Mat Taylor, a name celebrated in the annals of boat-building, for it is to him, in the first instance, that our present type of racing-boat owes its existence. " The Chester men," Mr. W. B. Woodgate tells us in his Badminton book on boating, "could not sit their boat in the least ; they flopped their blades along the water on the recovery in a manner which few junior crews at minor regattas would now be guilty of; but they rowed well away from their opponents, who were only College crews." They won, as a matter of fact, both the events for which they entered.
One might have thought that with this invention improvements would have ceased. But in course of time the practical experience of rowing men suggested to them that if they slid on their seats, both the length and power of their stroke through the water would be increased. At first they
greased their fixed seats, and slid on those. But it was found that the strain caused by this method exhausted a crew. In 1871 a crew of professionals used a seat that slid on the thwarts, and beat a crew that was generally held to be superior, and from that moment slides, as we now know them, came into general use. In 1873 the University crews rowed on sliding seats for the first time. Since then the length of the slide has been in creased from about nine inches to fifteen inches, or even more, a change which has made the task of the boat-builder in providing floating capacity more difficult ; but in all essentials the type of boat remains the same. It ought to be added that the Americans, to a large extent, use boats moulded out of papier lnache, but this variation has never obtained favour in England, though boats built in this manner by the well-known Waters of Troy (U.S.A.) have been seen on English rivers. The Columbia College crew won the Visitors' Cup at Henley in 1878 in a paper boat, and she was afterwards bought by First Trinity, Cambridge, but she never won a race again.