ROWING RATE OF STROKE.
The practice rate for paddling ought not in the early stages to be less than twenty-eight to the minute, which you may raise two points when rowing hard. Later on, when your men are doing their rowing work at thirty-six or more, and when they are, or ought to be, well together, you may drop the rate of paddling to twenty-six or twenty five, in order to give them periods of rest, and to instil into them that steadiness of swing which they are apt to neglect when engaged in the effort of working up the stroke to racing pace. For a course of a mile to a mile and a half, a crew should be able to start at forty, continue at thirty-eight, and, if necessary, finish at forty in the race. Even for the Putney to Mortlake course a crew ought to be able to command forty at a pinch. As a rule, however, over a four-mile course a crew will go quite fast enough if it starts for not more than a minute at thirty-seven to thirty-eight, and con tinues, in the absence of a head-wind at an average of thirty-five.* At Henley most crews will start off
at forty-one to forty-two for the first minute, and continue at thirty-nine. Anything higher than this is dangerous, though on a course of two-thirds of a mile I have known a Four to row forty-six in the first minute with advantage.
These instructions are intended to apply to light racing ships. For the clinker-built fixed-seat boats that are used at Oxford and Cambridge for the Torpids and Lent races, a racing rate of thirty seven ought to be high enough, seeing that the crews are mainly composed of young oars. The second division crews of the Cambridge " May " races row with slides, but in heavy, clinker-built boats. The advantages of this arrangement are not obvious. Still, these crews ought to be able to race at thirty-six to thirty-seven. As a rule, how ever, when I have seen them practising a minute's spurt, nearly all of them seem to have imagined that thirty-two strokes were amply sufficient for racing purposes.