Whatever the coxswain addresses to his crew should be spoken clearly and distinctly, so that all may hear without difficulty. The preceding instructions comprise most of the everyday terms that a coxswain should know.
Now let me turn to his functions of a semi coaching character, of keeping his crew in time.
Whether the crew are rowing or paddling, he must carefully watch the time of the oars, both as they catch the water and leave it. If the oarsman catches the water too soon, he should be told not to hurry ; if too late, he should be told, "You're late." If he leaves it too soon, or, as it is called, clips his stroke at the finish, he should be told to finish it out, etc. (but if an oarsman finishes it after the stroke, I cannot advise the coxswain to take notice of it). All these semi-coaching remarks, if I may so call them, should be prefaced with the number of the crew to whom they are addressed, for the purpose of calling his attention, and must be used with judgment and tact, for nothing can be more aggravating, not to say maddening, to an oarsman at any time, more especially when fagged in a race, to hear incessantly the possibly high pitched and monotonous tones of a coxswain. There is only one fault that will excuse him shouting himself hoarse, if he be so disposed, and it is the fault, or rather vice, of one of the crew looking out of the boat ; and he should at once cry, " Eyes in the boat !" and continue to do so until he is obeyed. There are certain acts of watermanship which an efficient coxswain will not neglect to carry out, namely, when turning to come down-stream, to swing his boat round by pulling her head outwards into the current ; and, on the other hand, when turning to proceed up stream, to thrust her nose into the slack water in shore, and allow her stern to come round in the same manner ; and always to bring his boat in to the raft or landing-stage with her head pointing up-stream.
There is no need for me to set out the rules of the road for a coxswain to follow, as they can be read at any time in the Rowing Almanack, which comes out annually, and is published at the Field office.
To steer a straight course, a coxswain should fix upon a high and conspicuous object some distance ahead, and endeavour to keep the nose of his boat dead on it ; and when learning his course, he should remember to choose objects of a permanent nature, or in the race he will be in difficulties. Now, the keeping of a straight course
is not so simple as it appears ; in fact, it is a most difficult thing to do properly, and there is no case in which the advantage of a coxswain with light hands is better displayed. It will be noticed that such a one leaves scarcely a ripple in his wake, whilst another will leave a considerable wash. The reason of it is this : that whilst the former uses practically no rudder, the latter, by first pulling one line and then the other, causes the stern of his boat to swing from side to side, until, as the sailors say, she becomes wild—that is to say, so unsteady that the further she travels the more rudder she will require to prevent her bows from yawing and to keep her course. He should never steer for a curve in the bank or for other pro jections—as, for instance, the buttress of a bridge —in such a manner as to be compelled to sheer out to clear them. He should approach a sharp corner as wide as possible, in order to reduce the acuteness of the angle at which he will have to take it, and should have the boat's head round by the time that the axis or pivot, if I may use the term, on which the boat swings, and which in the eight-oared boats I steered was usually trimmed to be somewhere between the seats of Nos. 4 and 5, is off the most prominent point.
The difficulty of taking this sort of corner is increased when the course lies up-stream, accord ing to the strength of the current ; for not only does the current acting on the bows tend to prevent the boat coming round, but also to drive her head towards the opposite bank. When the Cam at Cambridge is in flood, "Grassy" and Ditton are corners of this character, but usually that river runs sluggishly. But even then these corners present many difficulties. " Grassy" is on the right bank of the river, and therefore on the coxswain's left ; Ditton is on his right. The former is the harder to manipulate properly, by reason of the river becoming a narrow neck shortly before the corner is reached.