PROFESSIONAL ROWING, 1872 Professional rowing has steadily decreased in importance with the rise of amateur rowing ; its time of greatest popularity was in the sixties, and though the names of great professional scullers were familiar enough for twenty years after, yet few Americans sought the money prizes, and the more prominent scullers came from Canada, England, or Australia.
The professionals who stand out in the row ing of the early seventies are Ellis Ward, J. A. Biglin, James Ten Eyck, Harry Coulter, William Scarf, and Eph. Morris. Ward and Biglin were strong rivals ; in 1872 Biglin beat Ward at Nyack, and another match was made for the following year at Springfield, but Ward overtrained and fainted when the race was but half over ; they never succeeded in meeting again. In 1874 George Brown came down from the North where he had sculled away from Biglin, beat Scarf, and then won the championship from Eph. Morris. The rowing championship was as elusive as other professional championships, and it went to Harry Coulter, but was regained in 1875 by Morris, who had two races with Coulter ; in the following year Scarf took it from Morris.
The professional races in connection with the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia drew a great crowd of scullers from home and abroad, and marks the first noteworthy performance of Edward Hanlan of Toronto, who won the singles without much trouble from a great field of scull ers that included Coulter, Pat Luther, Morris, Ellis Ward, Thomas, Green, and Higgins of London, and Robert Peel and Brayley of Halifax. Faulkner and Regan of Boston won the pairs ; but professional oarsmen were becoming more scarce, and the rowing event — the four-oared shells—found two foreign crews in the final,— a four of Thames watermen and a crew from Hali fax, and the former won on a foul. The famous old Paris crew from St. Johns rowed, but they had lost their former speed.
The best professional racing was about Boston, where the annual city regatta gave the only regular races of the year ; the other races were mostly matches or open regattas held by hotel men or for other advertising purposes. Court
ney turned professional after winning the sin gles at the Centennial, and he had a number of races with J. H. Riley in New York State, but Courtney was always a little too fast for Riley; F. A. Plaisted joined in some of these races, but he was slower than either of the other men. M. F. Davis was coming into prominence ; first he won the New England championship by beating Faulkner, then defeated Ten Eyck at Peekskill, and later beat George H. Hosmer, another New Englander then coming up. Hanlan won the championship of Canada by beating Wallace Ross, and then Morris retained his American title with a victory over Pat Luther at Pittsburg.
Several regattas were held during the next few years at Silver Lake, Massachusetts, and the usual races took place at Boston, but the greater part of the sculling happened in Canada. Court ney's speed brought him forward, but a singular inability to defeat James Dempsey of Geneva started him on a career of remarkable accidents that were so frequent as to lead to a general belief that perhaps Courtney and not fate caused them. He had three races with Dempsey : in the first Courtney capsized after some one had tampered with his shell ; in the second he was run down by a boat, and in the third he led at the stake-boat, but, as he turned, caught his oar in a wire and went over; no one was able to find the wire. Hanlan beat Courtney in a very close race at Lachine, Canada, and then came to the United States and took the championship from Morris. The Courtney-Hanlan race aroused much indig nation, and it was freely said that Courtney had not rowed his best ; the real trouble was that Courtney, though a remarkable sculler and able to defeat any man, did not have the requisite nerve and could not bring himself to a stiff finish.