The University of Wisconsin had been rowing in a more or less spasmodic way since the early nineties, and now that the Yale Freshmen had no race, a match was made between the University eight from Wisconsin and the Yale Freshmen on Lake Saltonstall. The Western men were big and strong, and they rowed away from Yale, win ning the two-mile race by nearly half a minute.
Yale came back from Henley ; their tiff with Harvard smoothed over, and the annual boat race was a certainty except that Harvard had the agreement with Cornell to row for another year, and this they would not break. Yale did not want to meet Cornell, and they did not care to row on the Hudson ; while Cornell, with the race with Pennsylvania and Columbia also on hand, would not go to New London. Things were badly mixed for a while, until finally Yale agreed to accept an invitation for a three-cor nered race on the Hudson, and Cornell sent the invitation. There exists no clear reason why Pennsylvania and Columbia could not have rowed in the same race ; but Yale would not have it that way, and Cornell was foolish enough to agree to row two four-mile races and likewise two Freshman races on the Hudson.
R. C. Watson, the Harvard oarsman and coach, had consented to coach Harvard, but in this last year he went to England to study at first hand the principles of English rowing, which had proved so successful with Cornell. Instead of coming back with his own ideas and putting them into practice, he was able to have R. C. Lehmann, one of the leaders in English rowing and a gentleman of wide experience both as an oarsman at Oxford and as a coach, come to Bos ton and assume the burden of making a Harvard eight row well. The visit was one of the high est import to Harvard, and though not of particular note throughout the country, added a distinctly better tone to rowing. Mr. Leh mann brought with him English methods in their entirety and was given full charge. He made a trip over in the fall of 1896 and started the training, while other English oars came during his absence and continued the work. The service was absolutely gratuitous and under taken wholly for the love of the sport.
Harvard was taught the English university stroke. The slides were cut down to sixteen inches, the swing was long and hard, or intended to be hard, and the legs helped the finish in stead of the centre of the stroke — the radical difference between the general styles of the two countries and something which no American coach had yet attempted to teach. Cornell had
used a short slide, but they had started the legs when the body reached the perpendicular instead of after it had passed, as in the English stroke, and by which the slide is made a part of the finish. Yale, too, came back from Henley with the Eng lish theories, and the British period was in full swing. The newspapers were filled with discus sions of stroke, and in the argument the actual teaching was quite ignored.
The University of Wisconsin, encouraged by their success with the Yale Freshmen in the pre vious year, came on again late in May of 1897 to try the Yale University eight on Lake Saltonstall. The race was close and hard for the full two miles, and Yale won by only ten seconds ; Wisconsin had improved their time a full minute over their performance of the previous year.
The rowing had now centred at Poughkeepsie, and New London, for the time, was deserted ; if ever the old open college regattas were to be re vived, this was the time, when every rowing uni versity of importance had their squads along the banks of the Hudson. But petty college politics interfered, and there were two races. The first race brought together Harvard, Cornell, and Yale — exponents of the English idea in various de grees. And, as might have been expected, the crew won that had made their changes the more gradually, and kept parts of the older style. Cor nell won, Yale was second, and Harvard third. Cornell had been rowing their new stroke for two years, and though this 1897 stroke differed from that of the previous year and came a little nearer to the English swing, the change had not been sud den. Yale had taken a great deal from the English system, but still retained something of her own. Harvard had made a complete change, and they failed miserably because men whose former swing had been fairly long, but not hard, could not learn in a year to swing both long and hard, and it is not surprising that they finished a bad third and almost fainting.