Though college rowing was on a very fair basis in 1876, the next year and in the year following there was but little intercollegiate rowing, and for a time it looked as though the great rowing inter est of the preceding years would soon be forgotten. With the withdrawal of Harvard from the Row ing Association of American Colleges that body broke up, and the regatta, in which all could meet, vanished. Yale and Harvard had their race, and Harvard also rowed in eights with Columbia ; but Cornell could not get a single race, and most of the other members of the Association either gave up rowing for the time being or contented them selves with class races and an occasional appear ance in a local regatta.
Something of a revolution had been going on at Harvard in the way of rowing style, and " in the fall of 1876 some of the Harvard men put their heads together and concluded that some change was necessary in the Harvard stroke." How familiar that sounds, and how often it has been since written 1 Their idea was to go back to the longer, sweeping stroke of the older Harvard crews and abandon the quick jerk that had been losing the races. Captain Bancroft was eager for a change, and R. C. Watson, who had sat in the crews of a decade before, agreed to coach; the re sulting stroke was an adaptation of the stroke of a fixed seat to a slide ; the swing was long, the men going far down in the boat at both ends, while the slide was very short; critics dubbed it the " jack-knife stroke," but it was better than that of the previous year, and managed to win for three years. Yale said that it was only the Cook stroke changed a little, but there was a radical difference, though it is likely that the presence of Cook at Saratoga in the previous year may have had something to do with it. A better reason for its success may be found in the doings of Yale ; down at New Haven they had been getting away from the original stroke that had won and were setting too slow a pace with a marked hang at both ends ; there was a hard drive over a twenty-inch slide, but the swing had nearly gone.
Harvard met Columbia on June 26 at Spring field and beat them easily, doing the four miles in 21.32, or a half a minute faster than the Yale time of the year before. Thus encouraged, they rowed Yale on the same course four days later and won by about two lengths in a hard-driving race through water in which the whitecaps made the life of a shell most uncertain. Both boats at times were nearly swamped, and it was only the bailing of the coxswains that kept them afloat. The two shells were made of paper this year for the first time.
The defeat of the English amateur crews at the Centennial Regatta prompted American oarsmen to send crews to Henley in 1878, and a regular American invasion was planned. Columbia, not
having a race with Harvard, decided to have a try at some of the cups with their four-oared shell, which had the critical positions — bow and stroke — filled with two men, the equals of whom were not to be found in college rowing of the period, — Sage and Goodwin. They entered for both the Steward's Cup and the Visitor's Cup, the former being open to all amateurs and the latter only to colleges. Every member of the Colum bia four had been in at least one important race, and they were well qualified to be the first college representatives of America at Henley. George Rives, who had rowed at Cambridge, and R. C. Cornell, a member of the winning '74 crew, looked after the coaching.
Columbia was well received at Henley, and their style had the sharp criticism of the English press, which is one of the incidents of rowing in England ; at first they were held easily, and of their stroke the Pall Mall Gazette said, " They keep their backs straight, but their swing has a wooden appearance, and is devoid of elasticity ; they hang at both ends of the stroke— on the recovery when their hands touch the chest and again when at full reach forward." They were on the course at Henley-on-Thames for nearly a month, and there is nothing to show that the climate affected them in the least ; as their train ing progressed, the British oarsmen, who line the towing path along that stretch of the Thames, the very name of which calls up the shell and the oar, began to think that perhaps this American crew might be able to row, and that they might have a chance in the Visitor's ; Columbia did not really expect to get much out of the Steward's. The first heats were rowed on July 4, and in the initial trial for the Steward's, Columbia drew with the Shoe-wae-cae-melle four of Monroe, Michi gan, who had qualified to represent America in the fours, and Dublin University.' Dublin took a full length on the start, having the central sta tion, and then crowded over to Columbia's water ; the " Shoes," with their wonderful pace of forty eight, had been rowing steadily and led by one and a quarter lengths when Columbia spurted, and Dublin, veering still more, crashed into Colum bia at the bend just below Fawley Court. The " Shoes " eased up and rowed on down the course slowly, and the two colliding fours separated and finished, Columbia easily going ahead of Dublin. The umpire declared that Dublin had fouled Columbia, but would not allow Columbia to go into the final on the ground that the first crew had such a lead at the time that the foul did not affect the result of the race.