After beating Ward, no one else cared to match against Hamill, and he issued a challenge to row Harry Kelley, the English champion. Two races were arranged for the Tyne at Newcastle, the first straight-away for about four and a half miles, and the other a five-mile turning contest ; the trials were on July 4 and 5, 1866, and Kelley won both without trouble. Hamill did not pull with his usual vigor, and seemed to have strained himself.
Almost every city boasted of a crack four- or six-oared crew, and their meetings in regattas and match races were numerous; for a time the leader was the George J. Brown four of New York, with John, James, and Bernard Biglin and Dennis Leary ; the Stranger of Poughkeepsie, which beat the Brown a couple of times, and were also beaten by them. The George W. Shaw of Poughkeepsie was the forerunner of the Stranger, and the crews were usually about the same. The Gersk Banker was a famous six oar that Josh Ward often stroked, and the Dan Bryant another up-Hudson crew of note. The Harvard Sixty-Six, rowed by E. Farnum, H. G. Curtis, F. Nelson, N. Lawrence, Frederick Crowninshield, and C. H. McBurney, were promi nent in all the Boston regattas in competition with the professional crews, while the George B. McClellan, with George Faulkner, John Lam bert, John Morris, and Thomas Scott, was the champion four about Boston, and a rival of the Biglin crew. The Twilight held the cham pionship about Pittsburg, and came East to dis pute with the Brown and the Stranger, but lost both of the races.
The years following the war saw a most remarkable revival of interest in athletic sports in general, but more especially in boating, and clubs formed all over the country within the next five years. Something like two hundred clubs were organized ; some of them died when the craze had subsided, but others were more per manently founded, and the majority of the present clubs had their inception about this period. The Dauntless, Friendship, Nassau, and Alcyone Clubs of New York date from this time, together with the Palisade of Yonkers, the Mutuals of Albany, and the Laureate of Troy. At Springfield, Massa chusetts, seven clubs were organized in two years; the Eureka and Passaic of Newark, New Jersey, the Vesper, Crescent, and West Philadelphia in Philadelphia, and the Pickwick and Washington Barge Clubs, now long since dead, formed and were very active. The Undines, Maryland, Argo, and Zephyr followed in the lead of the Ariel of Baltimore, and the Potomac and Analostan Clubs of Washington came shortly after. It is impos sible even to find the names of all the clubs, but nearly every city that had a watercourse formed a rowing club.
The races for amateurs and professionals were quite in keeping with the growth of the clubs, for most of these clubs were for racing rather than the barge rowing which had occupied them almost exclusively before the war. The Schuyl
kill Navy resumed its annual regattas, and the Hudson Amateur Regatta Association came up with an annual regatta over the Elysian Fields course to take the place of the short-lived Hudson Navy. The Baltimore clubs combined in the Patapsco Navy, with an organization modelled after the Schuylkill Navy, and the Eagle Aquatic Association was formed at Poughkeepsie to give races. The Boston clubs headed a movement that resulted in the New England Rowing Asso ciation in 1868, and the next year the Western clubs combined in the Northwestern Amateur Rowing Association.
The clubs entered into many match races in four- and six-oared boats ; the Atalanta Club of New York had the crack sweep oarsmen in George Roahr, Russell Withers, John Lindsey, William H. Webster, William C. Mainland, and Alden S. Swan. Their match with the Mutual Club at Albany drew many oarsmen ; it was a home-and-home race, and the Atalantas won both at Albany and New York. They held the four and six-oared amateur championships of the time.
The professional racing drew the crowds and created the public excitement ; a race between prominent scullers or crews was witnessed by from ten to fifty thousand people, and the betting was like that on a horse-race. The modern police arrangements were unknown, and the referee sel dom decided against the home crew ; the patriotism of the small town for its base-ball team is as noth ing compared with the feeling in New York for the Biglins or other favorites, and that of the Hudson dwellers for the Wards. In match races each sculler was followed by a pilot barge from the bow of which some friend urged him on and at the same time intimidated the opponent ; it was win at any cost. The visiting oarsman had little chance ; if the crowd did not break his boat before the start, he would have to run a gantlet of craft as soon as he took the lead, and many a man had his boat cut in two by a barge when leading toward the finish. If there was an advan tage in course, the home oarsman got it ; if there was a question of a foul, it was decided in his favor. In one of Ellis Ward's races on the Harlem against a number of local favorites, he had to dodge four barges that went at full speed for him, and, all else failing, the boats massed at the fin ish so that he could not cross on the proper side of the stake-boat, and then the opponents claimed that the race should not be given to him because he had not finished in the correct place. It was the universal custom for the leading boat to give the nearest competitor the " wash," and every trick possible was played. The referee was the sole judge, and if he decided a race a draw, no matter what the outcome had been, the bets were off, and there are several recorded cases where such a decision was given simply because the home crew had been heavily backed and had lost.