There were no coaches, and the popular method of selecting a crew was by a survival-of-the-fittest trial, in which each man pulled a single oar against his rival and stayed in the boat or went out as he pulled or was pulled about. Every now and then some oarsman would challenge a member of the crew or all the crew, and each had to respond to determine the worth of the candidate. In the older barges and gigs the oars were long, usually about thirteen feet, and the strokes could not go very high, seldom reaching more than forty ; but with the spoon oars, which came into use by the college crews in the 1859 regatta, the length was decreased to ten and a half feet and the stroke raised correspondingly ; Yale went up to forty-five and finally to fifty in this race, while Harvard was but a point or two lower. Of course there were no sliding seats, and a hard jab at the water with a little swing made up the stroke. A member of that Yale crew says, " We took great pains to insure a good, strong catch, full thigh and loin movement before the oars were dragged past the perpendicular, a clean feather and a pfompt, easy recovery." With the introduction of shells rather more attention was given to body form because of the difficulties in " setting up " the shell, but no one crew had any settled stroke ; it was merely a question of brute power, and the biggest men were the favorites.
The formation of the College Union created an interest at Columbia College, and they bought the old barge Harvard from Harvard ; but they did no racing for some years, and the club existed principally to collect dues from freshmen.
The second College Union Regatta was on July 24, at Worcester ; a Sophomore and a Freshman race had been added, and Harvard won all three. The Thetis, Harvard '63, beat the Glyuna, Yale '63 ; the Harvard Sophomores won from the Thulia, Yale '62, and in the final race the Harvard shell led home with Yale second and Brown third. In the Citizen's Regatta, which followed the college races, all of the university crews were entered and made some money, but in the six-oared race the Gersh Banker from New burgh, with Josh Ward at stroke, won easily.
The Civil War took away many of the college men and prevented college races until 1864, though the crews rowed in a few open regattas ; then the College Union races were resumed by Harvard and Yale ; Brown, discouraged, had dropped out. The Yale crew was captained and stroked by Wilbur Bacon, who introduced a longer and better style of rowing, and this, coupled with a hard training, made the six the best that had yet come out of New Haven, though the men averaged but one hundred and fifty-five pounds. Arriving at Worcester on the day before the race, Harvard invited Yale to watch them row — so great was their confidence. But in the race the championship was taken from Cambridge, Yale taking the lead soon after the start, and keeping it during the whole race. The Harvard Sopho mores, with Frank Crowninshield at stroke, won from the Yale '66 by more than a minute. This Harvard Sixty-six, as the crew was known, were a very fast lot, and they rowed in many regattas during their period in the university.
On the day after the college regatta they were beaten by a length in the Citizen's Regatta by the P. L. Tucker of New York — the famous Biglin crew. In the following year Bacon, in the stern seat again, set a beautiful pace, and Yale led throughout the entire race, winning in the very fast time of 18.44, and on the next day, in the Citizen's Regatta, Yale again beat Harvard. William Wood of New York is mentioned as the trainer of the Yale crew.
In i866 the Harvard men had their shell; the boats were now being made of cedar, built ten feet longer than was usual and much narrower — fifty-six feet long with a nineteen-inch beam. The Harvard captain and stroke was William Blaikie, and he raised their stroke to forty-two, while Yale at the same time lengthened out and slowed the pace. The first race was between the Lawrence Scientific and the Sheffield Scientific, and the Harvard men won easily. Hardly had the race of the day been started when a rain storm broke ; Yale gained over a length in the first half-mile, but then the enormous power of the Harvard men told, and they came on stroke by stroke, and at the mile and one-half they had a lead of two clear lengths which lengthened out as the race grew longer until finally Blaikie brought the shell over the line in 18.432, nearly half a minute ahead of Yale. The quick, sharp stroke of Harvard, running up to forty-two, proved superior to the long, slow stroke of Yale in which the arms played too prominent a part, and in 1867 Harvard won by over a minute.
Harvard, as the champion of the American colleges, was anxious to try Oxford or Cambridge, and they planned to row against Oxford at the International Regatta in Paris ; but some of the Harvard men could not take the trip, and it was abandoned. In April, 1869, William H. Sim mons, then captain of the Harvard University Boat Club, sent a challenge to Oxford and another to Cambridge to row the Putney-Mortlake course. Oxford accepted at once and asked that the boats be coxswainless fours, but Cambridge never really agreed to row and finally dropped the race. The London Rowing Club sent a challenge for a match race, but Harvard declined on the ground that it was against their policy to row match races with clubs. The 27th of August was fixed for the race with Oxford. There was some opposition to the trip by the Harvard students, but, after many difficulties, the crew was organized thus : J. S. Fay, bow ; E. 0. Lyman, W. H. Simmons, Alden P. Loring, stroke ; Arthur Burnham, cox swain. On the 15th of June they were beaten by the George Roahr, a fast professional crew ; but two days later, in another boat and without a cox swain, Harvard won, and again in the Boston City Regatta they defeated the Hamill four from Pitts burg, the Biglins from New York, the George Roahr of Boston, the Piseatagnas of Elliot, Maine, and the Unions of Worcester : all of these fours were very fast, and the Harvard men established their right to go to England as repre sentatives. They had plenty of advice to start them ; they were told that the heavy water of the Thames required a different stroke, and other non sense of a like kind.