ROWING EQUIPMENT The mechanical side of rowing —the boats, their model and rigging — forms of itself no inconsider able subject, and since the science of oarsmanship is a minute one, the consideration of all these mechanical aids to speed has interest, and can only be well treated at length. It is not here possible to go fully into the matter of oars and boats, and to trace their designs in variety as they changed with the better understanding of principle.
The early rowing was done in barges rowed on the gunwale ; then came outriggers, Harvard being the first college crew to use them. The out riggers were of wood, but during the fifties the iron rods came into use, and the boats gradually were made lighter, until 1856, when the first shell was constructed. The early shells were scarcely lighter than the modern barge ; but the science of boat-building went forward rapidly, and by cover ing the light wood with silk, it was found that a smooth surface might be obtained, — an English idea that found some favor for several years but was discarded with better building. During the early seventies, Waters of Troy brought out his paper boat made of layers of heavy paper, and the light ness and speed of these shells, which were on fine models and had a perfectly smooth surface, soon almost drove out the cedar fours and eights, although for singles cedar was usually considered the better. Walter Brown used a paper single the first on record — and did much to bring them into the rowing world. The paper boat never found much favor outside of this country, and, though fast, they were expensive and of short life, the paper needing a new surface frequently. Many of the most notable victories of American oarsmen were won in them, such as the Cornell victory at the Intercollegiate Regatta in 1875, when their paper six distanced seventeen cedar boats ; Columbia used paper at Henley in 1878, and also Pennsylvania in 1901, while the Yale '88 record crew had a paper shell. The paper shells are now no longer built, and all the rowing is done in the cedar craft, which, when properly made and braced, are quite as fast.
The design of boats has changed considerably during twenty years, the general tendency being toward the longer and narrower models. At the present time there is no settled design for a rac ing boat, but the experiments in the way of very short and broad boats or very long and narrow have always failed. A shell must not be too stiff,
and must ride with the nose well out of the water ; and for this reason it has been found that too much bracing spoils the speed, and likewise, for the same reason, the aluminum shells, that have been made from time to time, have all been slow.
The invention of the sliding seat is undoubt edly the turning-point in the history of rowing, and the greatest aid to speed in a boat that was ever invented. In the stroke of the fixed thwart, the legs had some use, and much stress was put on their employment. The best oarsmen raised themselves from the thwart at the beginning of the stroke, and the advantages of a movement of a few inches on the seat were well recognized; gradually they began to make the thwart wider and, with leather trunks, to slide. In 1863 Robert Chambers, the champion, sculled a match with Harry Kelley on the greased seat.
The first movable seat of which there is any record was due to J. C. Babcock of the Nassau Boat Club of New York, who fitted one to a single scull in Chicago in the year 1857, but he did not believe that his idea had any practical value and abandoned it. In 1861 Walter Brown, the sculler, used a sliding seat ; but he too had no idea of its merits and discarded it for a time, but in 187o he took out letters patent.
Mr. Babcock organized a crew of the Nassau Club in 1869, and he found difficulty in properly placing the seats to the rowlock. At a distance of nine inches abaft the thwart, the catch was strong and easy and the finish poor, while at fif teen inches the catch was faulty and the finish good ; he adopted twelve inches as a medium. In the winter he had a rowing machine con structed for work indoors, made further experi ments, and found that both to catch and finish well the oarlock should move about six inches. Since this was impracticable, he conceived the idea of moving the seat, and fitted a six-oared gig of the club in that way, and they thus rowed at the opening day of the Hudson Amateur Rowing Association at Pleasant Valley, which is the first instance of the use of the sliding seat. The seat was a wooden frame covered with leather and grooved at the edges to slide on brass tracks. In this same year Walter Brown put slides of a similar description in the Yale boat.