The greatest known aid to this unity of action in a crew is the thole-pin, which we choose to call old-fashioned ; when the oar goes against the pin for the catch it gives a sharp " thump," and the ear instantly notices any dissonance. The English find that their crews get together much more quickly with the thowls than with the swivels, and I believe that this feature of the thowls more than compensates for the lost motion so far as eights are concerned.
(2) The angle of the oar to the boat at the catch and the finish determines the effective reach and finish ; beyond a certain angle much of the force will be spent in " pinching " the boat rather than sending it forward. With a short slide the body must swing far out in order to attain the proper angle, while with a longer slide the same angle can be had with little swing. The swing shortens as the slide increases.
(3) The most effective work is done when the oar is at right angles to the shell, since all the power is then applied to the propulsion of the boat; some crews in the past were speedy, — notably the older Cornell eights, the Davis crews of Yale, and the Hillsdales because their short stroke ex tended over this arc of effectiveness and repeated rapidly, — while other crews have made speed by catching easily and then putting on their strength as the oar went into this portion of the arc. Only long rowing will make a crew use their strength at the same intermediate point of the stroke, and it is therefore better to catch hard ; for at the catch the crew is more easily put in time than at any other point, and thus, though strength is lost at the catch, an advantage will be had in regularity. The legs should not be used to strengthen the catch, but be reserved for the effective middle of the stroke.
(4) The recovery should be slow enough to avoid checking the shell ; of two crews rowing with the same power the crew will win that keeps the boat going between strokes. The oar should be rattled away easily from the body with out a jerk, and the body started on the forward swing as the arms leave ; but the slide must be kept back until the arms are straight. A slow recovery allows the oarsman to breathe, but should not be slower than absolutely necessary, or strokes will be lost. With a long, powerful stroke the slide may be slower than with a shorter stroke, which does not give so much way to the boat.
But the speed of the slide and the rate of the stroke should only be determined after a crew has been selected and experiment has shown the most effective rate.
(5) The oarsman should be allowed all possible freedom in the boat ; the arms must. be kept straight and merely act as lines connecting the oar with the body until the finish, when they are to be used to bring the oar to the body. No two oarsmen will avail themselves of all their strength rowing in quite the same form, and a crew that has every man swinging identically, as we like to have our college crews, is not getting all the possible power out of the men. A fairly straight back and a swing in a line fore and aft, are best with most men ; but, after a period of rowing, if a man shows that he can put on more power by leaving the set rules and the change does not upset the shell, no correction should be made. This recognition of personal character istics is one of the reasons that English crews beat our too machine-like combinations.
There are several ways of rowing a boat with some speed, and it is silly to dogmatize and say that this way or that way is absolutely right. Each of us may have his opinion ; but when a crew rows fast and does not row according to our ideas, we will always find that the crew is rowing their own stroke well : a poor stroke rowed per fectly will beat a good stroke rowed badly. Un less a crew is made up of seasoned oars, it will take them a long while to get properly together, and a month, after selection, is the least time that can be allowed an eight to round into form.
On the fixed seat, the American and the Eng lishman rowed in pretty much the same fashion, though the British oarsmen were apt to swing more than our men and not to row quite so many strokes to the minute ; but, after all, the styles were not far apart. But when the slide came into gen eral use, the forms diverged at once. Over in England they did not take to the slide so readily, and viewed it as a help to the stroke of the fixed seat rather than as an entirely new method. Its principal use was to increase the length of the stroke, and no one thought of cutting down the power of the 'swing.