According to some aquatic enthusiasts, it is the best plan to let the men get into a boat and pull: time and a little intelligence will remedy their faults. Others urge that it is only necessary to master “the few essential principles,” and, as Mr. Julian Hawthorne says, “the refinements will take care of themselves.” Still others, who treat with withering scorn the opponents of “form,” lay great stress upon the absolute importance of sedulous attention to the minutest details.
In support of this first view, numerous instances have been cited of rough, awkward professional crews “yanking” and “yawing” their way in ahead of the best trained and disciplined amateur oarsmen, and, as one writer upon rowing aptly says, “casting despite upon the traditions of the art.” Indeed, until recent years it has been the current belief that a good amateur crew was no match for a set of skilled professionals. And the apparent truth of this opinion was never better illustrated than by an impromptu race rowed on the Charles River in ’78 or ’79—I forget the exact date—between the famous Bancroft crew and eight of the best oarsmen that could be gathered together from the purlieus of Boston. It is true the professional crew was made up of such celebrities as Ross, Plaisted, Gorkin, Faulkner, etc., but before that morning they had never sat together in a boat. Their boat, by the way, differed utterly in rigging from those they had been accustomed to, and, in fact, was the worst and most dilapidated the Harvard Boat-house could afford. After a preliminary “paddle” down to the starting-point—the Brookline Bridge—the race was rowed over the regular two-mile course. Well, it is related—and I have it from one of the victors—that by the time the celebrated Harvard crew reached the Union Boat-house their untutored rivals had carried their boat into the house and were nonchalantly wiping her off.
Now, why did this crew, composed as it was of the heaviest and strongest men that had ever sat in a Harvard boat, who moreover, by their irreproachable “form,” had crowned themselves with glory at New London, allow themselves to be so lamentably defeated by a set of men who labored under almost every possible disadvantage? Evidently there was some potent influence at work. Although the hardy and callus-fisted members of the professional crew gained a precarious livelihood in arts which did not sap their physical vigor, yet the superior endurance of the crew as a whole can hardly be urged as an excuse for such an overwhelming defeat in a two-mile race. We are left the bitter alternative, then, of shocking the æsthetic sensibilities of our amateurs by the inevitable conclusion that the professionals possessed superior skill.
Now, intelligent amateur, before turning away in disgust, reflect a moment. What is skill? What is form? Are they synonymous?
Skill is that which in almost every sport—in sparring, in fencing, in wrestling, in baseball, in tennis, etc., etc., other things being equal—enables one to win. Like elegance in writing, it is “the exquisite adaptation of means to ends.” In rowing it is that management of the body and oar—other things being equal, of course—which is conducive to the greatest speed of the boat.
“Form” in rowing is not so easily defined—for what would satisfy the most rigid exactitude in one system would be found defective in another. In general terms, however, it may be called, in crew rowing, “the graceful and nice management of the body and oar which contributes most to the appearance of similarity and uniformity throughout the crew.”
Now, it is true the professionals did not row with backs as straight, nor with a swing as even as the canons of good “form” call for, but they possessed the all-important secret of economizing all their strength and time. They not only knew how and when to apply their weight to the oar, but were fully alive to the necessity of holding the oar in the water no longer than it could do good, and in the air as short a time as possible. These and other less perceptible virtues, which such a constellation of aquatic lights will always possess, are generally obscured by the rugged and uncouth appearance of their body work.
But this body work, as far as the effect is concerned, though by no means all that can be desired, is not so very bad after all, for the swing of one man across the boat is counteracted by the swing of another. This fact, coupled with the firm, strong, simultaneous finish of the stroke, will effectually prevent the rolling of the boat.
On the other hand, the Harvard crew, whose “form” would have sent an æsthete into rhapsodies of praise, were skillful enough in their own peculiar way, but their rowing itself was unskillful because radically wrong in principle. But didn’t it enable them to win at New London? Yes, to be sure; but always against the same system or an inferior one.
The defeat of a well-trained amateur crew by a set of professionals does not, then, necessarily bring the traditions of the art of rowing into disrepute. “Form” without skill must always succumb to skill without “form.” The combination of the two should be the goal of the aquatic ambition. And the one need not be detrimental to the other. It is all very well to scoff at “form” and rest placidly content to let the refinements take care of themselves. They won’t, and the result will be a lot of irremediable faults.