No one in Britain thought fit to challenge Hanlan again, after the decisive manner in which he had disposed of all his opponents; but in his own country he twice defended his title, in 1883. On May 31 in that year he rowed J. L. Kennedy, a comparatively new man, in Massachusetts, and beat him; and on the following July 18 he once more met his old opponent, Wallace Ross, on the St. Lawrence, and beat him, though after a closer race than heretofore.
In England about this time sculling had sunk even lower among professionals than in the days when Boyd and Elliott were the professors of the science. These men had retired; there were sundry second and third class competitors for champion honours, among them one Largan, who had been to Australia to scull a match or two, and one Perkins, and one Bubear. The latter at first was inferior to Perkins, and was a man of delicate health and somewhat difficult to train. He often disappointed his backers by going amiss just before a match was due, but he took rather more pains with his style than other British scullers had done of late, and eventually he succeeded in surpassing them, and in becoming the representative (such as it was) of British professional oarsmanship.
We should mention that in 1881 the brothers Messrs. Walter and Harry Chinnery most generously made an expensive attempt to raise the lost standard of British sculling, by giving 1000l. in prizes for a series of years, to be sculled for. These two gentlemen were well-known leading amateur athletes in their day. The elder had been a champion amateur long-distance runner; the younger had won the amateur boxing championship, and had rowed a good oar at Henley regattas and elsewhere. It may be invidious to look a gift horse in the mouth, but we feel that this generous subsidy of the Messrs. Chinnery was practically wasted for want of being fettered with a certain condition. That condition should have been, that the competitions for the Chinnery prizes should be on fixed seats. One reason why professional racing has fallen off of late so much, compared to amateur performances, may be found in the fact that amateurs are taught, and are willing to be taught, from first principles: whereas our professionals nowadays are little better than self-taught. Rowing and sculling require scientific instruction more than ever on slides. In old days the main business of a professional oarsman was to carry passengers in his boat; the calling produced a large following, and out of these some few were good oarsmen and took to boat-racing as well as to mere plying for hire. Here there was a natural nursery for professional racing oarsmen. The disuse of the wherry for locomotion destroyed this nursery; we have already shown that our later professionals are as a rule neither London watermen nor Tyne keelmen. They are a medley lot by trade; a chimney-sweep, a collier, a coal-heaver, a miner, a cabman, &c., all swell the ranks. Such men as these take to the water simply for what they can make out of it, by racing on it. Their one ambition is to race, and to run before they can decently walk. Hence they do not go through the school of fixed-seat rowing before they graduate on sliders, and they have no instructors, nor will they listen to advice.
Amateurs, on the other hand, belong as a rule to clubs; and all clubs of any prestige coach their juniors carefully, and lay down rules for their improvement. Two very usual club rules are, that juniors shall not begin by racing in keelless crank boats, but in steady ‘tub’-built craft. No such control exists over junior professionals; if a bricklayer’s apprentice takes to the water in spare hours, and begins to fancy himself as an oarsman, he will probably find friends who will back him for a small stake against some brother hobbledehoy. Each of these aspirants will thus endeavour to use the speediest boat and appliances that he can obtain. Unfortunately it so happens that sliding seats give so much extra power that even bad sliding à la Boyd produces more pace than good fixed-seat rowing. The result of this is, that, however little a tiro may know of rowing, he will, in a day or two, get more pace on a slide than if he adhered to a fixed seat. So the two cripples race each other on slides, before they have acquired the barest rudiments of swing, and as a natural result they can never be expected hereafter to progress beyond mediocrity.
Now, if there were prizes offered for rising professionals, subject to the condition that sliding seats should not be used, these tiros would have some chance of being induced to study the art of using the body for swing, and of mastering this all-important feature in oarsmanship, before they ventured to fly so high as to race upon slides.
Twenty and more years ago there was a class of match-making on the Thames which is now obsolete. This was to row in what were called ‘old-fashioned’ wager boats, i.e. the lightest form of wherry which used to be built before H. Clasper established outriggers. The keelless boat requires a sharp catch up at the beginning to get the best pace out of it, and it also requires more ‘sitting’ to keep it on an even keel. (If it is not on an even keel, the hands do not grip the water evenly, and power thereby is wasted.) It was because this fact used to be realised in those days better than now, that so many rough scullers were matched in ‘old-fashioned’ boats, rather than in ‘best and best’ boats, as the fastest built craft were usually styled in the articles of matches. It would do good if this quondam practice of matching duffers on even terms in steady old-fashioned craft could be re-introduced on the Thames.
Another incident has tended greatly to the deterioration of professional rowing, and this is the lapse of professional regattas. Certain gentlemen connected with the University and the leading Thames boat clubs used formerly to get up an annual summer regatta for the benefit of professional oarsmen. In the ‘forties’ a somewhat similar regatta had also existed for a time, but it had consisted of amateur competitions as well as of professional. This earlier regatta faded away when its chief trophy, the ‘Gold Cup’ for amateur eight oars, was won thrice in succession by, and became the property of, the ‘Thames Club.’ (That Thames Club is now extinct, and must not be confounded with the well-known ‘Thames Rowing Club’ of the present day.) Some of the members of the Thames crew that won this ‘Gold Cup’ in the forties are still to be found, the most notable of them being Messrs. Frank Playford, senr. (amateur champion in 1849); and Rhodes Cobb, the president of the Kingston Rowing Club. (The sons of each of these old athletes have similarly made their mark in aquatics of the present generation.) Owing to the action of the chairman of a steamboat company and other gentlemen who had other interests than those of boating to serve, these regattas have lapsed.
To resume—as to Thames regattas. The Thames Subscription Club, between 1861 and 1866, got up a Thames regatta, which annually produced fine sport between Thames and Tyne men, and once or twice good Glasgow crews joined in the competition. In 1866 the amateur element was introduced as a mixture. This was the last year of the series.
Meantime the late Mr. H. H. Playford had for three years laboured to form a sort of ‘nursery’ regatta for professionals. It was styled the ‘Sons of the Thames’ regatta, and it had the effect of bringing out several good men, such as the Biffens, Wise, Tagg, &c., who afterwards distinguished themselves in the greater regattas on the Thames, which were open to the world. Never was professional rowing at higher flood than just at this date, thanks to the gentleman referred to.
In 1867 there was no regatta; but in 1868 a new series was founded. The late Messrs. J. G. Chambers, George Morrison, Allan Morrison, Rev. R. W. Risley, the Playfords, Brickwood and other prominent amateurs, gave money and labour to aid the scheme, and it flourished right well for nine seasons. It produced, like the preceding series, fine rowing, and many a subsequent sculling or four-oar match arose out of the regatta contests. So far these regattas had been promoted solely for sport, and in pure unselfishness. In 1876 a steamboat company originated the idea of a Thames regatta, and advertised a scheme. Subscriptions were obtained from several of the City sources which had formerly subscribed to bonâ fide Thames regatta, and thus the funds of the old-established meeting were sapped. The latter came off all the same that year, there thus being two Thames regattas for one season. But there were not funds to carry on two such meetings, and the amateur promoters of the old established regatta retired next year in favour of the speculative promoters. The speculative regatta lived just one year more, and then its promoters gave up, and left our British professionals with no regatta at all to encourage them.