When sliding seats were first used they completely revolutionised oarsmanship, and caused old coaches whose names were household words to stand aghast at the invention.
The best use of them was but imperfectly realised by those who first adopted them; and many of the earliest examples of sliding-seat oarsmanship were sufficiently unorthodox, according to our improved use of them in the present day, to justify the declaration of more than one veteran whose opinion was always respected that—’if that is sliding, it is not rowing.’
The mechanical power gained by a sliding seat is so great that even if he who uses it sets at defiance all recognised principles of fixed-seat rowing, he can still command more pace than if he adhered to fixed-seat work. It was the spectacle, in earlier days of the slide, of this unorthodox sliding style beating good specimens of fixed-seat oarsmanship which so horrified many of the retired good oarsmen of the fixed-seat school. Before long the true use of the slide became better understood, and thus oarsmen—at all events scientific amateurs—began to realise that, while bad sliding could manage to command more pace than good fixed rowing, yet at the same time good sliding (which will be explained hereafter) will beat bad sliding by even more than the latter can distance good fixed-seat work.
Just a similar sort of prejudice was displayed against the earlier style of rowing in keelless boats. When these craft first came in, oarsmen had little or no idea of ‘sitting’ them; they rolled helplessly, and lost all form, but nevertheless they travelled faster in the new craft than when rowing in good style in old-fashioned iron-shod keeled boats. In a season or two style reasserted itself, and it was found that it was by no means impossible to row in as neat a shape in a keelless boat as in a keeled one.
Sliding on the seat had been practised long before the sliding seat was invented, but only to a modified extent. Robert Chambers of St. Antony’s, the quondam champion, tried it now and then, and when preparing for his 1865 match with Kelley he used to slide a trifle, especially for a spurt, and to grease his seat to facilitate his operations. Jack Clasper, according to Mr. E. D. Brickwood’s well-known treatise on Boat-racing, used to slide to a small extent on a fixed seat when he rowed in a Newcastle four which won on the Thames in 1857. Of this detail the writer has himself no recollection. Also, in 1867, a Tyne sculler, Percy, tried sliding on a fixed seat in a sculling match against J. Sadler on the Thames (so Mr. Brickwood relates). But none of these earlier sliders made much good out of their novelty. The strain on the legs caused by the friction on the seat prevented the oarsman from maintaining the action for long, and meantime it took so much out of him that it prematurely exhausted his whole frame.
In 1870 Renforth’s champion four used to slide on the seat for a spurt, but not for a whole course. They beat the St. John’s Canadian crew very easily while so rowing in a match at Lachine, but we believe that they would have won with about as much ease had they rowed on fixed seats. In the same year a ‘John o’ Gaunt’ four from Lancaster came to Henley Regatta and rowed in this fashion, sliding on fixed seats. They had very little body swing, and their style showed all the worst features of the subsequent style which became too common when sliding seats were first established. They did almost all their work by the piston action of the legs, and their limbs tired under the strain at the end of three or four minutes. They led a light crew of Oxford ‘Old Radleians’ by three lengths past Fawley Court, and then began to come back to them. The Oxonians steadily gained on them, but had to come round outside them at the Point, and could never get past them, losing the race by less than a yard. Enough was seen on this occasion to convince oarsmen that the Lancastrian style was only good for half-mile racing. In the final heat for the Stewards’ fours a good L.R.C. crew beat the Lancastrians with ease after going half a mile. The Radleians would doubtless have also gone well by the Lancastrians had the course been a hundred yards longer.
So far the old fixed seat had vindicated itself for staying purposes. But in the following year a problem was practically solved. It seems that (so Mr. Brickwood tells us) an oarsman comparatively unknown to fame, one Mr. R. O. Birch, had used an actual sliding seat at King’s Lynn Regatta in 1870. Mr. Brickwood seems to have been the only writer who took cognisance of this interesting fact. University men and tideway amateurs, also professionals so far as we can gather, seem not to have heard of, or at least not to have heeded, the experiment. Had Mr. Birch been a leading sculler of the day, possibly the innovation might have been adopted earlier than it was.
Meantime in America the sliding seat had been better known, but had not been appreciated. Mr. Brickwood tells us that a Mr. J. C. Babcock, of the Nassau Boat Club, constructed a sliding seat as long ago as 1857. Also that W. Brown, the American sculler, tried one in 1861, but abandoned it. In 1869 Mr. Babcock once more devoted himself to the study and construction of sliding seats, and brought out a six-oared crew rowing on slides. But the invention did not obtain much recognition, although Mr. Babcock was of opinion that his crew gained in power of stroke through the new apparatus.
How the seat came to be at length adopted arose thus. In 1871 two Tyne crews went to America to compete in regattas. One of these was Renforth’s crew, and, as detailed elsewhere, Renforth died during a race against the St. John crew. Robert Chambers (not the ex-champion) took his place later on for sundry regattas. The Tyne crews rowed with a good average of success in America. Taylor, who commanded the other Tyne four, raced a States four, called the Biglin-Coulter crew, rowing with sliding seats. These Biglin-Coulter men did not prove themselves, as a whole, any better than, if so fast as, the British crew; consequently there was nothing to draw especial attention to their apparatus. Of the two British crews, that stroked by Chambers proved itself on the whole, through various regattas, faster than Taylor’s four.
Taylor bided his time. He proposed a match on the Tyne between the two British fours, and the offer was accepted. The match came off in the fall of the same year. Taylor’s men had their boat fitted with sliding seats, and kept their apparatus ‘dark’ from the world and from their opponents. They used to cease sliding when watched, and kept their apparatus covered up. When the race came off, Taylor’s crew decisively reversed the American regatta form, and beat Chambers’s crew easily. This was ascribed to the slide, information as to which leaked out after the race. The next University race was not rowed with slides, but a couple of minor sculling races in the spring were rowed with them. In June of that year a very fine L.R.C. four (Messrs. J. B. Close, F. S. Gulston, A. de L. Long, and W. Stout) rowed a four-oared match on the Thames against the Atalanta Club of New York. The L.R.C. men used slides. That did not affect their victory; they were stronger and better oarsmen than the Americans, and could have won easily on fixed seats; but what gave a fillip to slides was the clear testimony of these four oarsmen of undoubted skill to the advantage which they felt themselves gain by their use. Instantly there was a run upon slides. Henley Regatta was impending. The L.R.C. crews were all fitted with them for that meeting. Several other crews took to them after reaching Henley, and after seeing the superiority which London obtained by them. Kingston and Pembroke (Oxon) had their boats fitted with slides less than a week before the race. Pembroke was a moderate crew, and only entered because they held the Ladies’ Plate. At first, in practice, Pembroke did about equal time over the course with Lady Margaret, both crews being on fixed seats. But the day after Pembroke got their slides they improved some 15 secs. upon the time of Lady Margaret, who kept to their old seats. It must, however, be recorded that the Ladies’ Plate was won by a fixed-seat crew—Jesus, Camb. This crew was by far the best in material of all the entries at the regatta. Their individual superiority enabled them to give away the slide to Pembroke, and had they taken to slides even for the last few days they would probably have also won the Grand Challenge. As it was, that prize fell to the L.R.C., a crew which had four good men, and then a weak tail. The sliding seat had now fairly established its claims. It should be added that Pembroke, with two good and two moderate men, won the Visitors’ Plate from a very good Dublin four, about the best four that Dublin ever sent to Henley. Pembroke used slides, and the Dublin men had fixed seats. (Slides alone won this race for Pembroke.) The Pembroke slides were on wheels—a mechanism which was soon afterwards discarded by builders in favour of greased glass or steel grooves or tubes, but which seems to be returning to favour in 1886 and 1887.