OF THE RACE-DAY--OF THE RACE--OF THE NECESSITY OF HAVING A BUTT--OF
LEISURE TIME--OF AQUATIC AXIOMS.
THE DAY OF THE RACE.
On this tremendous day, towards which all their efforts for weeks past
have been directed, the coach will find that all his crew are suffering
from that peculiar nervousness to which rowing men have given the name
of "the needle." It is a complaint against which no length of experience
can harden a man, and the veteran of a hundred races will feel it as
acutely as the boy who is engaged in his first struggle. A sort of
forced cheerfulness pervades the air. Men make irrelevant remarks about
their oars, their stretchers, or the notorious incapacity of their
rivals, while they are reading the newspapers or discussing the politics
of the day. Even a coach is seized with the universal affection,
however gallantly he may strive against it, and endeavour to entertain
the crew with all his best stories of triumphant victories, of defeats
averted by brilliant spurts, or of the last sayings of some well-known
aquatic humourist. Old oars drop in, and for a few moments divert the
conversation, only to flow back with it into the one absorbing topic
that occupies all men's minds. The feeling goes on increasing until at
last, oh joy! the time comes for getting into the boat. With his
faithful oar in his hand, and his feet fixed to the stretcher, a man
regains his confidence, and when the word is given he will find that the
only effect that the needle has had upon him has been to brace his
energies to their highest pitch. The duty of a coach on such an occasion
is clear. He must try to keep his men cheerful, and prevent them from
brooding over the race that is to come. Visits from old oars should be
encouraged, for it is often a relief and an amusement to a youngster to
find that some solid oar of the past is even more agitated than he is
himself. One thing must not be omitted, and that is the preliminary
spin, which should take place about two hours before the race, and
should consist of two sharp starts of ten strokes each and one hard row
of a minute. This has an invaluable effect in clearing the wind. I have
always felt, when I have rowed more than one race in a day, and I think
my experience will be confirmed by most other oarsmen, that I have been
able to row better, harder, and with less distress, in the second race
than in the first. An hour and a half before the race a man will be all
the better for a biscuit and a hot cup of strong meat soup, with perhaps
a dash of brandy to flavour it, but this must depend upon the hour at
which the race is rowed, for if you have lunched at one and have to race
at half-past three you will want nothing between times to stay your
stomach. The early morning sprint should be taken as usual.
[Illustration: HENLEY REGATTA, 1897.
(_New College_ v. _Leander_. _Won by New College by 2ft._)]
THE RACE.
"I shall say, 'Are you ready?' once; if I receive no answer, I shall
say, 'Go!'" It is the voice of the umpire addressing us from the
steam-launch in which he will follow the race. He must be a man dead to
all feeling, incapable of sympathy, for he actually turns to one of his
fellow-passengers and makes a jesting remark, while our hearts are
palpitating and our minds are strung up to face the stern actualities of
the race. The other crew look very big and strong, and fit and
determined. We shall have to row our hardest, and we all know it. "Get
the top of your shorts properly tucked in," says our captain, "so as not
to catch your thumbs; and mind, all of you, eyes in the boat, and when
cox shouts for ten strokes let her have it. Come forward all."
"Touch her gently, bow" (it is the cox who speaks, and his voice sounds
thin and far away and dream-like). "One more. That'll do. Easy, bow. Now
we're straight."
"Are you ready?" from the umpire. Great heaven! will he never
say----"Go!" he shouts. There is a swish, a leap, a strain, a rattle of
oars, a sense of something moving very swiftly alongside, a turmoil of
water, a confused roar from the bank: we are off!
We started splendidly. For half a minute I am a mere machine; thoughts,
feelings, energies--all are concentrated into one desire to work my
hardest and to keep in time. Then my mind clears, and I become conscious
once more of myself and my surroundings. Have we gained? I _must_ steal
a look. By Jupiter, they're leaving us! "Eyes in the boat, four,"
screams the cox; "you're late!" Be hanged to cox! he's got eyes like a
lynx. Yes; there's no doubt of it--I can see, without looking out of the
boat, out of the corner of my eye. They're gaining still. Now their
stroke is level with me; now he has disappeared, and for a few strokes I
am conscious of a little demon cox bobbing and screeching alongside of
me. Then he, too, draws away, and their rudder is all I can see. At last
that also vanishes, and a sense of desolation descends on us. Nearly two
minutes must have gone; I know that by the landmarks we have passed.
Surely we ought to spurt. What can stroke be up to? Is he going to let
us be beaten without an effort. Ugh! what a shower-bath that was. It's
six splashing, as usual. Well, if we're beaten, we must just grin and
bear it. We shall have to congratulate the other ruffians. Hateful!
Somebody must get beaten. But we're not beaten yet, hang it all! Three
minutes. What's this? Cox is shouting. "Now, ten hard strokes together;
swing out, and use your legs!" He counts them out for us at the top of
his voice. Grand! We're simply flying. That's something like it. And
I'm not a bit done yet. We're none of us done. The boat's going like
smoke. "Nine!" yells the cox. "Ten! Now, don't slack off, but keep her
going. You're gaining, you're gaining! On to it, all of you." He is
purple in the face, and foaming at the mouth. Glorious! Their rudder
comes back to me; I see their cox. We _are_ catching them. Now for it! A
few strokes more and the boats are running dead level, and so they
continue for half a minute. Stroke has now, however, taken the measure
of his foes. We are steadying down and swinging longer, and I am
conscious that the other crew are rowing a faster stroke. It is now our
turn to leave them. Foot by foot we creep past them; their bows come
level with me, and then slowly recede. I can see the back of their
bowman. His zephyr has come out from his shorts; the back of his neck is
very pale. There can't be more than two minutes left now, and I'm still
fit, and my wind is all right. We are winning; I'm sure of it. No;
they're spurting again, and, by Jove! they're gaining! Spurt, stroke,
spurt! We mustn't get beaten on the post. But stroke, that wary old
warrior, knows what he is about. Unmistakable signs prove to him that
this effort is the last desperate rally of his enemies. He sees their
boat lurch; their time is becoming erratic; two of them are rolling
about in evident distress. His own crew he has well in hand; we are
rowing as one man, and he feels that he has only to give a sign, and our
restrained eagerness will blaze forth and carry us gloriously past the
post. Let us wait, he seems to say, a very few seconds more, until the
opposing spurt fades out to its inevitable end; so he rows on
imperturbably. But isn't he running it too fine? Not he. He gives a
quick word to cox, rattles his hands away, and swings as if he meant to
strike his face against the kelson of the boat. "Pick her up all!"
screams the cox. "Now then!" comes in a muffled gasp from the captain.
We feel that our moment has come, and, with a unanimous impulse, we take
up the spurt and spin the ship along. In a flash we leap ahead; we leave
the other crew as if it was standing still. We are a length ahead; now
we are clear; half a length of open water divides us from them. To all
intents and purposes the race is over. The crowd grows thicker; the
shouts from the bank become a deafening din. Enthusiasts scream futile
encouragements to pursuer and pursued, and in another moment the flag is
down, the cox cries, "Easy all!" and with triumph in our hearts we
realize that we have won. The captain turns round to us--he is rowing
No. 7--his face glowing with pleasure. "Well rowed indeed, you men!" he
pants. "You all did thundering well! And as for you, stroke----" but
words fail him, and all he can do is to clap his delighted stroke on the
back. Then, having duly exchanged the customary "Well rowed!" and its
accompanying rattle of oars in rowlocks with our gallant enemy, we
paddle home to the raft, where our exultant coach and our perspiring
partisans receive us with hand-shakings and embraces and fervently
epitomized stories of the struggle. "I knew you had got 'em all the
way!" says the coach. "Did you hear me shout when you got to the
half-way point?" "Hear you shout?" we reply in a chorus of joyful
assent. "Of course we did. That's why we spurted." Of course, we had
heard nothing; but at this moment we almost think we did hear him
plainly, and in any case we are not going to be so churlish as to
detract from anybody's joy over our victory.
And so the struggle is ended, and we have won. Pleasant though it is to
know that training is over, there is not one of us who does not feel a
sense of sorrow as he realizes that these days of toil and hardship and
self-restraint, of glorious health and vigorous effort are past. All the
little worries under which we chafed, the discipline that at times was
irksome, the thirst, the fatigue, the exhaustion, the recurrent
disappointments--all these become part of a delightful memory. Never
again, it may be, shall these eight men strike the sounding furrows
together. The victory that has crowned us with honour has at the same
time broken up our companionship of labour and endurance; but its
splendid memory, and the friendships it knit together--these remain with
us, and are a part of our lives henceforth wherever we may be.
THE NECESSITY OF HAVING A BUTT.
Let me turn now to lighter matters, for there are lighter matters
connected with rowing. And first let me insist on the necessity of
having a butt in a crew. It appears strange at first sight that the
system of training--that is to say, of diet, of early hours, of healthy
exercise, and of perfect regularity in all things, which has so
admirable an effect upon the condition of the body, should sometimes
impair the powers of the mind, and absolutely shatter the temper. I have
seen eight healthy, happy, even-tempered young men go into training
together for three weeks. They were all the best of friends. Tom had
known Dick at school, and both had been inseparable from Harry ever
since they had gone up to the University. With these three the other
five were closely linked by a common pursuit and by common interests.
Each one of them was a man of whom his friends could say, he was the
easiest man to get on with you could possibly meet. Yet mark what
happened. At the end of three weeks every man in that crew was the proud
possessor of seven detested foes. They ate their food in morose silence;
they took no delight in the labour of the oar, and each one confided to
his outside friends his lamentable opinions about the seven other
members of the crew. Even now, though years have passed away, no one who
rowed in that crew can look back without horror on those three terrible
weeks. Why was this so? The simple answer is this, that the crew in
question did not number among its members a butt. I doubt if the
importance of a butt in modern boat-racing has been properly recognized.
Speaking from an experience of many years, I should affirm
unhesitatingly, if I did not remember what I have written in previous
chapters, that in an ordinary crew, composed, as ordinary crews are, of
men and not of angels, the position of butt is a far more important and
responsible one than that of stroke or No. 7. If you can find a good,
stout, willing butt--a butt who lends himself to nicknames, and has a
temper as even as a billiard-table and as long as a tailor's
bill--secure him at once and make him the nucleus of your crew. There
may be difficulties, of course, if he should happen to be a heavy weight
without a notion of oarsmanship, but these defects can easily be
mitigated by good coaching, and in any case they cannot be allowed to
count against the supreme merit of keeping the rest of the crew in good
temper. Salient characteristics are apt to be a rock of offence to a
training crew. To be a silent thinker does not give rise to happiness in
the seven who watch you think. It is an even deadlier thing to be an
eloquent gabbler or a dreary drawler. There is nothing an ordinary
rowing man detests so much as windy eloquence, unless it be perhaps the
miserable indolence which is known as slackness. The butt must therefore
be neither silent, nor slack, nor a drawler. Nature will probably have
saved him from being a thinker or an orator. He must be simply
good-natured without affectation, and ready to allow tempers made stormy
by rowing and training to break upon his broad back without flinching.
Your true butt is always spoken of as "old" So-and-so, and, as a rule,
he is a man of much sharper wits, with a far keener insight into
character, than most of those who buffet or tease him. Among eminent
butts may be named Mr.----, but on second thoughts I refrain.
LEISURE TIME.
It seems a mere platitude to say that a man who can occupy his spare
moments in writing or reading is likely to be happier and more
even-tempered than one who is never seen with a book or a pen in his
hand. Yet it is a platitude of which not many oarsmen realize the force;
and, indeed, it is not an uncommon sight to see most of the members of
a crew sitting about listlessly in armchairs or talking the stale
futilities of rowing shop when they might with more solid advantage be
engaged, let us say, in following Mr. Stanley Weyman's or Dr. Conan
Doyle's latest hero through the mazes of his exciting adventures. At
Oxford or Cambridge, of course, a man has his lectures to attend, his
fixed tale of work to get through. But at Putney or at Henley this is
not so. There a man is thrown back on his own resources, a companionship
which he does not always seem to find particularly cheerful or
attractive. A billiard table, of course, is a valuable adjunct to
training quarters, but this is scarcely ever found at Henley, and not
always at Putney. Besides, most of us, after a short time, cease to take
any pleasure whatever in a game in which we are not qualified to shine.
The joy of reading the sporting reporter's account of your doings, and
of proving conclusively that he knows nothing about rowing, lasts but a
short time every morning. I may, therefore, offer the oarsman a piece of
advice which is, sound, in spite of its copybook flavour, and that is,
that he shall cultivate a habit of reading, and, if possible, of reading
good literature. Many moralists might recommend this habit on the
common ground that good literature tends to improve the tone of a man's
mind; and even a coach who is not a moralist will find it useful in
distracting the thoughts of his men. Besides, it is quite pleasant in
after life to recognize a well-worn quotation in a newspaper article,
and to remember, probably with complete inaccuracy, where it originated.
A little attention to writing and spelling might also prove valuable.
Oarsmen who had devoted themselves, say for ten minutes a day, to these
simple tasks, would have been saved from perpetrating the following
correspondence, which I quote _verbatim et literatim_ from letters in my
possession:--
"DEAR----
"It has been reported to me that you broke training last night you were
seen smoking not only a few wiffs but a whole pipe I have therefore
decided to turn you out of the boat.
"Yours, etc."
Answer to the above--
"DEAR----
"I am in reciet of your letter it is true that I smoked two whifs (not
"wiffs" as you say) out of another man's pipe but that's all however I
don't want to row in your beastly boat.
"Yours, etc."
AQUATIC AXIOMS.
I may add here some axioms which have been printed before,[11] but which
I may venture to repeat in a treatise on rowing. The years that have
passed since they were first set down have not weakened my conviction
that they are accurate. I still believe myself justified in stating--
(1) That if two crews row a course within ten minutes of one another,
the wind is always more violent and the stream more powerful against the
crew in which you yourself happen to be rowing.
(2) That it is always right to take off at least five seconds from the
time shown on your stop-watch in timing your own crew, and to add them,
by way of compensation, to the time shown on the same watch when timing
a rival crew.
(3) That your own crew is absolutely the only one which ever rows the
full course right out or starts at the proper place.
(4) That if your crew is impeded while rowing a course you must allow
ten seconds; but if any other crew is impeded you must allow only two
seconds.
(5) That if you row a slow course, No. 5's stretcher gave way, or his
slide came off.
(6) That you could always knock a quarter of a minute off when you row a
faster stroke, but that--
(7) You never do, as a matter of fact, row a faster stroke.
(8) That your crew always rowed a slower stroke than the rest.
(9) That you are sure to do a faster time to-morrow.
(10) That your private opinion is, that if everybody in the crew did as
much work as you do yourself your crew would be many lengths faster,
and--
(11) (and last) That you always lose by the steering of your coxswain
three lengths, which all other crews gain by the steering of theirs.
[11] In "In Cambridge Courts."