THE COXSWAIN AND STEERING.
The 'cock-swain' wins his place chiefly on account of his weight,
provided that he can show a reasonable amount of nerve and skill of
hand. A coxswain is seldom a very practical oarsman, although there have
been special exceptions to this rule, e.g. in the case of T. H.
Marshall, of Exeter, Arthur Shadwell, of Oriel, and a few others. But if
he has been any length of time at his trade he very soon picks up a very
considerable theoretical knowledge of what rowing should be, and is able
to do very signal service in the matter of instructing the men whom he
pilots. When a youth begins to handle the rudder-lines there is often
some considerable difficulty in inducing him to open his mouth to give
orders of any sort. Even such biddings as to tell one side of oars to
hold her, or another to row or to back-water, come at first falteringly
from his lips. It is but natural that he should feel his own physical
inferiority to the men whom he is for the moment required to order about
so peremptorily, and diffidence at first tends to make him dumb. But he
soon picks up his _role_ when he listens to the audacious orders and
objurgations of rival pilots, and he is pleased to find that the
qualities of what he might modestly consider to be impudence and
arrogance are the very things which are most required of him, and for
the display of which he earns commendation.
Having once found his tongue, he soon learns to use it. When there is a
coach in attendance upon the crew, the pilot is not called upon to
animadvert on any failings of oarsmen; but when the coach is absent the
coxswain is bound to say something, and, if he has his wits about him,
he soon picks up enough to make his remarks more or less to the purpose.
The easiest detail on which he offers an opinion is that of time of
oars. At first he feels guilty of 'cheek' in singing out to some oarsman
of good standing that he is out of time. He feels as if he should hardly
be surprised at a retort not to attempt to teach his grandmother; but,
on the contrary, the admonition is meekly accepted, and the pilot begins
at once to gain confidence in himself. Daily he picks up more and more
theoretical knowledge; he notes what a coach may say of this or that
man's faults, and he soon begins to see when certain admonitions are
required. At least he can play the parrot, and can echo the coach's
remarks when the mentor is absent, and before long he will have picked
up enough to be able to discern when such a reproof is relevant and when
it is not. In his spare time he often paddles a boat about on his own
account, and this practice materially assists him in understanding the
doctrines which he has to preach. As a rule, coxswains row in very good
form, when they row at all; and before their career closes many of them,
though they have never rowed in a race, can teach much more of the
science of oarsmanship than many a winning oar of a University race or
of a Grand Challenge Cup contest.
A coxswain is the lightest item in the crew, but unless he sits properly
he can do much harm in disturbing the balance of a light boat. He should
sit with a straight back; if he slouches, he has not the necessary play
of the loins to adapt himself to a roll of the boat. He should incline
just a trifle forward; the spring of the boat at each stroke will swing
him forward slightly, and he will recoil to an equal extent on the
recovery. His legs should be crossed under him, like a tailor on a
shop-board, with the outside of each instep resting on the floor of the
boat. He should hold his rudder-lines just tight enough to feel the
rudder. If he hangs too much weight upon them, he may jam the tiller
upon the pin on which it revolves, so that, when the rudder has been put
on and then taken off, the helm does not instantly swing back to the
exact _status quo ante_; and in that case the calculation as to course
may be disturbed, and a counter pull from the other line become
necessary, in order to rectify the course.
A coxswain will do best to rest his hand lightly on either gunwale, just
opposite to his hips. He should give the lines a turn round his palms,
to steady the hold on them. Many coxswains tie a loop at the required
distance, and slip the thumb through it; but such a loop should not be
knotted too tight, for when rudder-lines get wet they shrink; so that a
loop which was properly adjusted when the line was dry will be too far
behind in event of the strings becoming soaked.
When a coxswain desires to set a crew in motion, the usual formula is to
tell the men to 'get forward,' then to ask if they are 'ready,' and then
to say 'go,' 'row,' or 'paddle,' as the case may be. When he wishes to
stop the rowing, without otherwise to check the pace of the boat, the
freshwater formula is 'easy all,' at which command the oars are laid
flat on the water. In the navy the equivalent term is 'way enough.'
'Easy all' should be commanded at the beginning, or at latest at the
middle, of a stroke, otherwise it is difficult for the men to stop all
together and to avoid a half-commencement of the next stroke.
If a boat has to be suddenly checked and her way stopped, the order is
'Hold her all.' The blades are then slightly inclined towards the bow of
the boat, causing them to bury in the water, and at the same time not to
present a square surface to back-water. The handle of the oar should
then be elevated, and more and more so as the decreasing way enables
each oarsman to offer more surface resistance to the water. So soon as
the way of the boat has been sufficiently checked, she can be backed or
turned, according to what may be necessary in the situation.
In turning a long racing-boat care should be taken to do so gently,
otherwise she may be strained. If there is plenty of room, she can be
turned by one side of oars 'holding' her, while bow, and afterwards No.
3 also, paddle her gently round. If there is not room for a wide turn,
then stroke and No. 6 should back water gently, against bow, &c.
paddling.
A coxswain, when he first begins his trade, is pleased to find how
obedient his craft is to the touch of his hand; he pulls one string and
her head turns that way; he takes a tug at the other line, and she
reverses her direction. The ease with which he can by main force bring
her, somehow or other, to the side of the river on which he desires to
be tends at first to make him overlook how much extra distance he
unnecessarily covers by rough-and-ready hauling at the lines.
'Argonaut'[7] very lucidly uses the expression 'a boat should be
_coaxed_ by its rudder,' a maxim which all pilots will do well to make a
cardinal point in their creed.
[7] Mr. E. D. Brickwood.
When a boat is once pointing in a required direction, and her true
course is for the moment a straight one, the pilot should note some
landmark, and endeavour to regulate his bows by aid of it, keeping the
mark dead ahead, or so much to the right or to the left as occasion may
require. In so doing he should feel his lines, and, so to speak,
'balance' his bows on his _point d'appui_. His action should be somewhat
analogous to what the play of his hand would be if he were attempting
to carry a stick end upwards on the tip of his finger. He would quickly
but gently anticipate the declination denoted by each wavering motion of
the stick, checking each such deviation the moment it is felt. In like
manner when steering he should, as it were, 'hold' his bows on to his
steering point, regulating his boat by gentle and timely touches; if he
allows a wide deviation to occur, before he begins to correct his
course, he has then a wide _detour_ to make before he can regain his
lost position. All this means waste of distance and of rowing energy on
the part of the crew.
In steering by a distant landmark the coxswain must bear in mind that
the parallax of the distant mark increases as he nears it; so that what
may point a true course to him, for all intents and purposes, when it is
half a mile away, may lead him too much to one side or other if he
clings to it too long without observing its altered bearing upon his
desired direction.
When a coxswain has steered a course more than once he begins to know
his landmarks and their bearing upon each part of the course. There is
less strain upon his mind, and he becomes able to observe greater
accuracy. There is nothing like having the 'eye well in' for any scene
of action. A man plays relatively better upon a billiard-table or
lawn-tennis ground to which he is well accustomed than on one to which
he is a stranger; and a jockey rides a horse all the better for having
crossed him before the day of a race. However good a coxswain may be, he
will steer a course more accurately, on the average, in proportion as he
knows it more or less mechanically.
There is also a good deal in knowing the boat which has to be steered.
No two ships steer exactly alike. Some come round more easily than
others; some fetch up into the wind more freely than others. In modern
times it has been a common practice for builders to affix a movable
'fin' of metal to the bottom of a racing eight or four, under the after
canvas, which fin can be taken out or fixed in at option. In a cross
wind this helps to steady the track of a boat; but, unless wind is
strong and is abeam for a good moiety of the distance, the draw of the
water all the way occasioned by the fin costs more than the extra drag
of rudder which it obviates for just one part of the course.
In steering round a corner a coxswain should bear in mind that he must
not expect to see his boat pointing in the direction to which he desires
to make. His boat is a tangent to a curve, the curve being the shore.
His bows will be pointing to the shore which he is avoiding. It is the
position of his midship to the shore which he is rounding that he should
especially note. The boat should be brought round as gradually as the
severity of the wave will allow. If the curve is very sharp, like the
corners of the 'Gut' at Oxford, or 'Grassy' or Ditton corners at
Cambridge, the inside oars should be told to row light for a stroke or
two. It will ease their labour, and also that of the oars on the other
side.
When there is a stiff beam wind the bows of a racing craft tend to bear
up into the wind's eye. The vessel is making leeway all the time;
therefore if the coxswain on such an occasion steers by a landmark which
would guide him were the water calm, he will before long find himself
much to leeward of where he should be. In order to maintain his desired
course he should humour his boat, and allow her bow to hold up somewhat
into the wind (to windward of the landmark which otherwise would be
guiding him). To what extent he should do so he must judge for himself,
according to circumstances and to his own knowledge of the leeward
propensities of his boat. To lay down a hard-and-fast rule on this point
would be as much out of place as to attempt to frame a scale of
allowance which a Wimbledon rifleman ought to make for mirage or
cross-wind, when taking aim at a distant bull's-eye.
Generally speaking a coxswain should hug the shore when going against
tide or stream, and should keep in mid-stream when going with it.
(Mid-stream does not necessarily imply mid-river.) Over the Henley
course, until 1886, a coxswain on the Berks side used to make for the
shelter of the bank below Poplar Point, where the stream ran with less
force. The alteration (for good) of the Henley course which was
inaugurated in 1886 has put an end to this, and both racing crews now
take a mid-stream course. The course is to all intents and purposes
straight, and yet it will not do to keep the bows fixed on one point
from start to finish. There is just a fraction of curve to the left in
it, but so slight that one finger's touch of a line will deflect a boat
to the full extent required. The church tower offers a landmark by which
all pilots can steer, keeping it more or less to the right hand of the
bows, and allowing for the increase of its parallax as the boat nears
her goal.
Over the Putney water the best course has changed considerably during
the writer's personal recollections. Twenty years ago the point entering
to Horse Reach, and opposite to Chiswick Church, could be taken close.
The Conservancy dredged the bed of the river, and also filled up a bight
on the Surrey shore. This transferred the channel and the strongest
current to the Middlesex side. In 1866 a head wind (against flood tide)
off Chiswick raised the higher surf near to the towpath, showing that
the main stream flowed there. It now runs much nearer to the Eyot.
Also the removal of the centre arch of old Putney Bridge drew the main
flood tide more into mid-river than of old; and since then the new
bridge has been built and the old one altogether removed, still further
affecting the current in the same direction. There is a noticeable
tendency in the present day, on the part of all pilots, whether in
sculling matches or in eight-oar races, to take Craven Point too wide
and to bear off into the bay opposite, on the Surrey shore. The course
should be kept rather more mid-stream than of old, up to Craven steps,
but the point should be taken reasonably close when rounding; there
should not be, as has often been seen during the last six years, room
for a couple more boats to race between the one on the Fulham side and
the Craven bank.
In old days, when Craven Point used to be taken close, and when the set
of the tide lay nearer to it than now, there ensued an important piece
of pilotage called 'making the shoot.' It consisted in gradually
sloping across the river, so as to take the Soapworks Point at a
tangent, and thence to make for the Surrey arch of Hammersmith Bridge.
This 'shoot' is now out of place: firstly, because the tide up the first
reach from the start of itself now tends to bring the boat more into
mid-river off the Grass Wharf and Walden's Wharf; secondly, because the
Soapworks Point should now be taken _wide_, and not close. The reason
for this latter injunction is that the races of to-day, by agreement, go
through the centre arch of Hammersmith Bridge. Now the flood tide does
not run through the bridge at right angles to the span. It is working
hard across to the Surrey shore. Therefore, if a boat hugs Soapworks
Point as of old, and as if the course lay through the shore arch, that
boat will have to come out, _across_ tide, at an angle of about 25 deg. to
the set of the tide, in order to fetch the outer arch and to clear the
buttress and the steamboat pier. Year after year the same blunder is
seen. Pilots, of sculling boats and of eight-oars alike, wander away to
the Surrey bay off Craven; then they hug the shore till they reach the
Soapworks foot-bridge, and then they have to cross half the tide on
their right before they can safely point for the outer arch of the
Suspension Bridge. A pilot should endeavour to keep in mid-river off
Rosebank and the Crab Tree, and after passing the latter point he will,
while pointing his bows well to the right of the arch which he intends
to pass under, find the river move to the left under him, until, with
little or no use of rudder, he finds himself in front of his required
arch just as he reaches the bridge.
After passing the bridge a boat should keep straight on for another two
hundred yards, else it will get into dead water caused by the eddy of
the Surrey pier. At Chiswick the course may be taken wide (save and
except, as in all cases, where force of wind alters circumstances). The
main tide runs nearest to Chiswick Eyot. Horse Reach should be entered
in mid-river; there is little or no tide on the Surrey point below it.
Making for Barnes Bridge, the boat should keep fairly near to the
Middlesex shore--how near depends upon whether the race is ordained to
pass through the centre or the Middlesex arch of Barnes Bridge. Once
through Barnes Bridge, the course should sheer in (if the centre arch
has been taken) until the boat lies as if it had taken the shore arch.
It should attain this position by the time it breasts the 'White Hart.'
The river is here a horseshoe to the finish. In linear measure a boat on
the Middlesex side has nearly two lengths less to travel than the one
outside it between Barnes Bridge and the 'Ship.' The tide runs nearly as
well within sixty feet of the shore as in mid-river at this point, hence
it pays to keep about that distance from the Middlesex bank.
The old Thames watermen who instruct young pilots over the Putney course
are often inclined to run too much in the grooves which were good in
their younger days, when they themselves were racing on the river. Their
instruction would be sound enough if the features of the river had not
undergone change, as aforesaid, in sundry details. The repeated blunders
of navigation lately seen perpetrated by watermen as well as amateurs
between Craven Steps and Hammersmith make us lose much faith in
watermen's tuition for steering the metropolitan course. We would rather
entrust a young pilot to some active member of the London or Thames
Rowing Clubs. These gentlemen know the river well enough as it now is,
and are not biassed by old memories of what it once was but is no
longer.
University coxswains have easier tasks in these days than their
predecessors before 1868. Until the Thames Conservancy obtained
statutory powers in 1868 to clear the course for boat-racing, it used to
be a ticklish matter to pick a safe course on a flood tide. There would
be strings of barges towed, and many more sailing, others 'sweeping,' up
river. Traffic did not stop for sport. Coxswains often found themselves
in awkward predicaments to avoid such itinerant craft, more so when
barges were under sail against a head wind, and were tacking from shore
to shore. In 1866 a barge of this sort most seriously interfered with
the Cambridge crew in Horse Reach, just when Oxford had, after a stern
race, given them the go-by off the Bathing-place. It extinguished any
chance which might have been left for Cambridge.
In the preceding year C. R. W. Tottenham immortalised himself by a great
_coup_ with a barge. She was tacking right across his course (Oxford had
just gone ahead after having been led by a clear length through
Hammersmith Bridge). This was just below Barnes Bridge. Many a pilot
would have tried to go round the bows of that barge. At the moment when
she shaped her course to tack across tide there seemed to be ample room
to pass in front of her. Tottenham never altered his course, and trusted
to his own calculations. Presently the barge was broadside on to
Oxford's bows, and only a few lengths ahead. Every one in the steamers
astern stood aghast at what seemed to be an inevitable smash. The barge
held on, and so did Oxford, and the barge passed clear away just before
Oxford came up. Even if she had hung a little, in a lull of wind, it
would have been easy for Oxford to deflect a trifle and pass under her
stern. Anything was better than attempting to go round her bows, which
at first seemed to be the simplest course to spectators not experts at
pilotage. It must be admitted that so much nerve and judgment at a pinch
have never before or since been displayed by any coxswain in a
University match. Tottenham had his opportunity and made the most of it.
He steered thrice afterwards, but even if he had never steered again he
had made his reputation by this one _coup_. In justice to other crack
coxswains, such as Shadwell and Egan of old, and, _par excellence_, G.
L. Davis in the present day, we must assume that if they had been
similarly tried they would have been equally triumphant.
[Illustration: FEATHER 'UNDER' THE WATER.]