THAMES AQUATICS.

Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 2061, 12 August 1875, Page 2

THAMES AQUATICS.

The .Naval Brigade Rowing Club, with " praiseworthy pluck, hare determined to see what they can do in the wayC of aquatics compared with our Southern fellow colonists, and settled to send .a four* oar (if not two) to Christchurch (probably) to compete at the Inter-colonial Regatta. Our best wishes' will go with them,-and whether they return successful or : unsuccessful we shall consider that the » debut of the Thames at these regattas has not b en in rain if it in anyway tends to promote the pursuit of rowing as a healthy, pleasant and invigorating cxer-,, cise. In spite of the strictures of Skey, M.D., of anti-athletic notoriety, wc-are; inclined to place rowing among the fore*' most of those exercises which tend to make the body worthy of the mind of man. No exercise exists which is so -' much calculated to bring into exer-f cisc every muscle of the" body:., itj nearly the same time, or develop; each individual muscle to the same extent. ' Boxing, hammer-throwing; and wrestling, excellent as they are in their several ways, cannot in this respect—nor indeed- in *.-$,, many others—rcompare with rowing, which '•■.- employs or ought to employ every uuscle of the body from the moment when the ' loins are brought into .play, (which-they: should be at the very beginning of the : stroke) down to the time when the legs, ■ •■ having lent their powerful aid as they should do in the middle, the arms hither- *

to kept perfectly straight are/called upon to' finish it, and the wrists brought into play. to lend the finishing .touch"of, grace demanded of the necessary feather. But by rowing we do not mean the method in which sailors and others $o frequently disport themselves,' when with the | shoulders up to the ears, the back round,. I the arms bent, and one leg not un« ! frequently coiled up beneath the seat, the rower strives in a boat, guiltless of stretchers, and with oara devoid of; buttons, to make what pace he best may. • I We rather refer to rowing as a science 1 and an amusement acquired with a view to enable the body to perform the greatest amount of physical exertions with the greatest possible result of ease and . grace— i.e. to enable a man, or set offfourj r meu, t0,,, use strength in such a manner 4hat'a crew of men equal at leait in strength, t).ut inferior in finish and style, would hare no possible chance of su&est . in a Boat race.,,. This attempt io^rpass - others in boat racing, the T.N.BQ£ me . determined to "make, and what we pair of . them at Auckland at the last regatta (though, there was no.otMtegprew tnere capable—to twe a racing j^MMfe—of mak- -' iiig them lerefl galop).. leadTlU|lo imagine >

that with proper attention to training, and in the hands of a good coach to remedy certain glaring faults in the crew as then constituted, they would stand no bad chance; or -that if there is .'a crew there good enough to row away from them it will be considerably above the average of amateur crews who pull in regattas of this description in England — of course excepting Henley, London, Kingston and Ely. We.sincerely hope that the necessary funds may be forthcoming to enable the crew, not only to be sent.without any expense to themselves, but also to have a boat especially adapted to the weighty of. the crew who are to row in her. Nothing is worse than for a really'good crew, after all their trouble of training and getting fit for a race, to find their pains all thrown away by being either underbpated, i.e., in a boat too narrow for* ' men of their weight, and which dips or buries itself every time anything approaching'a severe spurt is put on (as was the case with the Cambridge crews of '59 and 73), or else to have a boat wider in the beam than is absolutely necessary to carry the crew, with the result that every extra half-inch in width as so much dead weight for the crew to puJy^iUng with them, and is sure to tell its tale if the race "be anyway close, at the finish. Innovation in boat buijpVJ ing is at best a very dangerous experiment when increased speed is the object-vainied at, and most of those who have tried startling novelties in this line have been i obliged to return whence "they set out in search of boats ere the day of the race itself. Witness the attempt of Green, the Australian, and the tubular skiff in which it was Supposed he wouM beat' Chambers, or the boat the Harvard four of '69 brought across withthen), to row against Oxford with a wide space between Nos. 2 and 31 Both these so much vaunted improvements (a patent was taken out for Green's invention), were found to be changes for the worse, and long before the day of trial came these, as well as others before them, had to seek the aid of English builders to prevent themselves being more helplessly beaten than they were. With the single exception of sliding seats on glass rollers, introduced some three years ago, boat building has shown little improvement since the days of th» elder CJasper; • and we should consider it one great point in favor of the Thames crew, if they could procure a four built on the same model which makes the present boat-builder of that name so popular, just suited to their weight with the Work set ib'd- . We do hope .-also that a competent coach can be obtained to endeavour toi/radicaio. some of the faults so common 1 to men' who teach themselves to?!©^*- 7" Keeping time is to a great-. ; extent, » matter of practice, Hbulr' ke'epuig\ stroke is -a very different affair, t and *%J^ cruel work on any stroke to fib<J'th'eb^iif literally hanging on his hands, because No. 3 will miss the most impbrflfiJfcpart .of the stroke —the beginningr— vfi& refrainfrom getting the weight"tif,'lSfS' body on the oar until the stroke be>l£i|lf, rowed through. • None but the- sfrofe himself and an experienced eye caji t»U. whether those forward are me beginning or not^andif the crew oncj&^et in the habit of letting the oar'almost'glide through the i water until the blade, -^be opposite the outrigger^ and." then eh- • deayour to make up for tbpir want.of. 1 .beginning by a violent lurch at the end of the strpke-rrtheonly r effe,ct ofvwhich;, »sfc t mtkc the boat roll—goodbye to all chance. - of-tbeir winning,- unless the othe£]sijgg& are' very,- bad indeed. -■We""do -not 1 mescr' thir for an essay on rowing, or we might draw attention to Such points- as doubling over the oar, bending the arms in the middle of the stroke, pulling the body up to the oar instead of the oar up to the body, and other faults which last year's crew were certainly not free from, but we content ourselves with drawing the attention of those who may form the Thames representative crews (for such', we take them to be) that however good the men may be individually, yet no greater mistake has ever been made than to imagine that one man can . pull a boat along by himself, and that unless they can get well together and in the same good style, their chance of winning—unless as we had said their opponents be bad indeed—ought to be absolutely nil! Mr Punch's words about the last inter-university race are both true and to the point:— For miles are mile?, and styles are styles, And when work, weight, and will Their best havo done, the race is won, Bj these plus sleight and skill That the T.N.B.C. have some of these qualifications, we have no doubt; our earnest hope is that all may be acquired by them ere the day of the race.