THE SPORT OF ROWING accomplishment of the sliding movement in rowing.”431 British artist, rowing journalist and historian Geoffrey Page (1929-2002): “[The sliding seat] was used for the first time by a rowing crew in May 1870, on the opening day of the Hudson Amateur Rowing Association at Pleasant Valley [New York] by the Nassau Boat Club, and the novelty was brought back to England by a crew of Tyne professionals432 who had been racing in America.”433 Suspicion Thomas Eakins historian Helen Cooper: “Initially, there was considerable discussion among rowers as to its advantages, and periodicals such as Turf, Field and Farm kept readers up-to-date on the division between the ‘sliders’ and the ‘anti-sliders.’ “Nevertheless, by 1872 virtually every shell had slides in some form.”434 The new technology was treated with considerable suspicion among American colleges. Even as late as 1887, Julian Hawthorne, an old Yale oar, wrote in The Century Magazine, “I should like to know precisely how much difference they make in the time of a boat. Not many seconds, probably. They lengthen the stroke, of course; but, on the other hand, they make it slower. “The spurting stroke in those [pre- sliding seat] days used to go up as high as 48 to the minute, and be pulled through at that. At present, 40 or 42 is the maximum; and as the strength with which the oar is dragged through the water has not increased in the 431 Qtd. by Dodd, Henley, p. 77 432 The River Tyne in North East England flows through Newcastle upon Tyne, an early hotbed of rowing. 433 Page, p. 9 434 Cooper, p. 126 same ratio as the distance through which it is dragged, the gain must be limited.”435 Hawthorne was absolutely correct. In 1952, Richard Burnell, coach, historian and 1948 Olympic Champion sculler,436 published a study of British times recorded during the decade before and the decade after the introduction of sliding seats. He found no improvement. Burnell: “It is probably true, of course, that fixed seat rowing had reached its zenith about 1870. It is certainly true that for some time after the introduction of sliding seats, their proper application was not fully understood. “But even so, one cannot escape the inference that for some ten years the winning crews, both in the Boat Race and at Henley, would apparently have been hard put to beat their fixed-seat predecessors.”437 Sliding seats had also been greeted with disdain by many in England. Arthur Shadwell438 considered the sliding seat “an invention of the devil, and in it was the root of all our ills.”439 However, there actually were a few people in Great Britain willing to give sliding seats a chance. In the spring of 1873, Edwin Dampier Brickwood (1837-1906) and John Henry Walsh (1810-1888), respectively the aquatics correspondent and editor of The Field, a popular British sports periodical, placed a four-oared shell on trestles in front of The London Rowing Club440 boathouse, and Francis Stepney Gulston (1845-1917) climbed in. His strokes through the air were marked off, demonstrating that even the very short nine-inch slides then being used 435 Hawthorne, p. 179 436 See Chapter 17. 437 Burnell, Swing, p. 19 438 See Chapter 6. 439 Qtd. by Dodd, Henley, p. 74 440 one of the major Metropolitan clubs on the Tideway. They row with white blades with two dashed blue lines toward the tip. 120
