THE BIRTH OF ENGLISH ORTHODOXY by English boatbuilders yielded eighteen inches of additional length at the blade.441 Brickwood and Gulston were among the most influential rowers of their day. Besides writing for The Field under the pen name “Argonaut,”442 Brickwood had won the Wingfield Sculls, the amateur singles championship of England,443 in 1861 and had (anonymously) written The Arts of Rowing and Training in 1866. With you to speed the hours along No day was spent dully, Our stalwart, cheerful, matchless, strong, Our undefeated Gully.444 Less than two months after the demonstration on The London Rowing Club dock, which was reported by Walsh in The Field,445 both Oxford and Cambridge were using sliding seats for the first time in the Boat Race of 1873. The Recovery The inclusion of sliding seats required integration of their movement into the cycle of the recovery. Spracklen: “On the Dodd, Water Boiling Aft Francis S. Gulston 164 lb. 74 kg Gulston eventually won twenty times at Henley, three times winning in a pair, four and eight on the same day. Rudie Lehmann wrote a poem about him: They can’t recall, but ah, I can, How hard and strong you looked, Sir, Twelve stone and every inch a man, Unbeatable and uncooked, Sir. 441 Dodd, Henley, p. 193 442 Dodd, Water Boiling Aft, p. 67. See Chapter 6. 443 “The ‘Wingfield Sculls’ were founded in 1830, given by the donor whose name they bear, to be held as a challenge prize by the best sculler of the day from Westminster to Putney [5¾ miles], against all comers, on the ‘4th of August for ever’ – so a silver plate in the lid of the old box which holds the silver sculls bears testimony.” – Woodgate, p. 29 recovery, the hands went first, and the body went forward as the seat remained at the back stops, and by swinging from the hips instead of the back, we were able to get our weight on our feet to control the slide forward. “If you come up forward on your coccyx, you bucket.446 Hurry forward on the slide, and it’s more difficult to control.”447 Evolution in Oars Sliding seats also forced an evolution of oar design. According to Byrne & Churchill, as slides “grew gradually longer, the strain at the beginning of the stroke became too great for oars as they were then constructed, and they became apt to break at 444 Lehmann et al., pp. 147-8 445 The Field, March 1, 1873, per Woodgate, p. 107, Dodd, Water Boiling Aft, p. 67 446 having the body continue forward after the seat has reached the stern end of the track. The American term is “lunge.” 447 Spracklen, op.cit. 121
