THE BIRTH OF ENGLISH ORTHODOXY straight by nature. A very sharp finish, combined with the short slide already mentioned, resulted in a short, fast stroke, fatal to any but the very best crews, and likely to be disastrous even for them.”458 In 1889, there was another example of resistance to change. Eton student Captain of the Boats E.L. Churchill, future co- author with L.S.R. Byrne of the definitive history of early Eton rowing, ordered a new shell with long slides, but when Stuart Donaldson, Warre’s immediate successor as Eton coach, found out, he threatened to quit. The boys had to back down.459 The Need for Uniformity Despite English Orthodox resistance, sliding seats had arrived. The first unintended consequence of the sliding seat was to change the morphology of the ideal oarsman. According to Crowther: “In the days of the fixed seat, when the power of the stroke came from the shoulders and the arms, the oarsman was apt to be a great, broad-chested fellow, but with the slide, the stroke had so many changes and called for so much more activity and general development that the long, lithe man came into favor, and the best crews since have been made up from that type.”460 In addition, anyone who has ever rowed in a boat larger than a single can understand that, in order to avoid utter chaos, crews rowing on sliding seats require close coordination between boatmates. In 1870, sliding seat inventor John C. Babcock described a second unintended consequence of his invention: “The slide properly used is a decided advantage and gain of speed, and the only objection to its use is its almost 458 Byrne & Churchill, pp. 182-3 459 Byrne & Churchill, p. 187 460 Crowther, p. 233 impracticable requirement of skill and unison in a crew, rather than any defect in its mechanical theory. [my emphasis]”461 A unified approach for the crew had become essential, and normally this can be accomplished in one of two ways. It can be done informally, subconsciously, through mileage, months of practice together tending to “smooth off the rough edges,” but this can be a slow, frustrating and inefficient process. Or a particular solution can be imposed upon the crew by mutual consent or by someone in charge. During the 19th Century and on down to the present, within the many boathouses along the Thames at Eton, the Isis at Oxford and on the banks of the Cam at Cambridge, a president or captain would be elected from among the student team members, and it would be his responsibility to organize the team, decide upon a technique, decide upon equipment, and either hire a coach or coach the crew himself from his seat within the boat. Theoretically, each individual on a squad can be coached to conform to a chosen technique, but this is infinitely more challenging when the coaching is being done from inside the boat by a young man with a limited mandate, minimal experience and little guarantee of continuity from year to year. Not everyone given such a responsibility turned out to be a T.S. Egan or an A.T.W. Shadwell. The presidential system made the direction of the team subject to the vagaries of politics and individual idiosyncrasy, which even Tom Egan experienced at Cambridge in 1847.462 A course set by one successful president might indeed hold sway for several years and even several successors, but especially after a couple of 461 www.rowinghistory.net/equipment.htm 462 See Chapter 6. 125
