THE BIRTH OF CLASSICAL TECHNIQUE blindingly fast even at the beginning of his career. After his retirement, Hanlan wrote that in 1875, only months after he had first sat in a shell, “there was a regatta in Toronto Bay, and I entered the amateur race, having for competitors ‘Bob’ Williams and ‘Bob’ MacKay, and others. I had no difficulty in winning the event, and later in the day, when the professional race was called, I resolved to test my speed for my personal satisfaction. “In this race were entered such crack scullers as Henry Coulter490 [of Manchester, Pennsylvania], the then Champion of America, Tommy Loudon, the then Champion of Ontario, Eph Morris and Pat Luther of Pittsburgh, and Jim Douglas, the well-known Toronto hotel keeper, then considered a very speedy man. “The start was from the foot of York Street, and the race was to Gooderham’s Distillery and return, a distance of two miles. I was stationed away at the outside, and when the gun was fired I started with the rest. I turned opposite the half-way buoy one-hundred-fifty yards ahead of the whole flock, and without exerting myself very much returned to the starting post fully two- hundred yards ahead of the winner. “This imbued me with a lot of confidence, and the next year [1876] I went into the professional class, defeating Billy McCann for the Championship of Toronto, the race being rowed on Toronto Bay.”491 Don Morrow, co-author of A Concise History of Sport in Canada: “Hanlan’s lower-class Irish background did not endear him to Toronto’s snobbish upper- or middle- class British sportsmen, who were dominant in the organization of rowing. Ned’s father 490 who was a member of the pair that had lost the 1872 race depicted by Thomas Eakins in The Biglin Brothers Turning the Stake. See Chapter 9. 491 Hanlan, p. 3 was a fisherman who also ran a hotel on Toronto Island, and Ned gained his early rowing practice in a fishing skiff, either in the pursuit of angling or in the business of illegally smuggling rum across Lake Ontario to his father’s hotel.492 “He won several four-oared and single sculling races as a teenager in the early 1870s, and won the Ontario singles championship in 1875. Shortly afterwards he came close to being caught by the police for illegally supplying liquor to his father’s hotel; Hanlan left Toronto in late May, 1876 and carried out his plans to race at the Centennial Regatta in Philadelphia on the Schuylkill River.”493 Hanlan: “I then entered into the Professional Championship race in the Centennial Regatta, which was held at Philadelphia in August of that same year [1876]. “The race was a distance of three miles with a turn, and the fastest men in the world were entered, including [John] Higgins, Champion of England, Coulter, Morris, Fred Plaisted,494 John McKeel, Ellis Ward495 and [Alexander] Brayley [champion of Halifax, Nova Scotia]. “There were altogether fifteen starters, and to win I was compelled to two preliminaries and a final. “In winning, I made the fastest time on record for the distance, the figure being 21 minutes, 9½ seconds.”496 “I had no moustache and didn’t weigh more than 137 pounds [62 kg] stripped. So easily did I win that I never shed a drop of perspiration from my brow during the race.”497 In his time, Hanlan’s technique was described as being a “long, smooth, loping 492 Hunter, p. 27 493 Morrow, p. 32 494 See Chapter 9. 495 See below. 496 Hanlan, p. 3 497 Qtd. by Palmer, p. 660 139
