THE BIRTH OF CLASSICAL TECHNIQUE in the traditional ferryman’s finish, but not all writers of the era disapproved, at least in the case of sculling. Rowe & Pitman, in their Badminton volume: “During the last part of the stroke, the body should be allowed to start its swing forward, and thus in a degree to meet the sculls. This motion in a light boat avoids burying her head at the finish of the stroke, and does not shorten the stroke in the same way as meeting the oar in rowing; for in the one case the handles of the sculls are past the ribs, while in the other the handle of the oar is, or should be, against the chest.”622 Woodgate disagreed with Lehmann’s observation that Hanlan did not employ the ferryman’s finish: “In sculling, with a very long swing back it is not a fault to commence the recovery of the body while the hands are still completing their journey home to the ribs. The body should not drop, nor slouch over the sculls while thus meeting them. It should recover with open chest and head well up, simply pulling itself up slightly, to start the back swing [forward], by the handles of the sculls as they come home for the last three or four inches of their journey. “Casamajor623 always recovered then, so did Hanlan, so did Parker,624 and any sculler who does likewise will sin (if he does sin in the opinion of some hypercritics of style) in first-class company.”625 Interestingly, Woodgate clearly wrote that Hanlan made use of the ferryman’s finish while Lehmann vehemently stated that he did not. So what did Hanlan actually do? Woodgate wrote in 1888, when Hanlan was still active. Lehmann wrote twenty years after that, long after Hanlan had retired. As an athlete, Woodgate had been extraordinary, a Diamonds and Wingfield Sculls winner. Lehmann never won at Henley and missed his Blue at Cambridge. He was far better known as a coach. Accordingly, one might infer that Woodgate’s near-contemporaneous analysis is probably more reliable, but that Hanlan’s ferryman’s finish must have been a great deal more smooth and subtle than the finishes of his opponents. 623 Alexander Alcée Casamajor (1833-1861) 148 lb. 67 kg, the greatest amateur oarsman of the mid-19th Century. “He won the Diamonds five times and held the Wingfields from 1855 until he stepped down in 1860. He won the pairs at Henley six times, the Stewards’ five, the Grand four and the Wyfold once, a grand Henley total of twenty-one wins.” – Dodd, Water Boiling Aft, p. 50 624 J.E. Parker, 1863 Wingfield Sculls 622 Rowe & Pitman, p. 46 Champion. 625 Woodgate, pp. 136-7 167
