THE SPORT OF ROWING And he developed several significant innovations. Eliminating Check In 1875 when Hanlan was 20, sliding seats were still in their infancy. Hanlan: “When I first took it into my head to follow rowing, the boats used were very inadequate for the purposes. The sliding seat, which is now [1898] in such a high state of perfection, was a sliding seat in name only. It was invented by Walter Brown, of Portland, Maine, in the sixties. It consisted of a short steel slide, on glass tubes about eight inches [20cm] long. The slide the oarsman obtained by this seat was but four inches [10cm], and only those who have gone through the experience can realize how great a drawback it was to speed. “I remember when I bought my first shell. It was in 1875. George Warin, of Toronto, built it for me. It was a spruce frame with skin of butternut, and it cost me $80. It had a four-inch slide. [The tracks were 8 inches long, accommodating four inches of seat travel.] “The first time I used it, I noticed a defect somewhere, but I did not locate it for some time. “I was out sculling in Toronto Bay one day, rowing as hard as I knew how, and I began to wonder at the slow rate of progress I was making. “I noticed that every time I reached forward for a stroke and put my oars aft that the stern of the boat would sink about four inches [10cm] in the water. [This is called stern check.] On each occasion, I could also feel the seat bump up against me, so to speak, [He was hitting his stern stops.] checking the movement of my boat to a large extent. “I ascertained that every time I took a stroke, I threw the whole weight of my body on my feet, thereby causing the stern of the boat to be submerged inordinately in the water. “I studied the matter for some time and finally concluded that the fault lay in [the placement of] the seat. I went to Mr. Warin and asked him to put in another seat with a three-inch longer slide. Mr. Warin said that I was the most ungainly sculler he had ever seen in his life. However, he made the alteration, and I resumed my practices on the bay.”634 The stern ends of the original tracks had been even with the rigger pins. For convenience, Warin left them there but extended the seat deck and tracks toward the bow the additional three inches or 8cm. This was much easier for him to construct, but it required Hanlan to move his foot stretchers three inches toward the bow to ensure that his seat would reach the new bow stops when he flattened his legs. The change made intuitive sense. It moved him away from the stern and made it less likely that he would hit his stern stops, but since the stern stops had not been moved, it did little to prevent the continued transfer of too much weight into the stern at the entry. Hanlan: “The new seat did not satisfy me, though, and in a short while I went to Mr. Warin again and induced him to add another three inches to the slide on the seat [also in the direction of the bow].”635 Hanlan’s tracks were now fourteen inches long, and seat travel had been more than doubled, from four inches to ten, from 10 to 25cm. This allowed more leg compression which led to less body angle forward, giving Hanlan a more upright posture at the entry and reducing much of the downward arc of his head and shoulders, 634 Hanlan, p. 1 635 Ibid, p. 2 170
