AMERICAN ROWING COMES OF AGE “Roars, whistles, firing of salutes. We are lying, drifting on the tide. Our oars drag lifeless. We lie crumpled up. Big Bill Crawford is sobbing behind me. He leans forward and then slowly falls over my upturned face. I try to push him off . . . We sit up. A crew fresh as paint is already rowing back up the course. It is followed by an increasing gale of cheers. “‘Cornell! Cornell! We yell like hell, Cornell!’ “Cornell first, Columbia second, Pennsylvania third . . . “Afterwards we went along to the Wisconsin boathouse. We wanted to know what happened to No. 2. There he lay, blood all over the place, being attended to by a perplexed doctor. Just before we entered the last sixty strokes he had jumped his seat. He rowed that sixty with his buttock sliding along the brass runners. The brass strips had cut through his rowing shorts, cut through his flesh, until, it seemed, his entire behind was just one wide open sore. “Otherwise we might have been fourth.”1233 Regatta Week The town of Poughkeepsie took on a carnival atmosphere for regatta week every June. Historian and The New York Times journalist Robert F. Kelley: “In the streets, the lampposts bore flags and bunting. Shortly after breakfast, sombreroed State Troopers, their motorcycles grumbling like machine-guns, came on the scene to help wrestle with the thousands of cars that each June climb the steep, winding streets of this city at the start of what they call ‘America’s Rhineland.’”1234 Tens of thousands of revelers would descend upon the town. Hotels on both sides of the river would fill months in advance. Hundreds of thousands of dollars would be openly wagered, with newspapers publishing odds as they changed in the days leading up to the regatta. In 1899, the observation train, described as a moving grandstand, had forty-eight cars and steam engines on both ends. The New York Times, June 28, 1899: “Anchored in the river opposite were half a dozen excursion steamers and a score or so of sizable yachts and sailing craft. Of the lot were the Ballantine yacht Juanita, dressed from stem to stern in rainbow fashion with a couple of hundred flags of Cornell, red and white, and one of the prettiest sights on the course. The big black steam yacht Lagonda also was elaborately dressed with international code and yacht club signals. The referee’s boat Aileen, a handsome white steam yacht, was the gayest of all the craft. Her flags were the biggest, her movements the liveliest. “Other yachts in the fleet were the Alciada, Nepahwin, Maspeth, Restless and Alfrida, and several of these had on board some of the Naval Militia boys who last night, as well as tonight, helped to make things hideous for those who wished to sleep. They fired the largest and loudest of the cannon crackers and drank the most beer. “Highland [the town across the river from Poughkeepsie] was converted into a sort of Coney Island. Lemonade vendors, peanut merchants and banana salesmen did a thriving business along the fronts of the waiting train, where all were hungry and 1233 Ibid, pp. 46-7 1234 Robert F. Kelley, Washington Gains Sweep in Regatta at Poughkeepsie, The New York Times, June 23, 1936 327
