THE SPORT OF ROWING championship regatta held for most of the 20th Century in Philadelphia. Jim Wray the lack of winning crews, turned to him for guidance.”1514 Mendenhall: “[Wray began coaching] the varsity only on assignment by the captain, thus leaving ‘the University wholly free to have at any time a professional or an amateur system as policy dictated.’”1515 His teams dominated Yale for the next decade. Mendenhall: “Neither Wray nor Harvard oarsman had ever acquired the fixation about the Yale race that Bob Cook had bequeathed to Yale. Where a broader rivalry on the water would lead Harvard was epitomized in the 1914 season.”1516 The 1914 Season That spring, Wray had two good eights and was having trouble choosing his Varsity. In April, his Jayvee beat their counterparts from Annapolis in the same time the Navy Varsity posted in beating the Crimson Varsity. Meanwhile, at the Union Boat Club Thomas E. Weil Collection Jim Wray in 1929 The New York Times: “As a youth in Australia, Jim Wray [1871-1954] made his living as a fisherman in rowboats, and he was noted as the strongest of the oarsmen in the fishing fleet about his home. Naturally there were races, and he won them all, and by such wide margins that his reputation spread. “There followed a series of sculling triumphs in Australia, England and the United States. “In 1905 he was in Boston, sculling on the Charles River, ready for any sort of a race, when Harvard, which was then feeling down the Charles River from the Harvard boathouses, an eight made up of Harvard graduates announced that they were going to enter the Grand Challenge Cup at the Henley Royal Regatta in England. In mid- May, Union entered the American Henley Regatta in Philadelphia. The American Henley had a race for college second eights, and Harvard won it over Yale, Penn, Navy and Princeton. Two hours later, they entered the Stewards’ Cup, the premier race for eights, and beat Union’s Henley-bound crew by five feet. Quickly, a plan was formulated to send the Harvard Jayvee to England as well. 1514 James Wray, 83, Ex-Cornell Coach, The New York Times, December 28, 1954 1515 Mendenhall, Harvard-Yale, p. 252 1516 Ibid, p. 281 404
