The Sun.
London, England, 1867-02-23 00:00:00

Antipodial Aquatics.

Americans in China have shown their country•
men at home a better kind of international compe

tition than sailing yachts across the Atlantic. To have
surpassed Britannia in any kind of maritime ex-
ploit is, of course, highly satisfactory. It was very
gratifying when Mr. Stevens, in the America, dis-
tanced the English yacht fleet and revolutionised
yacht-models—still more so when Mr. Ericsson,
with the Monitor, answered Punch's taunt that it
behooved Jonathan, having shown John how to
build a yacht, to instruct him in building a man-of-
war ; and, from the estimate placed by English
yachtsmen themselves upon our last achievement, it

apparently only remains for the Henrietta or the
Vesta or the Fleetwing, or all of them, to outsail a
fleet of European competitors in order that our cup
of maritime exultation may overflow. But victo-
rious yachting is, after all, a mechanical sort of
triumph, creditable chiefly to ship-builders and
sailing -masters, requiring a kind of pluck which the
heavy pursed alone can display ; while, above all,
the fact that only dwellers near the seaboard
can engage in it prevents its ever becoming among
us a national amusement even for those whose
other circumstances permit. The handful of

Americans at Shanghai have worsted their Eng-
lish opponents in a contest which should win them
infinitely more KVBOS than attends the yacht race.
Pre-eminence in rowing has always been held to be
an inalienable British glory, and when to their pre-
scriptive, prowess were added the considerations that
the English oarsmen in Shanghai exceed the Ameri-
can by the rate of six to one, and that the match
was pulled in the eight-oared shells with coxswains
instead of our six-oar with bowsman steering, it was
hardly surprising that the English residents filled
the papers in advance with letters patronisingly
eulogistic of the " hopeless pluck of the Yankees "
Their exultation may have been based upon the
previous defeat of American by British men-of-war's
boats, which we can readily conceive, since the
achievements of a naval crew, the build of their
boats, their oars, time, drill, speed, are all of an
order calculated to excite the derision of a Harvard
or Yale freshman. In the race, however, the Ameri-
cans—who, by the way, were all from New York
and Massachusetts, and among whom were two
Harvard race-crew men—took the lead from the
start, and at a pace which carried them over the
mile and a half in eight minutes and a half soon
left their rivals so far behind, that the English cap-
tain relinquished the idea of pulling over the course.
In the minor races on the same day, the American
oarsmen won such laurels and so overturned
popular preconceptions that, as we learn from the
letter of a Yale boating man present on the oc-
casion, the American population of Shanghai
were nearly a week after " still chuckling" over the
event. What the fortuitous representation of
Americans at Shanghai was able to accomplish as
matched against an assemblage of our English
cousins, which afforded much larger field for selec-
tion, it is not unreasonable to hope our college
clubs knight do in an international university boat-
race. The prestige of Oxford and Cambridge oars-
men is as well established as it is long-lived, while
it is only within a very few years that Yale and
Harvard have had any really first-rate rowing in