The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1872-03-20
The international Rowing Match.

The text of the reply of the London Rowing
Club to the recent challenge Of the ATLANTA
Club of this city to row four-oared outrigger
race over the famous Putney to Mortlake
course during the coming season has arrived,
and special telegram to the HERALD yester-
day gave the names of the probable confess
tants on the English sde-namely, Messrs.
Stout, Ryan, Gulston and Strong-names, by
the way, as familiar among rowing men in
England as those of the Ward Brothers here
The event is fixed for FIVE o'clock on the
afternoon of Monday, June 10, and all other
preliminaries are to be determined after our
men arrive out.
This time is earlier than the Atalantas had
desired but if they assent to it, as we sup
pose they will, it can hardly be made too plain
to them that they should be of at once.
Nearly six weeks Of stay in England before
the contest proved insufficient to properly ac-
climate the Harvard men, and this at time
of year when their passage thither was
over such quiet sea as to affect them but
comparatively little. Boats and oars are to
be tried and proved by processes that take
time; the track is to be mastered, and careful
study for over q month under the eye of the
oldest watermen Of the Thames failed to pre-
vent the Harvard coxswain from discovering
for the first time in the middle of the very race
itself an eddy off Chiswick Eyot that caught
his boat and held her so tightly that she
seemed to be anchored. Arrangements are to
be made for keeping the course entirely clear
| and the stopping all traffic on such a broad
| thoroughfare as the Thames is almost like
| closing Broadway from Madison square to the
Battery-for If this is not done our country
men had better stay at home; and we ear
nestly hope that perfectly clear and distinct
agreement will be made relative to the allow
ing or barring-and, we trust, the latter
| the jockeying principle of washing" or the
leading boats rowing directly in front of the
| other and throwing the back swirls from her
oars right against the latter's bow, and that
thus Harvard's fatuous blunder will be
| avoided.
We would suggest that a committee 60
along amply large and competent to attend
to everything that will be at all likely to
come up, 80 that the rowers may have
nothing whatever to attend to but their row.
ing; for with only this they will find that the
novelty and excitement of the affair will tell
on their nerves even for days before, and
make it far harder to keep in their best con-
dtion long than they have found 1t at home.
Notwithstanding the disclaimer of the Lon.
don papers and of their antagonists themselves,
in their friendly reply of the amateur cham
pionship of Great Britain, we still believe that
it will be very difficult task to find any
amateur club there that can beat these same
four Englishmen, when they are in such fine
order as they probably will be on the Monday
afternoon in questions and this although
we have seen four Elton boys whip
Gulston and Ryan and two other
shadow of Windsor Castle. They have
rowed together too long, are too familiar with
each Others ways, have met formidable rivals
too often and been in too many trying posi-
tons, to be anything else than an exceedingly
difficult crew to defeat, and 1t is better that
our venturesome countrymen should look
these facts fairly In the face first than last.
Yet the latter have two great advantages
over the students who went out in 1869. One
is, profit from the formers experience the
other, and really great one, that they car
row without coxswain. Now the London
men must learn this habit just as Harvard had
to to carry one !; and they will find that it vii
not only alter their pace, but quicken their
stroke very markedly, while the Americans
have always rowed the quick stroke adapted
to their style. The problem for each is how
to distribute their strength to the very hes
advantage throughout the twenty or twenty
one minutes of terrific work in store for them
The Englshmen have weight and. we think