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Lyttelton Times, Volume II, Issue 73, 29 May 1852, Page 7

To the Editor of the Lyttelton Times. Sir, —As 1 believe we are to have a Regatta here every'year, it is desirable that we and'the strangers within our gates should understand the principles upon which our sports are conr , i (ducted. Being a commercial little town, that principle is mainly the sound mercantile one, " get^pll you can for your money." Thus it has happened, if there has been any dispute about ,:,, v ;a. race, the umpires have not done the public "^he justice to inquire whether the winning boat, sack-jumper, has won unfairly, and whether tne second was not, therefore, entitled to the prize, but they have properly looked merely to the prospect of more fun, 'and have decided that the race should be run again. The boat owners, indeed, are so blind to the public interest as to call this " unfair." Some of them actually would not enter this year at all, and if I am rightly informed, few, if any, will ente,r next year. So the " running again" theory is, like some others, at once popular and impossible. But our umpires here, droll fellows, stick to this " most-for-your-money" principle in other

ways. For example, last year having allowed Mr. Ward's boat to pull over the ground, and win by a mile, they received the victors with their tongues in their cheeks, and told them they could not receive, the prize, because they had had no steersman. You may suppose. Sir, that this objection ought to have been urged before the boats started, as steersmen are usually visible to the naked eye, and the absence of such a functionary must have been remarked; but you forget that if the umpires had objected to the want of a steersman before starting, Mr. Ward's boat would not have pulled, and so the public would have lost a per centage of fun, and the umpires would have lost the chance of selling the competitors which is their chief duty at Lyttelton. Mr. Ward's boat being the Irish boat is, of course, always in a mess: so this year when it offered to pull with an intelligent lad to direct its course, the objection was raised that the coxswain was not a steersman, an objection which the Committee immediately and rightly recognised. He was a steers&oy, not a steersman as required by the rules. The Irish cannot of course complain of this. If they will persist in their own country of calling men of three-score-years-and-ten— hoys, they must not be angry if they are not allowed to call a boy of seventeen —a man. I do not say this reasoning is strictly logical ; I only say, it probably guided the umpires in their just but jocose decision. Hence, when we see in the English papers that a boat race has taken place between Eaton and Westminster, steersmen. John Snooks and Joseph Walker— we rightly regard it as merely done to gratify the vanity of the young wretches, and that had Dr. Johnson been the reporter it would have been written— steershoys, so and so. Another arrangement struck me as very admirable ; on Tuesday the sailing match was run again. It blew a reefed topsail breeze in the morning, as fine a morning for a sailing match as ever I witnessed. The managers, however, very properly waited till there was nearly a calm in the afternoon, when they started the boats. I suppose still on the principle that as a drift match would last longer, it would provide more fun for the money. I am, Sir, Your obedient servant, A Membee of the Royal Thames Yachx Club.