A NEW DEPARTURE IN ROWING.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume VIII, Issue 2343, 10 July 1886, Page 1 (Supplement)

A NEW DEPARTURE IN ROWING.

Dr Furnival writes to the Pall Mall Gazette as follows:

Your old University aud other boating readers will be interested to learn that the first race ever rowed on the Thames—or indeed in Groat Britain —in tho new style of boat, sculling fours, was rowed iu two heats and a final on Saturday by crews of the Maurice Rowing Club, of which I am the president. This race, I hope will b» the inauguration of the substituting in boating of the handier and better tools, a pair of sculls, for the clumsier, less level oar. Had the rowing mind been aB alert as the cycling mind, tho change would have been made two or three years ago, when our Maurice Club trials conclusively proved the superiority of sculls to oars as racing implements. Bat on tho river it is not as on the track, On the latter every improvement is adopted as soon as it is made. Directly the great inventor, Huuiber, introduces a new type of machinj, it is copied and sometiuii's improved, all through tho trade, and over the world, But on the river prejudice in favor of old ways prevails, Men right and left know as well as we of the Maurice Club that sculls have beaten oars, and will beat them again whenever they are tried against them, fairly level crews changing boats. But (he sturdy old Tories of fours and eights declare their fathers always rowed with i oars, and they too have always rowed ! with oars; God forbid that they should johange the good old stupid ways. ; Why, the Thames might dry up sin indignation at such newfangled i notions. Two pairs of sculls Una skiff are allocable; so are three pairs in a randan, but four pairs iu a four; aud eight pairs in an eighthGood heavens, what is the world coming to I However, Sculls for Oars is the one gieat change wanted in boating; and it'll have to be made, notwithstanding all the pig-heads in England. With sculls, men sit in the middle of the boat, not on opposite sides as with oars, With sculls, the power is more equally and more profitably applied than with oars; a crew gets sooner together, and gets more pace out of its boat. A sculling eight with eight good men in her is the prettiest as well as the fastest boat ever seen on water.