Henley: Ready To Go

The Leander raft, the boat tent area and the regatta finish viewed through the balustrades of Henley Bridge.

Tim Koch was at Henley on Tuesday, the day before the regatta started, and he writes:

I am pleased to report that the course is straight, the Pimm’s is chilled and the weather is excellent. Unfortunately the competitors seem to get younger and thinner every year but perhaps that is just when viewed in relation to my own age and waistline. Here is pictorial proof that 2014 Henley Royal Regatta is ready to mark its 175th year in good style.

Yale University, one of the eight contenders for the Remenham Challenge Cup (Women’s Open Eights). The U.S. is one of twenty overseas countries represented.

Bladework in the boat tent area.

Durham University 'A', one of two Durham crews in the Temple Challenge Cup (Men’s Student Eights).

London’s crew for the Thames Cup (Men’s Club Eights) in a reflective mood.

Regatta Headquarters, just upstream of Henley Bridge. Strangely, during Henley time it is deserted as all the administration moves to the regatta area.

Van Voorhis New Yale Captain

In a press release Yale announces that the team has elected a new captain for the 2014-15 Season. The press release reads:

Photo: Bulldogs.com

Following the best varsity eight finishes in years at the Eastern Sprints and IRAs, the Yale heavyweights have elected Lyon Van Voorhis to lead the team to even better results as next year’s captain. The rising senior from Mattapoisett, Mass., is a history major in Branford College. He will take over leadership duties for the heavyweights from outgoing captain Zachary Johnson ’14.

“I am very honored to have been granted this responsibility”,  said Van Voorhis. “In my three years on the team, I have seen unbelievable growth in the program, and I am excited to keep moving it forward this coming year”.

Van Voorhis joined the heavyweight crew his freshman year as a novice to the sport. In his first year rowing, he sat four-seat in the 1F that had dual season wins over Brown, Columbia, Dartmouth, Penn and Princeton.

His sophomore year, Van Voorhis was a part of the crew that finished second in the Club Eight event at the Head of the Charles Regatta in Boston. He went on to row in the third varsity that beat Dartmouth and finished ninth at Sprints.

This past season, Van Voorhis rowed in the junior varsity, helping it to one of its most successful seasons in recent history. The boat went 3-3 in the regular dual-racing season, beating Cornell, Dartmouth and Brown. The boat went on to finish 12th at Sprints and 10th at IRAs.

Growing up in Mattapoisett, Van Voorhis attended Falmouth Academy, where he played varsity soccer, basketball and lacrosse. During his senior seasons in high school he made the All-League Team for all three. He began rowing during his first year at Yale.

This summer Van Voorhis will be training out of a rowing club and working in Berlin, Germany.

One Up for Charley Butt – When Crimson Takes All

The hopes were high at the Yale camp this year to finally, after a six-year wait, claim The Sexton Cup for the Varsity Heavyweights at the 149th Harvard – Yale Regatta which was held on Saturday, 7 June, on the Thames River in New London, Connecticut. (The river is pronounced so it rhymes with ‘James’.) It seemed maybe a bit too optimistic, as Harvard had previously somewhat easily taken care of whatever the Bulldogs had thrown at them for the last decade. Last time Yale Varsity Heavyweights won was in 2007 (and before that in 1999), their 2nd Varsity (Junior Varsity, JV) also won in 2007 and their Freshmen in 2006, otherwise the victories were all crimson-coloured, which have been shown by the red-painted ‘Rock’, which is just before the finish line at Bartlett Cove. Traditionally, the Rock bears the colour of the winning ‘combination crew’, who races on Friday, and this year Harvard won this race again. As the Rock has not been blue for a long time, there are now spectators at the regatta who think that the Rock is permanently red with a big white ‘H’ painted on it.

The ‘Rock’

Nevertheless, Coach Steve Gladstone, who is now in his fourth season training the Bulldogs, or Eli's, as Yale is also called, saw progress in his crews this season and felt they were on the right track. For the first time since 2006, Yale made it to the final of the IRA National Championships a week prior to this regatta (they finished sixth). Undoubtedly, there was also the possibility that the Crimson had got their boat rocked after only finishing fifth at the IRA Championships (after otherwise having had a victorious season), which was a great disappointment to them all. They also have a new coach, Charley Butt, who had taken over the position as the Thomas Bolles Head Coach for Harvard Men’s Crew after the legendary Coach Harry Parker had died of cancer on 25 June, three weeks after last year’s regatta.

Parker’s incredible 44 victories, out of 51 seasons as the Crimson coach, must have scarred Yale crews throughout the years, even if the Bulldogs were unaware of it.

Although new to the heavyweights, Coach Butt was not all that ‘new’ to Harvard. He had breathed Crimson air for almost three decades, as the Harvard men’s lightweight coach, and he is known for being one of the best rowing and sculling technicians in the country. Whatever Yale thought about their chances to win a cup or two this year, the 149th Regatta, as a Boston newspaper put it, ‘turned into an old-fashioned Butt-kicking’ event with Harvard coming out on top in every race.

More than the usual number of spectators and ‘visitors’ had gathered at Red Top’s boathouse last Saturday to watch the races, although you only actually see the crews coming up the river the last mile of the course. Of course, there were the regular numbers of pretty girlfriends of the oarsmen, and the rowers’ parents and a few grandparents, but also a good amount of ‘old oars’ who had rowed for Harvard way back when, including some of Harry’s old boys, who had arrived from near and far to honour him. A memorial had been built in tribute to Parker at Red Top. Designed by artist Ellen Kennelly, whose father had rowed for Harvard, the memorial is ‘a curved stonewall representing the bend of an oar, with a flagpole at its apex, representing the pin of the oarlock. Atop the wall sits a bronze cast of Harry’s infamous megaphone – dents, scratches and all’, Row2K, wrote on its website. See a picture of the memorial here.

Red Top was the natural spot for this tribute. ‘This was the place of Harry’s first big win, and his last win’, his wife, Kathy Keeler, told Row2K.

Spectators at Red Top were happy to find shade when the sun was beaming down.

At precisely 2:45, the 2-mile Freshman race started under a blue sky with some fluffy white clouds and almost flat water. Though it was called ‘freshman’, the crews were not just freshmen. Parker had always insisted that the shortest race of the regatta was going to be for freshmen only, although this year it was decided that the crews could be mixed, a ‘3rd Varsity’. It was Butt’s intention to race with a pure freshman crew, but injuries and some needed changes after the poor performance at the IRA made him shift some of the oarsmen in the boats. In the first race of the day, the Crimson crew got an early lead, but did not manage to shake off the Yale crew. The Bulldogs did not, however, really manage to threaten the Crimson’s lead. Harvard was a boat length ahead over the finish line, at 9:19.6. Yale’s time, 9:22.8 – the closest race of the day.

The 2nd Varsity race also had ‘mixed’ crews, and several of the oarsmen in the Harvard crew were freshmen. While it is not that much difference from racing a 2,000-metre race to a 2-mile (c. 3,220) race, a 3-miler takes some time to get used to if you have been racing 2,000-metre races during the whole season. In this 3-mile race, Crimson led from the start, and when a cross-wind hit the course early in the race – a cross-wind that the 3rd Varsity crews did not feel, as they started further up-river – it made it harder for Yale to catch up. After Harvard left the area with the cross-wind, somewhere after the Submarine Base, the crew picked up speed and was almost 18 seconds ahead of Yale crossing the finish line, winning at 14:15.7. Yale’s time, 14:33.1.

A winning crew: Harvard 2nd Varsity

The start of the Varsity crews’ 4-mile race under the Gold Star Bridge took some time to organise, as Yale’s stake boat suddenly began to drift off. After a 15-20-minute delay, both crews were off. With the incoming tide and a tailwind, the times were expected to be fast, but the wind had picked up for the first mile and the crosswind made sure that the oarsmen had to fight for every inch on that mile. At first Yale took a slight lead, but at the half-mile mark, Crimson was up a five, six seats to Yale; for the rest of the first mile Yale stayed in contact with Harvard. Passing the 1-mile mark, Harvard put in an extra gear that gave them more than a boat length lead at the 2-mile mark. After that it was impossible for the Bulldogs to catch up. At the 3-mile mark, Crimson had a 14 second lead, and from there the crew, with Bow Peter Scholle, 2 James Medway, 3 Andrew Reed, 4 James Johnston, 5 Vincent Breet, 6 Max Meyer-Bosse, 7 Charles Risbey, Stroke Andy Holmes, and Cox Will Hakim, cruised up the course, winning at 19:32.3, while Yale’s time was 19:46.4.

Harvard Varsity now leads the series by 96 victories to Yale’s 54.

Harvard oarsmen taking care of their boat before tossing in their cox, Will Hakim, in the Thames. Hakim, on the right, is just catching the broom that someone is tossing to him.

HTBS managed to exchange a couple of words with Harvard’s Varsity cox, Will Hakim, who the previous two years has coxed the JV boat, and who was now wet from having been tossed in the Thames. Happily leaning on the famous broom that comes out from the boathouse after every clean sweep, three victories (four if you count the Friday Coxed Four race for ‘combi crews’), I asked him if there was ever any doubt that his boat was going to win? Will said: ‘No, not really. We were prepared from any attacks from Yale, and we never felt pressured. Charley [Butt] trained us well, and to us there was never any doubt that we would win.’

When I later talked to Harvard’s Varsity stroke and captain, Andy Holmes, he said that the crew had been struggling in the choppy waters just before the Submarine Base. ‘Then we were really bouncing around a lot’, Holmes said in his beautiful Scottish accent. To the question how much it meant to have oarsmen in the boat who have rowed in the race before, Holmes said: ‘It means a lot. Four, five guys have rowed in the race before, for Harry. It gives confidence’. Holmes, who himself has rowed in three previous Varsity races for Harvard against Yale, praised the rest of the crew: ‘This is a great team. The boys had an unbelievable rhythm, which really made it easy for me. We had some strong guys from South Africa in the “engine room” [4 James Johnston and 5 Vincent Breet] – those guys are phenomenal. This is my last year, and it has been a fantastic four years and I have learned a lot.’ Holmes continues: ‘We wanted to win, we did it for Harry and we did it for Charley. We wanted Charley to get off with one [win].’

Andy Holmes, Harvard Varsity captain and stroke, is talking to the gentlemen of the press (no female reporters this year at the regatta!).

Later this summer, Harvard is going to Henley Royal Regatta, but not with any eights. Instead they are sending some fours. I asked Holmes for which cup they are going, and he said: ‘The Visitors’ Challenge Cup, with me, Peter Scholle, Andy Reed and Max Meyer-Bosse. We are also competing in the Prince Albert Challenge Cup [coxed Four for students] with some freshmen.’

Coach Charley Butt happily waving the broom.

After the traditional winning photograph of the crew with their coach, the latter was tossed in the river. Charley Butt did not seem to mind it at all, and after some seconds in the water, he was joined by the crew, and by his young son, who voluntarily took a dip in the Thames. Standing on the dock, wet, but happy, Butt kindly agreed to answer some questions even from an obscure blog reporter as yours truly. My first question was obvious:

‘You had some big shoes to fill, how does it feel?’ Butt laughed before he answered: ‘Oh, it will take a while yet to get used to, but the guys have rowed for Harry, so it was as much a continuance of him as it was a beginning for me. The real test for me is going forward with each year.’ He continued: ‘The way it went today…. I am delighted. They are really good guys. You can see they row well. All of them have rowed for Harry, except for a freshman [James Johnston] who came in today.’

Then I asked him about all the shuffling around of the crews. ‘Yes there was a lot of that for this weekend. We knew if would be very difficult, and this was going to be important.’

‘Then you are going to Henley with some fours? I asked. ‘Yes’, Butt replied, ‘we will take some fours, and then continue on….’

I thank him and wished him luck at Henley.

A wet Coach Butt with an equally wet son in the background.

Charley Butt seems to be a very humble man, just the fellow who could well start a new era for the Crimson. Of course, the question that many, if not all, Yale supporters are asking right now is: how long will it take for Yale to turn the corner? As it is now, it is honestly not much of a competition in either race.

Harvard Varsity winners.

To the question from the newspaper the New Haven Register ‘How long until the Bulldogs can compete with Harvard again?’ Yale’s Coach Steve Gladstone said:

That’s a good question. Here’s what it takes. If you have enough depth in squad to have serious and meaningful competition, it can go quickly. Right now we don’t have that. We really don’t. You can see the drop-off with the JV. There’s not that depth. Next year’s incoming class should provide that. I’m not shy about it; it’s our intention to have this program be in the top echelon. Not just in the top six, but let’s start medaling and win this race. A year away? Two years away? I don’t know.

Two Crimson ‘old oars’ watching the river, where a winning Harvard crew is approaching the dock at Red Top.

Coming back to the question about having only freshmen in the ‘Freshman race’, I see both pros and cons with that. As it is now, the door is open for a 3rd Varsity, instead of a pure freshman race. This means, as was proved this year with all the crews from both Yale and Harvard, that freshmen, sophomores, juniors and seniors can be picked for any of the boat crews. What we get with this system is an A-, B- and C-boat, where the eight very best oarsmen form the crew for the A-boat (Varsity), the next best eight oarsmen form the B-boat (2nd Varsity), and the next best rowers are the C-boat (3rd Varsity). I really wish that the oarsmen in the Freshman crew were ‘fresh’, but if we take a look at this year’s list of rowers, it tells us that it will be impossible.

Of the twenty-seven men in the Harvard crews, more than half of them, eighteen men, were foreigners, while Yale had twelve non-Americans rowing in their crews. It is a fact, that non-Americans begin to row earlier in life than Americans; they are then ‘fresh’ both academically and in the boat, while the Brits, other Europeans, New Zealanders, Australians and South Africans already have more competition experience when they come as freshmen to Yale and Harvard. What I heard during the races on Saturday was that many of the oarsmen from the other countries will now return home to try to qualify for the Under-23 World Championships – yes, they are that good.

Of course, a different perspective is that of the international oarsmen rowing for Oxford and Cambridge in the famous Boat Race. Many of the foreigners in the Oxbridge crews are both World Champions and Olympians before they join these universities’ boat clubs; there are no freshmen, sophomores, juniors and seniors rowing categories in the boat races between Oxford and Cambridge.

It is going to be interesting to see in which direction the Harvard – Yale Regatta will develop in the future with foreigners at the oars, and how the Charley Butt era will look a couple of years from now.

Among the celebrities at Red Top was boat builder Graeme King of Putney, Vermont.

Here are the lists of the crews:

3rd Varsity/Freshman: The New London Cup
Harvard
Bow Achim Harzheim (Germany)
2 Craig Slater (New Jersey)
3 Alex Uruchurtu (Australia)
4 Philip Bates (Maryland)
5 Adam Janes (England)
6 Andrew Emmett (Australia)
7 Josh Bernstein (England)
Str. Gregory Edwards (England)
Cox Brittanie Maxwell (Minnesota)

Yale
Bow William Rosenbloom (Illinois)
2 Jack McGinn (Minnesota)
3 Lawrence Lopez-Menzies (Connecticut)
4 Ed Reeves (New Zealand)
5 Grant Olscamp (Ohio)
6 Emery Schoenly (Connecticut)
7 John Risbergs (New York)
Str. Henry Bird (New York)
Cox Mackenzie Lee (California)

Watch the 3rd Varsity/Freshman race:



2nd Varsity: The F. Valentine Chappell Trophy
Harvard
Bow Ross Jarvis (Australia)
2 Sean Vedrinelle (France)
3 Matt Carter (England)
4 James Croxford (Australia)
5 Ben Lynton (New Zealand)
6 Henry Kennelly (Massachusetts)
7 Rory Glover (Australia)
Str. Chase Buchholz (Rhode Island)
Cox Joel Batesman (New Zealand)

Yale
Bow Lyon van Voorhis (Massachusetts)
2 Elliot O’Rielly (France)
3 Robert Michel (New Jersey)
4 Robin Molen-Grisgull (Australia)
5 Clements Barth (Germany)
6 Thomas Pagel (England)
7 Nate Goodman (New Jersey)
Str. Adam Smith (New Zealand)
Cox Chris Carothers (Illinois)

Watch the 2nd Varsity race:



Varsity The Sexton Cup
Harvard
Bow Peter Scholle (Massachusetts)
2 James Medway (Australia)
3 Andrew Reed (Massachusetts)
4 James Johnston (South Africa)
5 Vincent Breet (South Africa)
6 Max Meyer-Bosse (Connecticut)
7 Charles Risbey (Australia)
Str. Andrew Holmes (Scotland)
Cox William Hakim (Massachusetts)

Yale
Bow Owen Symington (Australia)
2 Zachary Johnson (California)
3 David DeVries (California)
4 Ollie Wynne-Griffith (England)
5 Hubert Trzybinski (Germany)
6 Simon Keenan (Australia)
7 Robert Hurn (Australia)
Str. Peter Tortora (Connecticut)
Cox Oliver Fletcher (England)

Watch the Varsity race:



Race commentators in the videos above are Andy Card and Charlie Hamlin.

Winning Harvard crews getting ready to celebrate - Crimson now leads the series with 96 victories to Yale’s 54.

The Rock will stay Red!

Harvard's Varsity crew won the 4-mile race in 19:23.3.

After today's 149th Yale-Harvard Regatta on the Thames River in New London, it is clear that the 'Rock' will stay RED, as the Crimson won all three races under a beautiful blue sky. Harvard's new coach, Charley Butt, can now relax after what must have been a nerve wrecking afternoon. Butt's Varsity crew's winning time was 19:23.3, which was 14 seconds ahead of Yale's.

HTBS will come back with a full race report in a couple of days. In the meantime, if you missed to watch the 4-mile race, take a look, here - the stake boats at the start had problems, so it takes several minutes before the race starts in this video. Listen to race commentators Andy Card and Charlie Hamlin small talk....

Will the Rock be Red or Blue Tomorrow?

Tomorrow, for the 149th time, Harvard will meet Yale for their 4-mile race on the Thames River in New London, Connecticut. This time the Crimsons will not have their legendary coach Harry Parker to back them up. Parker died of cancer on 25 June last year, after having been the Crimson heavyweight coach for 51 years. Charley Butt, the Harvard lightweight coach for 29 years, took over the heavyweights, and tomorrow will be his first race as their coach against Yale in the Harvard-Yale Regatta, which was rowed for the first time in 1852.

Harvard has won the race the sixth last times against Yale and the question is now if the Bulldogs will manage to turn the tide. Steve Gladstone, the Bulldogs’ heavyweight coach who came to Yale four years ago, told a reporter of the New Haven Register: ‘I’m pleased with the development. It’s been good. No coach is ever content. There is a clear indication we’re on the right track. We’re progressing.’

At the IRA National Championships, which was held on Lake Mercer last weekend, Harvard came fifth, while Yale was sixth, 6 seconds behind. Washington won, with Brown second, California third and Princeton fourth. It was a disappointing place for Harvard, while Yale took a step up, as it was the first time since 2006 they manage to make the final in the Championships.

Tomorrow afternoon, we will see if the famous ‘Rock’ at the finish line will be painted blue or red.

The races start at 2:45 p.m. on Saturday, 7 June, with the freshmen’s race, which will be followed by the 2nd varsity race, and then the varsity (heavyweights). Today, the sparemen’s race will be rowed on the Thames.

The Man Who Spanned the 20th Century: From Jim Ten Eyck to Ronald Reagan (via Guy Nickalls and Joseph Stalin) – Part 2

1910: The third of six consecutive Harvard victories over Yale.

Here is Part 2 of Tim Koch’s article on William Averell Harriman. Part 1 was posted yesterday.

In 1911, seventy-four years, two World Wars and thirteen Presidents before his death, Harriman had received the first of his life’s many important appointments when he was made coach of the Yale Freshman Crew for 1912. The Graduate Rowing Committee was desperate to find a solution to the Blue’s poor performance on the water and had decided to abandon professional coaching and to use a ‘gentleman graduate coach’ in the British manner. The new Freshman coach wanted to change the short, choppy stroke with a slow catch and a quick recovery that Yale and most American crews were using. He believed the key to success would be to adopt the ‘English Style’ of rowing, a long, swinging stroke which gave more power and speed with fewer strokes per minute. Following the success of the Leander Eight in the 1908 Olympics, this ‘orthodox style’ of rowing was dominant at Oxford and so, in February 1912, Harriman got a six week leave of absence from the University, obtained some letters of introduction to Oxford coach, G. C. Bourne, and to the OUBC President, R. C. Bourne (G. C.’s son) and booked his passage to England. His reception was a cold one in both senses of the word. In 1955, Sports Illustrated magazine painted this scene:

Arriving at Oxford ...Averell found his way to the boathouse where he waited outside an open door in the rain while a boatman went up to the dressing room to fetch the Oxford (President). In his own good time that gentleman came down dressed in a great white duffle coat, stood in the rain with Harriman, read and then quizzically reread the letter of introduction. Governor Harriman recalls its key sentence: “Harriman has come from Yale, which is 3,000 miles away, to see you row.” The (President) crumpled the letter into a ball, stuffed it in his pocket and said, “We’ll be going down the river shortly. If you walk along the towpath, you will be able to see us.” He left Harriman standing in the rain.

Possibly this chilly reception was due to the suspicion that an American was unlikely to be an amateur as defined in the strict and peculiar rules of Britain’s Amateur Rowing Association, especially as regards its opposition to professional coaching. Also, the Brits may have sensed that he was ‘new money’ and may have been unsure if he really was ‘a gentleman’. Whatever the reason, Harriman was left alone on the Isis towpath to observe Oxford’s preparations for the 1912 Boat Race.

Oxford, 1912.

The American visitor was still largely ignored when he followed the crew to Henley-on-Thames where they had further coaching under W. F. C. Holland. Daily he followed the crew, observing from horseback, but when they all dined at Leander in the evening, he sat alone. Eventually the Dark Blues must have realised just how serious Harriman was and, perhaps a little flattered by his attention, President Bourne invited him to eat with them.

Sports Illustrated again:

Thus, finally, and formally introduced, Averell got on famously with the Oxonians and joined them at meals and in their weekly glass of champagne. That introduction to British manners and character was not forgotten on later trips to England as World War II Lend-Lease boss...

After training at Henley, the crew moved to Putney for a final period of instruction before the Boat Race on 30 March, now with Harcourt Gilbey Gold as finishing coach. Harriman’s leave of absence from Yale was running out but he was tempted to stay on in England to see the race against Cambridge. Thus he booked his passage back to the United States on two ships, one leaving before and one after the event. Eventually, he decided that he would have to miss the race and he took the earlier sailing. He cancelled the later booking, one that was to have been on the maiden voyage of a new liner – RMS Titanic.

Yale Freshmen Eight, 1913. Picture: Library of Congress.

On his return Harriman had less than three months to teach his Freshmen the new style in time for their race against Harvard at New London on 21 June. On the day, Yale lost this and every other race in the 1912 regatta. However, the Freshmen’s losing margin at two and a half seconds was the University’s smallest and they regularly beat their own Varsity crew in training. As a result of this, Harriman was eventually made head coach for 1913.

The new man built soon formed his coaching team and appointed the Freshmen’s ‘7’ man to train them further in the English Style. The new Freshmen coach was one Dean Acheson, a future Secretary of State (Foreign Secretary) and a man who in later years would, along with Harriman, become one of ‘The Wise Men’ and who perhaps had more influence on post-1945 American foreign policy than anyone else. Years later, following a disagreement with Acheson over Vietnam, Harriman is alleged to have said to an aide: “To you he’s the great Secretary of State. But to me, he’s the freshman I taught to row at Yale.”

In January 1913, Harriman went back to Oxford to learn more of the English Style, this time taking with him Jim Rodgers (his predecessor as head coach who now had become his advisory coach) and Bud Snowden (the Yale Captain).

Yale Varsity Four, 1913. Harriman should have got them bigger shorts. Picture: Library of Congress.

By 14 April the Washington Herald headlined “Yale Oarsmen Hard At Work – Harriman Employs Methods Which He Learned While Watching Oxford – Awaits English Coaches”. The British finishing coaches were Alister Kirby (who rowed for Oxford in the Boat Races of 1906 to 1909 and was in the winning eight at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics) and Harcourt Gilbey Gold (who stroked three successive wins for both Eton at Henley and Oxford in the Boat Race). Gold also brought his brother-in-law, Gilchrist Maclagan, (who coxed four University Boat Races, six Henley Grand wins and the winning eight at the Stockholm Olympics). He was to instruct the cox in use of the new English built and ‘English rigged’ boat. The Herald article indicated of how far the Varsity coach would defer: Until the two English coaches arrive it is doubtful if Harriman will attempt to select even a tentative first eight.

Unfortunately, things were left very late. The race against Harvard was to be on 20 June, Kirby arrived on 10 May and Gold, Maclagan and the new boat were only available from 3 June. Kirby’s first view of the American crews was at the Yale Spring Regatta on 12 May and the results of this were a selector’s nightmare. The Second Varsity defeated the Varsity by two lengths, the Sophomores (2nd Years) defeated the Juniors (3rd Years) and the Second Freshmen were defeated by a high school crew.

Not surprisingly perhaps, Harvard won every race at New London in 1913. The Yale Varsity crew were in the lead at two miles but lost by 38 seconds at the finish. Crossing the line they were rating 29, compared to Harvard’s 38.

Spectators at the Harvard - Yale Regatta.

This crushing defeat was not the end for the English Style at Yale. Gold and Kirby were engaged to return as finishing coaches for the next year and almost immediately Harriman and Acheson left for England, partly to yet further study rowing technique, partly to attend Henley Royal Regatta on 2 to 5 July. They had a very good time socially but still, as Acheson later recalled, ‘returned as full as Ulysses of esoteric learning about rowing – shell construction, rigging, stroke and training – and with more confidence in our learning that I think I have since felt about anything’. Full of this self-belief, they arranged a race against Princeton. The Harvard newspaper, The Crimson, of 11 November 1913 takes up the story concerning their old rivals with, no doubt, a certain amount of schadenfreude:

When the present English system of rowing was first adopted at Yale, it was felt that the success or failure of the undertaking could not be determined in a year’s time, but most of the followers of the scheme had agreed that the race with Princeton on October 25 would go far towards showing whether or not the system warranted a continuation. The Yale crew came across the finish line a length behind Princeton after a two-mile race, which was characterized for Yale as splashing, unfinished and arrhythmical, the eight men being utterly exhausted. This seems to have decided the matter in the eyes of the graduate and undergraduate bodies, the general consensus of opinion being that unless Yale wishes to have her crew suffer continual defeat, a professional coach of the first rank must be obtained and a new system of rowing installed.

Yale Freshmen Eight, 1913.

A month later, The Day newspaper of 15 December 1913 reported ‘Yale Discards the English Style...’ and that Harriman was to be replaced. While the new Varsity coach (Richard Armstrong, Yale ‘95) was still a ‘gentleman graduate’ (albeit paid), he was to receive strong professional assistance:

Guy Nickalls, the famous Leander Rowing Club coach of London and Eugene J. Giannini, coach for years of the New York Athletic Club crews, have been asked to assist.... The whole question of a change in crew policy came about after the defeat by Princeton.... After this race W. Averell Harriman practically eliminated himself from the situation and left the way for a new coach and a new policy..... Nickalls is quoted as saying that there is no such thing as the English stroke or a Chinese stroke, speaking broadly, and that the stroke used by the English college crews is not in all points suitable for use by American college crews.

An adjoining article had an interview with the great Cornell coach, Charles E. Courtney:

..... Coach Courtney came out in strong praise of the English system. He said that Yale might have had some success of it if she had someone who knew how to teach it. Without mentioning any names Courtney left the impression that young Averell Harriman was not the best man in the world to teach Yale the English stroke.

Harriman and others in the Yale coaching launch, 1913. Picture: Library of Congress.

Perhaps it was the arrogance of youth and of wealth and privilege, the hubris of the ruling class, that made the young Harriman think that he could teach high performance rowing of any style when his ‘crew’ experience was limited to school and to his Freshman year and when his coaching experience was almost non-existent. Further, to attempt to learn a new and different style of rowing and then impart it to others simply added to the likelihood of failure. Perhaps his time at school had set him up for this. In their book, The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made, Isaacson and Thomas said about Harriman at Groton:

...with his air of stoic detachment, Harriman seemed aloof even to students of his own age. He had been taught to row by a private tutor on his family’s own private lake, and the other boys came to regard him as more of a coach than a schoolmate as he helped to organise the underclass crews.

Isaacson and Thomas also said of the young Harriman:

He was tough physically and mentally, and relished putting his abilities on the line. Recreations were challenges to be mastered, and Harriman inevitably did: polo, rowing, skiing, bowling, croquet...... ‘He went into any game lock, stock, and barrel’, Robert Lovett later recalled. ‘He would get whatever he needed – the best horses, coaches, equipment....... and worked like the Devil to win'.

Most importantly perhaps, there was the influence on Harriman of his father, who was loving in a strict, stern way, but was fiercely determined that each of his children should ‘be something and somebody’. Maury Klein, a biographer of Harriman Senior, holds that: ‘(E. H.) Harriman prodded [his] children into reaching beyond what they thought themselves capable of doing’.

Here, I would suggest, is ‘the nub’. Harriman worked as hard as he possibly could have done to understand and communicate ‘the English Style’ in the very short time that he had available. But money and effort and will cannot speed the acquisition of the one thing that practically every coach needs – experience.* Even if he had decided not to change Yale’s rowing style, it is doubtful that such a novice coach would have achieved much better results. When he did bring in men of experience to coach, they did not have enough time to be effective. The new regime under Nickalls had both time and experience and Yale Varsity won by inches in 1914 and by 21 seconds in 1915. While it would be churlish not to give Harriman some of the credit for these successes, how much is for history to speculate.

Alert and active to the end, William Averell Harriman died in New York on 26 July 1986, aged 94. In a tribute, former Secretary of State Dean Rusk said: ‘One cannot grieve after a life so long and so nobly led’.

* Before someone with a knowledge of Yale Rowing corrects me, I will have to acknowledge ‘the exception that proves the rule’. In 1870, Yale Semaphore Bob Cook studied ‘orthodox’ rowing in England and is credited with bringing it to the United States and adapting it to American rigs to become ‘The Bob Cook Stroke’ which was widely used by U.S. college crews.

The Man Who Spanned the 20th Century: From Jim Ten Eyck to Ronald Reagan (via Guy Nickalls and Joseph Stalin) – Part 1

Yale Varsity Eight, 1913. Picture: Library of Congress.

Tim Koch writes:

The head coach that Yale appointed in December 1912 seemed an odd choice to many people. He was a Junior (3rd Year) who had only rowed for the University as a Freshman (1st Year) and he was the socialite son of one of the richest men in the United States. It was a bold move made largely out of desperation. Yale had not won the annual regatta against Harvard, the oldest intercollegiate contest in the United States, since 1907. Bob Cook, who coached Yale from 1872 to 1899, supported the appointment, saying that the young man in question was ‘easily the most promising crew coach in America..... I hope that he can give his life to it.’ As things turned out, the new coach did not make rowing his lifetime's commitment. However, the two years that he did give to coaching were remarkable for their efforts. Further, after he left Yale and rowing behind, his life and work from the First World War to the final days of the Cold War had a great and lasting effect on the United States and on the world.

William Averell Harriman was born in New York in 1891, the son of E. H. Harriman. ‘E.H.’ had begun his working life as a $5 a week office boy and rose to become head of the Union Pacific Railroad with a fortune of $70 million (in the days when $70 million was worth something). It is easy for the children of fabulously wealthy men to lead lives of unproductive (and often self-destructive) leisure but this was not to be the case. As W. A. Harriman’s New York Times obituary pointed out:

His strong-minded father impressed on him the virtues of a healthy body, strong nerves, an ability to mix with others and public service. ''Great wealth is an obligation,'' his father declared.

William Averell Harriman, 1913. Dubbed by the press as ‘the millionaire coach’. Picture: Library of Congress.

Harriman Junior was an undistinguished student academically at his prep school, Groton, Massachusetts, and later at Yale (he probably would not get into an Ivy League University today). However, he did excel at sport – including rowing and sculling. Typically, in the summer of 1908 his father hired the best sculling coach that he could find to tutor his two sons on the private lake of his 20,000-acre estate at Arden, N.Y. He chose James A. Ten Eyck whose Syracuse eight had just defeated a much fancied Cornell crew at the Intercollegiate Rowing Association Regatta. In September 1909, Harriman went up to Yale and made the Freshman Crew. He had ‘a polished style’ but his weight of only 160 pounds/72.5 kg went against him and in his Sophomore (second) year he took up double sculling. His coaching career spanned his Junior (third) and Senior (fourth) years and I will return to this after a brief summary – as far as that is possible – of the remarkable life that W. Averell Harriman led after Yale.

Harriman at Groton School, fifth from the left.

While still at Yale, Harriman joined the Board of the Union Pacific Railway, having gained some practical experience of the business by working as a track repair man in his holidays. In 1917, keen to show that he was not just ‘the boss’s son’, he left Union Pacific and bought a rundown shipyard. In less than ten years he was the most powerful man in American shipping. Having thus proved ‘that a man can rise from greatness’, in 1926, he sold his ships and returned to Union Pacific as Chairman. In 1920, he had also established the private bank of Harriman Brothers and undertook as series of innovative international investments including making a mining deal with Leon Trotsky and the new Soviet Russian State. Though not all of his business ventures were profitable, Harriman’s successes were notable – as when he made huge profits for Union Pacific during the Great Depression when many other railroads went bankrupt.

Until 1934 Harriman was a businessman, not a direct political player. However, he perceived that with the coming of ‘The New Deal’ (a series of interventionist government programmes made in response to the Great Depression), power was shifting from Wall Street to Washington. Democrat President Roosevelt (‘FDR’) made the ‘reformed Republican’ chief of the National Recovery Administration, an agency established to set prices and establish ‘fair practice’. In 1941, while America was still technically neutral, FDR put him in charge of Lend-Lease Aid to Britain. His brief was ‘to keep the British Isles afloat’ by supplying food and materials from the U.S. and this he did using all his considerable skill. The UK, standing alone against the Nazis, had three weeks supply of food left and desperately needed a friend like Harriman. Fêted by his hosts, he enjoyed an intimate relationship with Churchill and his Government (though not as intimate as the one he enjoyed with Winston’s young and newly married daughter-in-law, the ‘colourful’ Pamela Churchill).

Harriman (second from right) meeting the first American food ship to arrive under lend-lease to Britain. While this is clearly a posed publicity shot, the sending of fresh eggs across the Atlantic seems a little eccentric.

During the war Harriman’s diplomatic skills became increasingly recognised and he was a key participant at all of the major wartime summit meetings. His role was crucial as he was able to interpret Stalin to both Roosevelt and Churchill and he also smoothed relations between the latter two leaders.

Yalta, 1945. Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin seated, Harriman standing, back right.

With previous experience of dealing with the Soviet Union, Harriman was an obvious choice as U.S. Ambassador to the USSR from 1943 to 1946. He shocked many with his bluntness towards Stalin but this may have produced some sort of respect from the Soviet leader who made him a gift of a white stallion. Never an ideologue with the Soviets, he found Stalin ‘ruthless and brutal..... but basically dependable’ and also ‘better informed than Roosevelt and more realistic than Churchill’. He claimed that his most notable achievement as Ambassador was rejecting the USSR’s demand for a Soviet occupation zone in Japan, typically something he did without consulting Washington.

1942: Churchill, Stalin, Harriman. Stalin always won the staring contests.

After the War Harriman was briefly Ambassador to Britain but was soon appointed President Truman’s Secretary of Commerce. He was concerned that, with the arrival of peace, most Americans only wanted ‘to drink Coke and go to the movies’. He felt that the United States should take an interventionist role in ‘defending freedom’ around the world. Motivated by noblesse oblige, Harriman and other patricians paid little heed to the instinctively isolationist American public opinion. He and fellow Yale Crew alumnus Dean Acheson were the leading members of the group of six friends who later became known as ‘The Wise Men’. Truman had few ideas on foreign policy and allowed the six to develop the policy of ‘containment’ in dealing with the Communist bloc. To this end Harriman was one of the founders of NATO, the collective defence agreement, and he became an architect of the Marshall Plan, the initiative to aid the rebuilding of Europe in a bid to stop the spread of Communism.

1951: The Freshman Coach, the Head Coach and the Commander-in-Chief – Acheson, Harriman and Truman. Picture: pastdaily.com

In post-war American domestic politics Harriman, standing as ‘an uncompromising New Deal-Fair Deal candidate’, was an unsuccessful in obtaining the Democratic nomination for President in 1952 and in 1956. His only elected office was as Governor of New York State between 1954 and 1958. Despite (or perhaps because of) his liberal reforms in those four years (foreshadowing Kennedy’s New Frontier and Johnson’s Great Society) he was defeated after one term by one of the few men richer than he was – Nelson Rockefeller.

In 1960, President-elect Kennedy (‘JFK’) gave Harriman a very free hand and appointed him ‘ambassador-at-large’, to operate ‘with the full confidence of the president and an intimate knowledge of all aspects of United States policy’. He effectively served in this role not only for JFK but also for his successor as President, Lyndon Johnson. In 1963, he negotiated the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with the Soviets that put an end to the superpowers’ testing of atomic weapons in the atmosphere. He spent most of the decade focused on Vietnam and for a time he supported the war in South East Asia. In 1968, he became the chief U.S. negotiator at the Paris peace talks, but after the election of Republican President Richard Nixon Harriman was, to his frustration, replaced.

1960: Harriman with President Kennedy. The 71-year-old was initially sidelined at the youthful Kennedy White House, but the new President soon found that there was no replacement for him. Edward Kennedy later said: ‘when my brother Jack first became President, he announced that the torch had been passed to a new generation of Americans. Then he turned around and realized that Averell Harriman still had it'.

1963: Harriman with Khruschev at the Test Ban Treaty talks.

1964: Harriman with President Johnson. Picture: businessinsider.com

In the 1970s, Harriman became a leading spokesman for detente as well as assuming the role of the Grand Old Man of the Democratic Party. In 1976, President Carter recruited him to rally public support for the Administration’s ultimately successful battle to secure ratification of the Panama Canal treaties. His final diplomatic mission was in 1982 during the Reagan Administration when, at the age of 92, he went to Moscow to meet with Soviet Leader Andropov. Possibly the 71-year-old Reagan like having a man around who was actually older than himself, even if it was someone who was, in the words of Presidential chronicler T.H. White, ‘the last tall timber of the New Deal’.

Part 2 will be posted tomorrow.

The Way of the Man with the last Wooden Spoon

Cuthbert Lempriere Holthouse, oarsman of Lady Margaret Boat Club and student of St John’s College, Cambridge, with his mock prize, the ‘Wooden Spoon’, which showed everyone that he was the last one on the 1909 honours list at the Mathematics Tripos. On Holthouse's left is a shield with St John’s College Coat of Arms.

The story of the ‘Wooden Spoon’ and the last man who received this award at Cambridge University, Cuthbert Lempriere Holthouse, has been told many times by bloggers all around the web. Most of these bloggers have got the information, it seems, from the Wikipedia entry called “Wooden Spoon”. However, as many HTBS readers would agree, especially after having taken a look at the picture of Holthouse above, this kind of ‘story ‘is just what you would expect to find on HTBS. I am afraid that I have not a lot to add about Cuthbert Lempriere Holthouse and his Spoon, but this is how the story goes:

Ever since man came up with sport competitions, the winner, an individual or a team, has received a grand prize. The ones coming in second and third have sometimes also got prizes, though of less value than the victor. Nowadays, gold, silver and bronze medals are handed out in most sports, but in a few sport events, for example Henley Royal Regatta, only the champion crew receives a winning cup.

Some sports have gone further and not only awarded prizes to the winner and the second- and third-placed persons or teams, but also the dead-last person/team has received a so-called booby prize. In the first fictional boat race report, in Book V in The Aeneid of Virgil, Aeneas presents Sergestus, who has steered his vessel too close to some rocks whereupon the oars wreck and leave Sergestus and his crew last of the competitors:

Aeneas presents Sergestus with the reward he promised,
happy that the ship is saved, and the crew rescued.
He is granted a Cretan born slave-girl, Pholoe, not unskilled
in the arts of Minerva, nursing twin boys at her breast.
(translated by A. S. Kline, 2002)

The first time the mock prize ‘Wooden Spoon’ was recorded was in 1793 (though, Wikipedia says in 1803), but as an academic ‘award’, not as a sport prize. Two years earlier, in 1791, the ‘Senior Wrangler’, the top student on the honours list, or the ‘academic success’, was first mentioned. ‘Spoon’, as in the slang word ‘spoony’(foolish), found its way into the academic world of Cambridge during the 1700s.

This one-metre long spoon is one of two (!) that were handed out by friends to two students of Selwyn College in 1906 (both ended up at the bottom of the degree list). This spoon now hangs on the staircase of the Selwyn College library, Cambridge.

In 1823, the poem “The Wooden Spoon” was published in The Cambridge Tart. One stanza reads:

And while he lives, he wields the boasted prize
Whose value all can feel, the weak, the wise;
Displays in triumph his distinguish’d boon,
The solid honours of the Wooden Spoon.

The year after this mock poem was published, the Cambridge student Hensleigh Wedgewood, who later would become a barrister and an etymologist, was handed a special prize as the Classics student at Cambridge who came dead last on the degree list. As it was a custom for examiners in the Mathematics Tripos to award prizes to top students and give the student who just managed to scrape by a wooden spoon, the examiners in Classics decided to award prizes to all their students, and as Wedgewood was last, they gave him a wooden wedge, a jest on his own name. In the 1860s, Wedgewood’s son, Ernest, kept up the good family tradition by becoming ‘The Spoon’.

The ‘Wooden Spoon’ also spread to other English-speaking countries. In 1847, it appeared at Yale University and, in 1861, at University of Pennsylvania. However, in America the ‘Wooden Spoon’ shifted from being a mock award to a honour award, so at Yale the most popular student was given the spoon.

The Wedge and the Spoon, from The Slang Dictionary (1913; published by Chatto & Windus, London).

At Cambridge, it was, however, the spoon handed out at the Mathematics Tripos that was most famous, or maybe it is more correct to say, ‘infamous’. The attitude towards ‘The Spoon’ also changed through the years, from being an embarrassment to receive to an attracted prize to walk away with. Reports tell that the student who was presented with ‘The Spoon’ in the Senate House, where the honours were handed out, was greeted with the same enthusiasm as the ‘Senior Wrangler’, at least amongst the students. At times, this occasion did turn out to be a disorderly event, as in June 1882, which came to be known as ‘The Battle of the Spoon’.

An unhappy student receives the ‘Wooden Spoon’. Detail from Robert B. Farren’s painting Degree Day (1863). See the full painting here.

While ‘The Spoon’ became quite notorious, it grew larger and larger, from a small wooden spoon to the last wooden spoon, which was 1,5 metre long and was handed out in 1909 to the student Cuthbert Lempriere Holthouse (1887-1967). Maybe it was because Holthouse was an oarsman at Lady Margaret Boat Club of St. John’s College that the spoon took the shape of an oar?

According to the Wikipedia entry “Wooden Spoon”, there is an inscription in Greek on this oar/spoon, which may be translated to something like this:

‘In Honours Mathematical
This is the very last of all
The Wooden Spoon which you see here
O you who see it, shed a tear

Alternatively: This wooden object is the last souvenir of the competitive examinations in mathematics. Look upon it, and weep.’

Looking at the photograph of Cuthbert Lempriere Holthouse, he does not look that displeased. We must remember that it was not that uncommon to receive a third degree. On this matter, HTBS’s Tim Koch has written ‘a Third was [an] entirely appropriate [degree]. It was known as “A Gentleman’s Degree” or “An Oarsman’s Degree”’, so it was very suitable for young Holthouse to be on the receiving end. We also have to remember that a good number of students placed below the ‘Wooden Spoon’ by getting an Ordinary degree. ‘In the 1860s about three-quarters of the roughly 400 candidates did not score enough to be awarded honours, and were known as poll men’, it says in “Wooden Spoon” on Wikipedia.

When Cuthbert Lempriere Holthouse – don’t you think that it’s such a appropriate name for the last holder of the ‘Wooden Spoon’? – left Cambridge, he, of course, brought his award with him. Holthouse became a clergyman and was appointed an army chaplain during the First World War, in France in 1918. Before he went to Canada in the 1930s, he lent the ‘Wooden Spoon’ to St John’s, so the college could put it on display. When Holthouse came back to England, the ‘Wooden Spoon’ was returned to him.

In the essay “The Wooden Spoon. Rank (dis)order in Cambridge 1753-1909” (2012), Christopher Stray writes:

It subsequently returned to the college in a very curious way. In the 1960s Holthouse put his house in Winchester up for sale so that he could move into a retirement home. One of those who came to inspect the house was another St. John’s oarsman, Guthie Easten, who on looking through the window immediately recognized the spoon. The upshot was that Easten drove the spoon to Cambridge in his small car, with one end sticking out of a window covered in a plastic bag.

When the tripos system changed after 1909, students were grouped into classes that made it impossible to tell who was the lowest place, so the practice ceased. Nevertheless, today Cuthbert Lempriere Holthouse and his ‘Wooden Spoon’ live on; in our social media era, there is of course a Twitter account named @lastwoodenspoon.

A Lady's Ticket for the Wooden Spoon Exhibition at Yale in 1869, depicting a six-oared shell. From Yale University Library.

Today, ‘Wooden Spoons’ are held in the colletions of Cambridge colleges St John’s, Selwyn, Emmanuel and Corpus Christi, and at Yale University, University of Pennsylvania and Oberlin College (Ohio). At the latter college, a wooden spoon was handed out to an 'ugly person'. There are also five known wooden spoons in private collections.

To come back to where I started this blog entry: wooden spoons came to be known in certain sports like tennis and rugby. Below is a short video clip from 1931 showing a rugby match between England and France where, figuratively speaking, England receives the wooden spoon.

FRANCE HANDS ENGLAND 'THE WOODEN SPOON"

See also: Tim Koch writing on Rudie Lehmann's "The Necessity of Having a Butt" in Lehmann Online.

More on 'Shaved' Blades

HTBS has received two e-mails related to the entry about Ran Laurie’s ‘narrow blade’ that was posted on Friday 27 September. In one e-mail rowing historian Bill Lanouette, who recently wrote on HTBS about Thomas Eakins’s ‘newly’ discovered rowing painting, writes:

That’s a fascinating exchange about English strokes using narrow blades. As a stroke myself I would have loved to use such an oar, but in the 1960s at least, when I rowed in England, all blades were the same size. And, honestly, as a stroke I’m glad they were because you couldn’t feel the poise and power of the crew – and know what pace to set – if you weren’t just as exhausted as the other guys.

The second e-mail came from another rowing historian, Tom Weil, who on this matter writes:

As Guy Nickalls [seen in the photograph] was casting about to improve his 1921 Yale crew, which he had termed ‘gutless’, he saw the performance of one J. Freeman, who had just stroked Yale’s very first 150 lb. crew to victory in the American Henley on the Schuylkill. He put the lightweight Freeman into the stroke seat of the New London crew, and equipped him with a shaved blade. Nickalls was fired by the Yale Committee because of his unfortunate comment, but his parting contribution to the Yale varsity, wielding his shaved oar, led the ‘gutless’ crew to victory over Harvard.

There is an interesting photograph showing Guy Nickalls and freshman coach Giannini at Yale’s training quarters at Gales Ferry on 10 June, 1915 (© Bettmann/CORBIS), here.

Are there any more ideas out there about a stroke’s narrow or ‘shaved’ blade? If so, please send it to: gbuckhorn – at – gmail.com

1956 Olympic Eights Races

Before the 1956 Olympic rowing regatta on Lake Wendouree, Ballarat, Australia, the U.S. eight had not lost one single Olympic race since 1920, winning gold 1920, 1924, 1928, 1932, 1936, 1948 and 1952. However, when the young men from Yale raced in their first heat at Ballarat, they only managed to take a third place, beaten by Australia and Canada. Slightly embarrassed, the Yalies made sure to win the repechage heat, then winning in the semi-final, and then crossing the finish line as the first boat in the final, taking the Olympic gold. After having crossed the line, three-seated John Cooke collapsed, giving everything he had in him.

In the old, interesting video above both John Cooke and David Wight are interviewed about the races. At the Rowing History Forum, held in March 2008, Wight gave a thrilling talk about how it felt to belong to an American crew who lost an Olympic race (and despite that, becoming Olympic champions). John Cooke's 1956 Olympic oar now hangs in the NRF's National Rowing Hall of Fame at Mystic Seaport, Mystic, Connecticut.

The River, Victorious

The River, Victorious

The Thames lay a flat
sheet of beaten
silver in the grey
light, Harvard's boys
and Yale's boys posed
to compete.  They appeared
neddlework on the sheet
of the river, needlework
come alive when they shot
into motion at the start
of the race, their blades,
needles sewing fast
the cloth of the river,
the design of their work
dissolving as fast as it appeared,
the design of their work
thrusting them
toward the finish line,
their muscles pumped,
almost to bursting.  At the finish
they lay flopped over their oars,
gasping for air, pain incising
their faces, pain reflected
in the victorious beaten
silver sheet of the Thames.

Philip Kuepper
(13 June, 2013)

The 148th Harvard-Yale Regatta Video

Most of you have probably already seen this video elsewhere, but if not ~ enjoy!

What They Wrote about the Crimson Victories 2013

'The Rock' was painted Crimson red.

Unfortunately I had some technical difficulties yesterday when I was going to post photographs from the 148th Harvard-Yale Regatta on the Thames River in New London. Below are some that I managed to get up on HTBS.

The newspapers wrote this about the regatta:

The Boston Globe: “Harvard dominates Yale in rowing”

Boston Herald: “Sweeping beauty again for Parker”

The Day: "Yale partisans find something to cheer about in regatta loss"


GoCrimson.com: “H-Y Regatta No. 148 Goes to Harvard”

New Haven Register: “Harvard-Yale Regatta: Crimson beat Bulldogs for sixth straight year”

Norwich Bulletin: “Harvard again captures annual regatta with Yale”

YaleBulldogs.com: “Bulldogs Finish Season with Y-H Regatta”

Waiting for the heroes to return to Red Top.

Harvard Freshman crew received The New London Cup.

Harvard 2nd Varsity congratulating each other at the dock.

A happy man: Harvard's heavyweight coach, Harry Parker.

Harry Parker congratulation Harvard Varsity Captain James O'Connor.

Captain James O'Connor holding on to 'the broom', indicating a clean sweep for Harvard, while he was talking to the press.