Those who desire to go still further back, have the authority of Virgil for stating that the Trojans under Æneas could organize and carry through what Professor Conington, in his version of the "Æneid," calls "a rivalry of naval speed."

Before I take leave of this Virgilian race, I may perhaps, even at this late date, be permitted as a brother coach to commiserate the impulsive but unfortunate Gyas on the difficulties he must have encountered in coaching the crew of a trireme. Not less do I pity his oarsmen, of whom the two lower ranks must have suffered seriously as to their backs from the feet of those placed above them, while the length and weight of the oars used by the top rank must have made good form and accurate time almost impossible. A Cambridge poet, Mr. R. H. Forster, has sung the woes of the Athenian triremists and their instructor.

So much for the trireme. But neither the Greeks nor any other race thought of adapting their boats merely to purposes of racing until the English, with their inveterate passion for open-air exercise, took the matter in hand. African war-canoes have been known to race, but their primary object is still the destruction of rival canoes together with their dusky freight.

In Venice the gondoliers are matched annually against one another, but both the gondola and the sandolo remain what they always have been—mere vessels for the conveyance of passengers and goods.

The man who would make war in a racing ship would justly be relegated to Hanwell, and to carry passengers, or even one "passenger," in such a boat is generally looked upon as a certain presage of defeat. Consider for a moment.

The modern racing ship (eight, four, pair, or single) is a frail, elongated, graceful piece of cabinet work, held together by thin stays, small bolts, and copper nails, and separating you from the water in which it floats by an eighth of an inch of Mexican cedar.

Built by Jack Clasper.

The whole weight of the sculling-boat, built by Jack Clasper, in which Harding won the Searle Memorial Cup, was only nineteen pounds, i.e. about 112 pounds lighter than the man it carried. Considering the amount of labour and trained skill that go towards the construction of these beautiful machines, the price cannot be said to be heavy.

Most builders will turn you out a sculling-boat for from £12 to £15, a pair for about £20, a four for £33, and an eight for £55. But the development of the racing type to its present perfection has taken many years.

Little did the undergraduates who, in 1829, drove their ponderous man-of-war's galleys from Hambledon Lock to Henley Bridge, while the stricken hills of the Thames Valley rebounded to the shouts of the spectators—little did they imagine that their successors, rowing on movable seats and with rowlocks projecting far beyond the side would speed in delicate barques, of arrowy shape and almost arrowy swiftness, from Putney to Mortlake—in barques so light and "crank" that, built as they are without a keel, they would overturn in a moment if the balance of the oars were removed.

In 1846.

The improvements were very gradual. In 1846 the University race was rowed for the first time in boats with outriggers. That innovation had, however, been creeping in for some years before that. Mr. Hugh Hammersley, who rowed in the Oriel boat which started head of the river at Oxford in 1843, has told me that in that year the University College boat, stroked by the famous Fletcher Menzies, was fitted with outriggers at stroke and bow; and the bump by which University displaced Oriel was generally ascribed to the new invention.