This page needs to be proofread.
228
Boating.

that he would need her to race in again ; but when the regatta drew nigh he could find no boat to suit him, and had to make shift with the old boat. In the race he had to give Lee the inside, or Berks station; and all who have known Henley Regatta are well aware of the advantage of that side ; it gives dead water for some hundreds of yards below Poplar Point, and still further gains on rounding the point, Three lengths would fairly represent the minimum of the handicap between the two stations on a smooth day, such as that of the race. The two scullers raced round the point, Lee leading slightly ; but the Oxonian caught him and just headed him on the post. Lee stopped one stroke too soon, whether from exhaustion or error is uncertain, but the performance plainly stamped the English amateur as his superior, half trained and badly boated as he was. Over a champion course, in a match, Lee wauld in his Henley form haye been a score or more lengths behifid the Oxonian.

Knough can be guessed from these calculations to show that there would haye been a most interesting race, to say the least, if it could have been arranged for a trial of power between Mr. Playford and Hanlan, The latter sculler used to admit, so we always understood, that the London Rowing Club sculler was the only man he had seen whom he did not feel confident of being able to beat,

Hanlan’s style, good though it undoubtedly was, appeared to even greater advantage when seen alongside of the miserable form of our professionals, Hanlan was a well-made man, of middle height, and a thoroughily scientific sculler, He was the best exponent of sliding-seat sculling among professionals, only a Jong way so; but we, who can recall Kelley and Chambers in their best days, must hold to the opinion that the two latter were, ceteris paribus, as good professors of fixed-seat sculling as ever was Hanlan of the art on a slide. Had sliding seats been jn vogue in 1860, and the next half-dozen years, we believe that Kelley and Chambers would haye proved themselves capable of doing much the same that Hanlan did in his own generation,