Thames regattas for one season. But there were not funds to carry on two such meetings, and the amateur promoters of the old established regatta retired next year in favour of the specu- lative promoters. The speculative regatta lived just one year more, and then its promoters gaye up, and left our British pro- fessionals with no regatta at all to encourage them.
And this was just at a time when our champion honours had been wrested from us, and when we needed more than eyer some disinterested assistance, in order to revive and en- courage the falling fortunes of professional oarsmanship! It was too late to revive the old regatta; the hand of Death was busy among the old amateurs who had founded the second series, and the four or five gentlemen whose names headed the list of promoters (supra) have passed rapidly away, from one cause or another, in the prime of life. Whether hereafter any combination of later amateurs will once more come to the rescue, as did the late Messrs. Chambers, H. Playford, the Morrisons, and Risley, remains to be seen. If they do so, we hope they will found something, at first, more on the lines of the Playford series of ‘Sons of the Thames’ regatta, to bring out new blood ; and that they will insist upon xo séides Icing uscd in any race of the meeting, for at least two seasons. Slides are not allowed in the public schools fours (lately rowed for at Menley, and now competed for at Marlow), nor in Oxford torpids, nor in Cambridge lower division races. Nor do the leading amateur tideway clubs allow their juniors to race on them in club matches, If we are to educate a new generation of professional talent, we must do so on the same general principle that we teach our junior amateurs in rowing clubs,
Since the date of Hanlan’s invasion of Britain, British sculters have not been in the hunt for champion competitions, Such champion racing as has taken place has been confined to Canadians, Americans, or Australians. In 1884, May 22, Lay: cock was once more brought out to row Hanlan on the Nepean river, New South Wales, and Hanlan again held his own. Meantime an emigrant (in childhood) from Chertsey, one
