Embedded Files
Long Slender Boats
My interest in crew began as a boy. On Sundays in springtime, I’d scan the sports pages of the NEW YORK Herald Tribune and dwell on the pictures of the crews racing on the Harlem. Columbia would annually host Yale and Penn racing for the Blackwell Trophy, and there would usually be photos of the race taken from High Bridge or from the launches following the crews. I was fascinated by the long slender boats and when I asked my father about them, he told me they were “shells” and that they were very fast. Beautiful slender boats that moved very fast: I was hooked, and resolved that if I ever got the chance I would like to row in one. Of course photos give no idea of how strenuous rowing “fast” really is. The boats were so sleek and fast-looking that I assumed rowing them must be sort of effortless, just a matter of gliding along and pulling the oars through the water. How hard could that be? I had learned to row as a child and enjoyed paddling canoes, so when I got accepted at Georgetown and found that they had Crew I decided to give rowing a try.
Fall 1963
During freshman orientation week in September of ’63, I saw a posting inviting guys interested in the Crew to come to the Harry T. Thompson boathouse below K St, about a mile from campus, down where Rock Creek meanders into the Potomac. The weather that Saturday afternoon was overcast and quite cool for late-September in DC and the river was gray and choppy under a westerly wind. A small crowd of guys clustered around an eight that had been set up on slings in front of the boat house. I was fascinated the beauty of its architecture: the honey-colored cedar hull, the red rubber bow ball, the keelson and cross braces, the oddly shaped rolling seats, foot stretchers, riggers and brass oar-locks. Walking the length of the shell from bow to stern, I paused at the coxswain’s seat to ponder the small hallmark of its maker:
Another Pocock label
George Pocock,
Seattle Washington.
“Building boats for building men.”
Being over six foot five inches tall I wondered aloud whether I could fit into the seats. One of the older guys, whom I later discovered to be the late Dave Casey, ‘63 assured me I would fit and pointed out Peter Blyberg, who was even taller than I. Height, he assured me, was an advantage in rowing. Encouraged, I decided to attend an organizational meeting later that week.
The meeting was held Thursday evening in room 208, the large lecture on the second floor of White Gravenor. The coaches Frank Barrett and Bob “The Goose” Remuzzi, were introduced along with the officers of the Georgetown University Rowing Association, Mike Mullin, President, and Pete Blyberg, Captain of Boats, and Marc O’Brien, Treasurer. The main business of the meeting was to explain a bit about the Georgetown Crew and to have us fill-out cards with our personal information, and then to divide the hundred (or more) interested freshmen[1] into small groups each to be led by an upper-classman. Times were assigned for each group to muster “at the stump”[2] on John Carroll circle on Saturday morning[3], before running down to the boathouse. I was assigned to the group led by Doug “Tiger” Sergeant, the varsity coxswain who had a blond crew cut (of course) and great, inimitable voice.
White Gravenor Hall at Georgetown University
Arriving at the stump that Saturday morning I joined a literally “motley” crew of guys milling about nervously in sweats and sneakers. Once our names were checked-off his list, Tiger told us to follow him as he set off at a run down to the stairs from Prospect St. down to M St, across the traffic approaching Key Bridge, over the wall and down to the narrow tow path along the C&O canal, and down to 30th St,[4] and then through the Potomac Sand and Gravel Co. yard to the Harry T. Thompson Boat House.
Being in no physical condition to run a mile, even down-hill, I was surprised to make it to the boathouse without an asthma attack. Throughout childhood and high school I had never been able to play sports because of severe asthma, but I wanted to row crew and decided to take it “one day at a time” and see how it went. At that time few people were aware that second hand smoke could cause respiratory problems, especially in children, so no one connected my asthma to my father’s two-pack-a-day cigarette habit. After spending a couple of weeks removed from the smoky atmosphere of my own home, my lungs proved remarkably resilient and I never again suffered any restrictions on my athletic activity. Teddy Roosevelt experienced something similar when he moved from his Manhattan home to Cambridge as a Harvard freshman. The physical and moral development wrought by rowing crew profoundly changed my way of thinking about my potentials and is the reason that those four years on the Potomac were so determinative of my later life and character. I think Georgetown Crew had that effect on most of us.
First Strokes: Learning the Rudiments of Rowing
A typical rowing and training barge
Arriving at the boathouse we were led down to the dock and introduced to “the barge,” a flat-bottomed gray boat about six feet wide and twenty-five feet long with five pairs of riggers and seats, and a central walkway for the coach to patrol; there was space at the stern for a coxswain to sit and steer with a large tiller. Our group was fatefully but arbitrarily divided into five port and five starboard rowers,[5] shown how to select the right oars (banded red for port, green for starboard,) and seated in the barge. This would be our introduction to rowing for the next week or so as we learned the rudiments of the stroke, feathering and squaring the oar, the catch and pull through, recovery and “sliding” in unison. These first few days in the barge were just enough time to get the rhythm of “hands – body – slide – catch,” and to raise some serious blisters on our hands that would eventually become tough callouses with the help of daily applications of tincture of benzoin as recommended by our coach, whom we knew then only as “Goose.” (Bob Remuzzi.) [6]
Besides rowing technique, these early sessions taught us a number of important points of crew etiquette and discipline.
First, we row in all weathers. If a workout is ever cancelled, it will be cancelled at the dock, not in your dorm-room.
Second, don’t be on time, be early! Your crew depends on you. If you are late you lose your seat, period. This rule was simple, ruthless, and fair.
Third, respect the equipment, it cost us money:
· Always carry and place the oar blade-face downward to prevent scratching the back of the blade.
· Always carry and place the oar blade-face downward to prevent scratching the back of the blade.
· Always hold the boat off the dock, so its fragile hull won’t band against the edge.
· Always hold the boat off the dock, so its fragile hull won’t band against the edge.
· When carrying the boat, always close and turn the empty oar locks inward to minimize the hazard of them striking anything or anybody.
· When carrying the boat, always close and turn the empty oar locks inward to minimize the hazard of them striking anything or anybody.
Fourth, shut up and listen to the commands of coach and cox; the boat is no place for chattering; when rowing keep your eyes in the boat.
Fifth, always leave the boat-house in better condition than you found it.
Lastly, and in summation, we were told to remember this paraphrase of Will Rogers:
“I never met an oarsman I didn’t like. Don’t spoil it.”
These admonitions set a moral standard of personal responsibility that was the basic predicate for rowing at Georgetown. Those who absorbed the ethos stayed and became full-fledged members of the fraternity of the Crew. There was no need for initiation rituals or hazing, and there were no cuts; you either felt the appeal of the sport and its disciplines or not.[7] Those who did not simply stopped showing up every afternoon. In the process, the many became fewer, “We happy few, we band of brothers.”
Different Strokes: The Finer Points of Rowing
The key to speed in rowing any sliding seat boat has less to do with the brute power of the rowers, and more to do with their “finesse” and “slide control” on the recovery when the oars are out of the water. This requires that the oarsmen all be moving down their slides in unison so that they all arrive at the catch at precisely the same instant. In physical terms, “slide control” exemplifies Newton’s third law of motion, of action and opposite reaction. Physically, as the rowers “slide” toward the stern they are in effect pulling the boat forward toward the finish line.[8]
In the traditional “low stroke” style of rowing (28 to 32 strokes per minute,) the ideal was to finish the stroke with the upper body in a more or less laid-back position; the hands would then snap downward (cleanly lifting the blade from the water,) feather, and then thrust away, leading the body slowly out of bow on the recovery. Using the clock-face analogy, the shoulders would finish the stroke at 11 o’clock, then swing upright through 12 to about 1:30 following the hands toward the stern. The reversal of direction of the slide (the transition from pull-through to recovery) naturally required a momentary pause to minimize disruption of the forward momentum of the boat after the impetus of the stroke. After this transitional pause on the slide, the crew’s mass would begin accelerating down the slide toward the next catch, thus giving the boat a forward thrust to overcome the inertia of the boat on the pull through. The coaching mantra was “Hands – Body – Slide.” This sounds complicated, but once mastered by a well-trained crew the rhythmic swing of the crew and the surging of the shell was beautiful to see and made the speed seem almost effortless.[9]
The Tombs sign
A fan of oars in the Tombs in Georgetown
Because the major regattas in Britain and America were traditionally rowed at distances of several miles or more, this classic “long and low” style was the only one practicable in terms of crews’ endurance. Crews generally rowed these long races at ratings that rarely exceeded 35 strokes per minute even in the closing sprints. Those were the days of the old Pocock “American” style oars: laminated wooden shafts with long, gracefully tapered blades of the type that survive now only as trophies adorning the wall down in the “Tombs” at the1789. These Pocock blades lent themselves to the classic style of rowing described above, and that Fall (’63) we freshmen still used the Pocock blades and learned to row the old “American” stroke. [10]
There have been three major types of blade used over the
past century. Oars have generally become shorter
and blade area has been increased.
But the shorter Henley (a mile and 5/16ths) and the Olympic (2000 meters) distances allowed for, and competitively soon came to demand, much higher rates from 36 to 44 spm. And such higher rates required a different blade shape, and thus evolved the wider"Macon" or “shovel” or “tulip” shaped blades. When the high-stroking Ratzeburg Crew won the Olympics in 1960 using their new Karlish “tulip” shaped blades, the days of the old “long and low” Conibear style and the Pocock oars were numbered. After the GU varsity raced Ratzeburg in April 1963, they too adopted the new “German style” and the tulip oars soon became the norm among American college crews.[11]
The new oars and the higher stroke meant a much faster movement “out of bow;” no more pause and layback at the finish, now the crew had to shoot their hands out of the finish, and swing their bodies forward and down the slide in one continuous motion. “Fast hands, body, slide!” To the degree that there was any pause on the recovery it was in the instant before the catch, a reversal of the old American rhythm.
Blades at the catch: note increasingly better
surface contact with each advance (L to R= new to old)
Blades at extension: note power advantage of each
newer blade (L to R) as it shortens and widens
The greatest advantage of the tulip blades was that the catch was much more positive; by shortening and widening the blade, the “business end” of the oar was pushed further out on the shaft lengthening the leverage by a few inches and creating a more solid fulcrum against which to pry the boat forward on the pull through.[12] This increased the physical demands on the oarsmen in terms of both the higher stroke rates (spm) and the strength needed to pull the more efficient oars, so the training regimen had to adjust to the new stroke as well. Rowing the German style brought a whole new meaning to the phrase “the rigor of the game.” Races now became sprints.
But in the fall of 1963, the freshmen inherited the old Pocock oars and learned to row the “long and low” American stroke, while the Varsity adjusted to the demands of the new German style and their tulip blades
Into the Eights
On some of those autumn afternoons, just as we were beginning to move the boat as an crew, we would be passed by a comely young woman paddling a single kayak with remarkable speed and dexterity. This was Francine Fox, an Olympic hopeful out of the Washington Canoe Club. She was quite pretty with short blond hair, but had the upper body musculature that most men would envy in a guy but few would admire in a girl. She seemed to enjoy paddling beside us just long enough to show off and then gradually accelerate away from us. She knew we were only novices and that once we got together as an effective eight we’d be fast enough to turn the tables and leave her behind as we did the next spring. But despite her teasing (or because of it) she was a pleasant diversion in the midst of a workout; we didn’t always keep our eyes in the boat when Francine was around.
Being late October, we’d get off the water about dusk and then run back to campus to make it to the cafeteria in New South just in time for dinner. That was the last year of meal cards that entitled the holder to virtually unlimited helpings of everything but the meat entrée, so we’d fill up on rolls and butter, and multiple glasses of cold chocolate milk from the stainless-steel the dispensers. The Majordomo in those years was a big gray-haired Irishman and former heavy-weight boxing contender named Marty Gallagher who’d greet everyone with a “How ya doin’ buddy?” Since we’d arrive en mass and just before closing, Marty got to know us as crew guys and would feint a jab at each of us as we passed through the line at the checkout where we’d show our meal cards.
To mark the end of the fall rowing season for the freshman heavies, a “scrimmage” was arranged for us with the Naval Academy plebes on Saturday, November 2nd. Unfortunately, this workout had to be cancelled because of the rough conditions on the Severn. Imagine! Although the cancellation was disappointing, we were still happy to have two months off from the daily practices. We’d learned the basic of rowing, and joined the fraternity of crew.
National Canoe Racing Champion
at age 14, after only 6 months in
the sport. In 1964 she won a Silver
Medal at the Olympics in kayaking.
Off the Water and Into the Gym
Archival photo of McDonough Gymnasium at GU
The winter workouts in McDonough Gym began soon after the end of Christmas vacation in early January and ran six days a week through to the last week in February. In the mid-Sixties, the Fall semester didn’t end until mid-January, followed by a brief “reading period,” final exams, and a “semester break.” The Spring semester didn’t begin until around Groundhog’s day!
As we have seen in Chapter Three, of the most important innovations that Don Cadle brought to Georgetown Crew was the notion that one first had to get into peak physical condition before attempting to row. This might seem obvious now, but in those days some rival coaches (fortunately for Georgetown) operated on the assumption that rowing itself would condition athletes for the rigors of racing; just get in the boat and row. Cadle understood that unless the would-be oarsman already had a fairly high level of overall strength and stamina, the rigors of rowing would quickly lead to exhaustion, the erosion of skills, and the formation of sloppy habits. Rowing well, much less rowing to win, demands a high level of endurance as well as very specific physical strengths that one must bring to the boat. To develop these strengths he introduced an off-water regimen based on the “Russian PT Test” that consisted of performing a personal maximum number of callisthenic exercises: push-ups, sit-ups, leg lifts, etc. Cadle added the innovation that wherever possible these exercises should be performed at a rate approximating the racing stroke rate on the water.[13] The savvy coach never missed a trick.
The callisthenics were usually led by the two captains up on the gym stage and consisted of jumping jacks, push-ups, leg-lifts, sit-ups, squat-thrusts, reverse sit-ups, etc. and concluded with wind-sprints from one end of the gym to the other in quick succession. In the first few days of sprints, dry-heaves were common among those who’d overindulged during the off-season from Thanksgiving through Christmas. On days when the streets were not too icy, we’d leave the cozy confines of the gym and run a mile or two around the campus perimeter. I recall one morning having to crawl up New South hill on my hands and knees because a sleet storm had left an inch of ice on the walk-ways and roads, making it impossible to walk upright much less run.
In a novel addition to the usual regimen of calisthenics that winter of ‘64, Mark Pisano introduced us all to the theory and practice of isometric exercise. Mark was a senior from California who rowed the 2-seat in the heavy-weight varsity, and took training very seriously. He persuaded our coaches, Bob “The Goose” Remuzzi and Frank Barrett, that exercising against the resistance of a looped rope would improve our strength without resort to weight-training (which would have been impossible anyway given almost a hundred guys and the severely limited weight room in McDonough.) So everyone got a piece of rope about 10 feet long and tied it into a loop to use in a series of isometric exercises. Most of us used a piece of simple half-inch cotton clothesline, but some of the more ostentatious guys brought hawsers an inch thick lest their mighty muscles tear any lesser cables to shreds. Whether the isometrics worked as intended, having the ropes did encourage us all to skip rope, and some of us got to be pretty good at that anyway. Show offs!
Saturday mornings were devoted to the performance tests in which each of us was paired with another guy who was likely to be competing for the same seat in the boat: so port oars were paired with ports, starboards with starboards. We were given index cards and stubby pencils for recording the number of reps of each exercise performed in the allotted time (eg. 360 sit-ups in 10 minutes) with the competitor keeping an honest count. Points were assigned to each rep of the various exercises and a final score kept by the coaches. After the five or six weekly tests, these scores (and one’s attendance) determined the initial boatings when we finally got on the water. In the years before ergometers, this system was the fairest way to select the best (or at least the fittest) men for the first, second, and third boats.
Mark Pisano's isometric inspiration?!
The Discipline of Abstinence
In the 1950's and 1960's each
issue of The Hoya carried
several sizable ads for
cigarettes--but not for liquor
One of the things that made us feel especially dedicated to the Crew and to each other was that once training started in January we were expected to forgo beer, booze, and cigarettes. The discipline of abstinence served to bond us together in a spirit of shared sacrifice. Given that the social life of Georgetown was heavily lubricated by alcohol, to abstain merely for the sake of an athletic ideal of mutual sacrifice and self-discipline was to stand apart from the crowd. To illustrate the prevailing campus ethos I recall that one of my classmateschose to be remembered in the College yearbook by the quote “Temperance is the greatest violation of party etiquette.” [14] To us, temperance was a badge of distinction. Even off the water we were members of the Crew, and tacitly proud of it.
That being said, there did occur at least one case that I learned of in which a varsity oarsman was discovered to be breaking faith with his crew by violating the rule against drinking, and something had to be done about it. The officers that year convened a meeting of the varsity oars and proceeded to lay out the facts as known. There was a long discussion about whether to drop him from the crew or allow him a second chance to redeem himself. Since it was still early in the season before the crew hit the water, it was decided to allow him to stay, on probation so to speak. The whole affair from the accusation, through the discussion, to the decision was made by the students and their elected officers without involving the coaches. The episode illustrates not only the seriousness of the commitment to abstinence but the autonomy of the crew’s officers in handling such matters. When the incident came to the attention of the coach several months later, he said that while he approved of the process he would have set the man down, permanently.
[1]In the mid-‘60s Crew consistently drew the largest freshmen turnout of any sport on campus perhaps because virtually no one had rowed before and there were no scholarships, everyone started even.
[2]In those days “The Stump” was all that remained of a once flourishing maple tree that had shaded the north-western quadrant of John Carroll circle. For reasons unknown it was cut down some time in the early sixties but remained a common rendezvous for those living on campus.
[3] 9/28/63
[4] Running from the Hilltop down to the boathouse allowed for a variety of routes, but being a creature of habit in those days I followed the path Tiger had taken on that first Saturday, along the C&O towpath behind the stores along M Street. This stretch of the canal runs between high brick walls from 34th down to 30th St, a distance of about a quarter of a mile. Usually freshmen rowed in the afternoon, but there were times when we’d have to run down in the misty predawn darkness of late October and on those dark mornings the tow path appeared a ghostly gauntlet made all the more eerie by the single fog-dimmed street light shining far down the alley; and by the occasional startled rat splashing into the canal. It was the sort of place you’d expect to meet up with Jack the Ripper or Mr. Hyde on the hunt for new victims.
[5] Since crews almost always row with a port stroke, this assignment to port or to starboard was a fateful division in that it usually precluded starboard oarsmen from ever rowing the stroke seat. It was rare that an oarsman ever changed sides once he’d learned to row.
[6] I don’t think I learned Bob’s real name until the Spring racing season.
[7] “We’ll take anybody who comes out. There are only two requirements. The first is to show up, the second is to try as hard as you can.” Bob Remuzzi, quoted in the WASHINGTON POST, 4/24/65. Byline, Bill Gildea.
[8] Of course the reverse is true at the catch: when the legs drive down and the crew’s mass thrusts toward the bow, the boat’s opposite reaction discounts the forward impetus of the oars and causes the rhythmic pulsing forward motion of the shell.
[9] This is often referred to as the “Conibear Stroke” for the legendary coach, Hiram Conibear (9/5/1871 – 9/9/ 1917) who studied the mechanics of sliding seat rowing and developed what became the standard American stroke style at the University of Washington in the early 1900’s. “Conibear maximized the efficiency of the leg drive, and he added a force and strength to the rowing stroke . . . When Washington started winning than other schools started hiring Washington graduates to coach their crews.” THE BOOK OF ROWING, by D.C. Churbuck (Overlook Press, NY: 2007)
[10] For a comparison of the Pocock and Karlish oars see the Appendix.
[11] Recall the explanation of this development in the chapter above on “The Ratzeburg Race.”
[12] Note that during the pull-through an oar is a lever using the water as a fulcrum with the force of the rower exerted against the oar-lock and prying the boat forward.
[13] Thanks to Glenn Farris, FS’66, for this detail. (9/16/12)
[14] Richard Hayden (See The Domesday Book, 1967.)
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