File:Harper's boating book for boys; a guide to motor boating, sailing, canoeing and rowing (1912) (14778901425).jpg

Identifier: harpersboatingbo01davi (find matches)
Title: Harper's boating book for boys; a guide to motor boating, sailing, canoeing and rowing
Year: 1912 (1910s)
Authors: Davis, Charles G. (Charles Gerard), 1870-1959, ed
Subjects: Boats and boating
Publisher: New York, London, Harper & Brothers
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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his way the rowingmuscles only are developed, avoiding the condition knownas muscle-boundness. A man who does much gym-nasium work develops opposing muscles on different sidesof the bones. This, while it gives good general develop-ment, is apt to bring on muscle-boundness, which preventsthe man from getting a good reach easily, which is soessential to smoothness and speed in the boat. During the last few years Yale, Pennsylvania, and Cor-nell have gone to Henley without success; and Harvardhas also traveled to England to meet Cambridge, and hasbeen defeated. The tale would undoubtedly be differentwere the best English crew to meet us here or on neutralwaters. Many improvements have been made in the last quarterof a century in the boats, oars, and mechanical fittings. The paper shell had a comparatively short life. It wasfound from experience that both single shells and crew-boats made of wood were much faster. The porosity ofthe Spanish cedar gives the much-needed life—buoyancy, 382
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BOATING BOOK FOR BOYS which is essential to speed. Aluminum was also tried by-Cornell as a material for boat-building, but the expansionand contraction from heat and cold were too great, and itwas abandoned. Briefly, the other improvements havebeen: the perfection of the swivel row-lock; the additionof roller wheels to the sliding-seat; the decided incline ofthe slide; the fin on the bottom of the boat, to keep itfrom heading up into the wind (and this has even beenmade so as to be raised and lowered like a centerboard ina sailing-boat); and the bulkheads in the cockpit of theboat, with swinging gates, which allow all water whichmay be shipped to go astern at each stroke, without re-turning, so that the coxswain may either pump or dip itout. One of the greatest steps forward has been in the rig-ging. The only fixed points affecting a man in a boatare the stretcher and the pin of the row-lock. Upon therelative position of the former to the latter, for each in-dividual, a vast amount de

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