Scull (rowing)

“ But always remember if you are at all evenly matched, that however bad you feel yourself, your opponent is probably in just as bad a plight. Talking of pace reminds me of how soon even the best scullers tire. In sculling a course against time at Henley, a good man may get to Fawley, the halfway point, in about the same time as a Pair, and yet will be half a minute slower from that point to the finish; and for the last quarter-mile the veriest tiro can out-scull a champion, provided the latter has gone at his best pace throughout. ”

“ The best makers of oars and sculls too often turn out sculls which are not ‘pairs,’ and when this is the case the action of him who uses them cannot be expected to be even on both sides of his frame. Having got suitable sculls, let the sculler arrange his stretcher just a shade shorter than he would have it for rowing. He can clear his knees with a shorter stretcher when sculling than when rowing, as he can easily see for himself. A stretcher should always be as short as is compatible with clearing the knees. ”

“ The firm drive will start the swing of the body, [Pg 164] which may be continued a fraction of time after the slide has finished. You will find that when you have driven your slide back your body will have swung well past the perpendicular (and in sculling you may swing further back than you are allowed to in rowing) . When in that position a sculler is allowed to do that which an oarsman must not, viz. he may help to start his recovery by moving his body slightly up to meet his sculls as they finish the stroke. ”

“ Since the back swing should be longer in sculling than in rowing, and as there is a limit to the length which any pair of legs can slide, and since also it has been laid down as a rule that both when sculling and when rowing the slide should be economised so that it may last as long as the swing lasts, the reader will gather that the legs will have to extend more gradually when sliding to sculls than when sliding to oars. ”

“ In modern sculling-boats a man must use swivels, for the reach of the sculler extends to a point which he could not reach with fixed rowlocks, as his sculls would lock before he got there. As he moves forward he is constantly opening up, his arms extending on either side of his body; but in rowing, one arm swings across the body, and unless you are going to screw the body round towards the [Pg 155] rigger, and thus sacrifice all strength of beginning, you cannot fairly reach beyond a certain point, which is just as easily and comfortably attained with fixed rowlocks as with swivels. ”

“ A good steerer in sculling will correct his course even to half a stroke; if through a bend, or a wave, or other cause, he sees one hand has taken the other a little round by the time that the sculls are crossing, he will row the other hand home a trifle sharper, and so bring the keel straight by the time he feathers. When a sculler gets more settled to his work, and has got over the first difficulty of clearing his hands at the crossing, he will begin to acquire the knack of bringing the boat round to one hand, without any distinct extra tug of that scull. ”

“ A sculler who does not swing back further than when he is rowing, will do best to row his sculls home just as he would an oar.
In racing all men like a lead. If a sculler can take a lead with his longest stroke, swinging back as far as he can, and can feel that he is not doing a stroke too fast for his stamina, by all means let him do so; but let him be careful not to hurry his stroke and thereby to shorten his back swing simply for the sake of a lead. Many a long-swing sculler spoils his style, at all events for the moment, by sprinting and trying to cut his opponent down. ”

“ This inability to assimilate one's style to that of another man, or body of men, may be the reason why some excellent amateur scullers proved inferior oars, or it may be that they can go at their own pace and not at another man's. I myself have often felt on getting out of a sculling-boat into an Eight great difficulty and much weariness at being compelled to go on at another man's pace, and only to easy at another's order. If you are practising for sculling as well as rowing there is nothing like being captain of an Eight or stroke of a Pair or Four. ”

“ This, although a hard matter to explain, is partly accounted for by what I have said above, in that sculling is so greatly a matter of delicate touch and handling. Even good oars are as often as not clumsy and wanting in a quick light touch. Very few really big men have ever been fine scullers. ”

“ Vivian Nickalls, for a long man, was a fine sculler, handicapped by an awkward finish and handicapped also by the fact that he never entirely gave his time up to sculling only—his chief characteristic being a fine, healthy, long body swing. ”

“ In rowing an oarsman is guilty of fault if he meets or even pulls up to his oar. In sculling, with a very long swing back it is not a fault to commence the recovery of the body while the hands are still completing their journey home to the ribs. The body should not drop, nor slouch over the sculls while thus meeting them. It should recover with open chest and head well up, simply pulling itself up slightly, to start the back swing, [137] by the handles of the sculls as they come home for the last three or four inches of their journey. ”

“ This diabolical habit of driving the slide away, although common to many professionals, cannot be too severely condemned, as it relieves the sculler from doing any work at all except with the arms, which, if thus used, without swing and leg-work to help them, cannot, unless a man is enormously muscular in them, hold out for any great length of time. ”

“ The rower sits near the side of the boat, the sculler in the centre of the seat. The sculls are lighter than oars, the action quicker. There are from thirty to forty strokes a minute in sculling, but the average is about thirty-two. The boy who goes out sculling alone is often his own steerer, and so needs to keep a sharp look-out over his shoulder. Having taken a seat in the centre, stretch out your legs to their fullest extent and adjust the stretcher. Grasp the sculls, one in each hand, by the handles, and bend your body forward until your head is well over your knees. ”

“ Therefore a man accustomed to row on slides, and whose legs are more or less habituated to a certain extension coupled with swing when rowing, must keep a watch upon himself when sculling lest his rowing habits should make him finish his slide prematurely, when he needs to prolong his swing for sculling. Unless his slide lasts out his swing, his finish, after legs have been extended, will only press the boat without propelling her. ”

“ Training for sculling requires more time and practice than training for rowing. If it takes an Eight 6 weeks to get together and fit to race, it takes a Four 9 weeks, a Pair 12 weeks, and a Sculler 15 weeks. If a man is training for both rowing and sculling at the same time, and racing in both on the same day, it takes lengths and lengths off his pace, for rowing upsets all that precision so necessary in sculling. ”

“ In most gigs there is a want of room between thowl and stopper. A sculler requires a wider rowlock than an oarsman, because his scull [129] goes forward to an acuter angle than an oar, with the same reach of body. Nothing puts out a sculler’s hands more than a recoil of the scull from the stopper, for want of room to reach out. The sculler should examine whether his rowlocks are true; the sills of them should be horizontal, not inclined, and most of all not inclined from stern to bow ”

“ Sculling differs so vastly from rowing that no man who has not tried his hand at both can appreciate how really wide apart they stand; and the fact that sculling depends to such a great extent on one's innate sense of touch and balance, makes it extremely hard for a man who has tried his hand with some success at both sculling and rowing to explain to the novice, or even to the veteran oarsman, wherein the difference lies. ”

“ It is essential that the body should not fall away at the finish, but maintain an easy, graceful position, so that, with a final pressure of the legs, the swing of the elbows past the sides, and a rowing back of the shoulders which opens the chest, the hands may be swept fair and square home, the oar-blade being meanwhile covered, but not more than covered, from the moment it enters the water until it is taken clean out. ”

“ As to slide, I hold that a man should slide to a point level with his rowing-pin—never past it, lest the boat should be pinched instead of being driven at the beginning of the stroke. The clogs should be fixed at an angle of 55° to the keel (i.e. an angle measured along the back of the clogs) . If the angle is much smaller, the feet and legs lose power when the sculler is full back, and the drive at the finish is weakened. If the angle is greater, the difficulty of bending the ankle-joints sufficiently [Pg 170] as the slide moves forward becomes very serious. ”

“ Blades, I think, should vary according to the liveliness of water rowed on, and according to the strength of the individual. For myself, I am rather in favour of smaller blades than are generally used. My experience leads me to believe that racing sculls should be from 9 ft. ”

“ As many as fifty entries are sometimes received for Junior Sculling, for though an Eton boy may have no chance of winning a race, he will start, just for the sport of racing and improving his rowing, a proceeding which might well be imitated at Oxford or Cambridge. Each boy who starts in one of these races has to wear a jersey trimmed with a distinctive colour, and carry a flag in his bows; and it is extraordinary what ugly combinations some of them choose and think beautiful. ”

“ Courtney, the greatest sculler the United States has yet produced—a large man, standing six feet and half an inch in height, strongly made in most parts; and weighing ordinarily nearly a hundred and ninety—is a good instance of how rowing does little for the upper arm; for while his forearm is almost massive, measuring exactly thirteen inches in girth ”

“ In shape and size the sua resembles the oar of a ship's cutter. Thrusting it down perpendicularly into the water between the hull and the outrigger, and using the cross-tie as a rowlock, the sculler describes short, semicircular sweeps with the blade, throwing his weight against the handle in front of him as he stands upon the deck. When two are sculling they swing in time, but in opposite directions, and there is no exercise that displays the grace of the human body in action to better advantage. ”

“ There is as much difference between sculling and rowing as there is between a single cyclist racing without pacemakers, steering and balancing himself and making his own pace, and a man in the middle of a quintette merely pedalling away like a machine at another man's pace, and not having the balance or anything else solely under his control. ”

“ The sculler can afford to ease his recovery in return for the strain of his long stroke. Also lest his long swing should press the boat’s bows, he can ease her recovery as well as his own, so soon as the main force of the long drag comes to an end. In the writer’s opinion, unless a sculler really does go back à la Casamajor & Co. with straight arms and stiff back, and until his sculls come out of the water almost of their own accord as he brings his hands in, it is not an advantage for him to pull himself up to his handles to this trifling extent at the finish. ”

“ No oarsman who has won a race at a regatta in which the construction of the boats was restricted, shall compete as a junior in any such race after the end of the current year.
A junior sculler is a sculler (A) who has never won a sculling race at a regatta other than a race in which the construction of the boats was restricted; or a race limited to members of one club; (B) who has never competed for the Diamond Sculls at Henley, or for the Amateur Championship of any country. ”

“ Body and slide are now moving back in unison, the feet pressing with firm and steady pressure against the stretcher, and the arms perfectly straight. As the slide moves, the leg-power applied must on no account diminish. If anything it ought to increase, for the body is beginning to lose its impetus, and the main part of the resistance is transferred to the legs, the blade all the time moving at an even pace through the water. ”

“ When the arms are extended as far aft, and the blades of the sculls as far forward as convenient—which must never be so far as to jam in the rullocks— (Plate XXIX. f. 1) the rower must dip the sculls into the water, and pull towards him, by at once bending the arms and the body.
When in the middle of the pull, if the sculls are not short enough, or even if the head and body are slightly turned, one of the hands will go higher than the other; and, as the right is generally the stronger, it may go above, and the left below. ”

“ You are your own stroke, captain, crew, and cox, and success or failure depends entirely and absolutely upon yourself. No one else (worse luck) is to blame if things go wrong.
The pace of a sculling-boat is strictly proportionate to the quality of its occupant. A good man will go fast and win his race; a bad man cannot. A good man in an Eight cannot make his crew win; and a bad man in an Eight may mar a crew, but he can also very often win a race against a crew containing better men than himself.
People have often asked me why a first-class oar should not of necessity be a good sculler. ”