Page:Boating - Woodgate - 1888.pdf/179

 reason why in some of the seats the space should not exceed this minimum, e.g. to set the first four men at the minimum, and then to place No. 5 an extra inch past No. 4 and so on, with perhaps stroke and 7 1} inches further apart than the forward men, would enable the builder to attain a greater longitudinal displacement at the sternmost part of the boat than he would otherwise require to carry his men. In lieu of this gain, he can then reduce his beam and depth aft, and so make his lines taper more to the stern.

Mat Taylor built on this principle. Dctractors used to laugh sometimes to see him chalk off his seats, and say, ‘A rowlock here—a seat there” ‘I'he fact was, Mat Taylor placed his men, man for man, over the section of vessel built to carry them, allowing the minimum distance for reach in all cases, but by no means tying himself down to that distance where in his « opinion the boat required elongating aft. They said he built by rule of thumb ; so, perhaps, he did, but his builds have never becn surpassed. Modern eights traycl faster than of old, thanks to sliding seats and good oarsmanship, but if some of the old lost lines could he now reproduced, the speedy crews of modern days would be speedier still.

We offer one more illustration to show the effect of haying too sudden a termination toa boat aft of her greatest beam, or of a certain amount of beam. Let anyone construct two models of racing boat hulls ; probably he will not succeed in making two of equal speed, but such as they are he can handicap the speedier in his experiment. Let him place the two models to race, each towed by a line carried over a pulley, with a weight at the end of the line. The weights which tow the two models can be adjusted till the two run dead heats.

Then cut off the stern of one of the models, and bulkhead her, say about coxswain’s seat, and let them race once more with the forces which previously produced a dead heat. ‘he model with a docked stern will have become the smaller vessel, and will now weigh less, Nevertheless, she will become decidedly slower than she was before, and will be beaten by her late duplicate.