Rowing Race

Because intercollegiate championship races have been bungled at Poughkeepsie in the past, a new rule was made this year that any crew late at the starting line would be disqualified. All nine shells were on time; there were no false starts; in sweltering heat they moved away together down the choppy river, with the nine cox-swains yelping in different keys. They had gone almost a mile when the people mopping their faces on the observation trains began to yell. Massachusetts Tech had pulled out in front, nervy enough to be pacemakers for the big Washington crew that was the favorite, the picture-book Navy crew that was the main hope of the East, the formidable dark-horse, California. At a mile and a half Cornell came out of the pack and at the end of the second mile caught Tech. Nobody took this move seriously because up to that time nobody had considered Cornell seriously except to say that they were too heavy; that the stroke, blonde Robert McCrae Wilson Jr.. 19, suddenly recruited from the third varsity when towheaded Captain Horace D. ("Hod") Shoemaker fell ill, was too young; and that the No. 5, a bald-headed fruit-farmer, Peter J. McManus, 30. who had been inspired to go to college because he had seen so many crews row past his farm at Highland on the Hudson, was too old.

Cornell had not won a Poughkeepsie regatta since the late Charles E. ("Pop") Courtney's last great crew in 1915. But stubbornly this crew kept the lead by a foot or two at Coe's Cut. M. I. T. was a half-length in front of California, with Syracuse. Navy, Washington and Columbia a few yards apart. At two and a half miles Cornell was a quarter of a length out and Syracuse had passed California. Then, "Open water." yelled the Cornell crowd. Captain Shoemaker and Coach Jim Wray, following their men in the Cornell launch, saw a slowly widening space appear between the Cornell stern and M. I. T.'s bow. Washington and the Navy were still in striking distance, but at the railroad bridge they were out of it and M. I. T. was trying wildly and uselessly to hold off Syracuse. Cornell was so far ahead now that the speed boats following behind moved up and let their wash rock the shells of the losing crews. Cornell was three lengths in front of Syracuse, eight in front of M. I. T., Columbia was behind California but ahead of Washington. Just before the finish line the Navy swamped in the wash of a Coast Guard cutter.

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