At New London

Harvard had a huge crew--183 Ib. to a man--slow over sprint courses but formidable for a four-mile race like last week's at New London. In it were Coxswain Henry Hamilton Bissell, Stroke Gerard Cassedy and four other oarsmen who were on the crews that beat Yale last year and the year before. Coach Ed Leader's Yale boat, known to be fast, had won all three of its sprint races earlier in the season. But no one knew whether it had enough endurance for a long pull, particularly if the wind blew up the river.

Up the river the wind, cold after rain, was blowing hard when the two shells jumped away from the stake boat. Harvard shot ahead in the spray of the racing start. As Stroke Cassedy slid his beat down to 31, Yale drew even and then ahead, three quarters of a length at the half mile, two lengths at the mile. Here, where an inexperienced oarsman might have tried too hard to whittle down the lead, Cassedy was satisfied to let Yale set the pace. From time to time, fencing with Bill Garnsey in the stern of the other shell, he sent his beat up, dropped it again when Yale answered the challenge. Finally, after two miles and a half, Quarrier, Yale No. 4, caught a crab. It was the break that Cassedy had been waiting for. This time when the Harvard beat went up, the bow of the Harvard shell began to creep along Yale's gunwhale slowly & steadily until the boats were even half a mile from the finish. They stayed that way for quarter of a mile until Coxswain Bissell called for a Harvard stroke of 37. He held it for six beats, turned his head to make sure that Yale had cracked, and then, crazily excited, stood up and waved his arms above his head as his boat crossed the line--winner for the third year in succession, with Yale, utterly spent, 1 3/4lengths astern.

It was the coldest, gloomiest Yale v. Harvard regatta on record, one of the most exciting since the race of 1914. when the Harvard steward in the judges' boat voted that Yale had won because he mistakenly expected his Yale confrere to return the courtesy. William Meikleham, Columbia stroke in 1886, who usually referees the race, this year decided he was too old. Harvard suggested a Yale man to replace him, Julian Wheeler Curtiss, 75. president of A. G. Spalding & Bros., who usually runs the Poughkeepsie Regatta.

After the race, Yale's varsity and a pick-up crew of Harvard junior varsity and freshmen prepared to leave for California, for the new intercollegiate regatta over the Olympic Course at Long Beach.

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