Sport: 72nd Rowing

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While the Democrats were nominating Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire for the U. S. Presidency in June 1852, the Boston & Maine Railroad was casting about for some smart new way to advertise the candidate's home state as a summer resort. A bright young B. & M. passenger agent named Jim Elkins thought it would be clever to promote a boat race between Harvard and Yale on Lake Winnepesaukee. He persuaded New Haven friends to persuade Yale to issue a challenge which Harvard promptly accepted. The race was billed as "the marine contest of the ages." The man who the following spring was to become the 14th President of the U. S. was in the crowd of 4,000 that saw Harvard win. Last week 80,000 people, including the 32nd President of the U. S., turned out at New London to watch the 72nd rowing of this oldest intercollegiate event in the land.

Until 1895, when the Poughkeepsie Regatta started, the winner of the Har-vard-Yale race was considered the best crew in the U. S. As the athletic import of the race declined, its social prestige increased. Last week more than half of the commissioned yachts in Eastern waters were crowded into the mouth of the Thames. Biggest were boats like Carl Tucker's Migrant (661 tons), Arthur Curtiss James's Aloha (659 tons), Hiram Edward Manville's Hi-Esmaro (1,333 tons). J. P. Morgan's Corsair (2,181 tons), like Gerard B. Lambert's three-masted schooner Atlantic (303 tons), stayed in the harbor below the bridge. Her Harvard-alumnus owner, wearing an old panama with a blue ribbon, bought 18 observation-car tickets for himself and guests, smiled when the conductor counted them twice. Scattered along the course were most of the boats that started two days later for the race to Bermuda. Governor Cross of Connecticut was on a Navy cutter anchored near the finish. Notably absent was Vincent Astor's Nourmahal.

On the morning of the races President Roosevelt left the Department of Commerce's inspection boat Sequoia which had brought him from New Haven, boarded the referee's boat, Dodger III, to watch the races. Going up the river, the Dodger III passed the Harvard freshman shell in which Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr. was No. 6. The Harvard coxswain gave the order to "let her run" while father and son exchanged a wave.