This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1888 Excerpt: ...and the labour would be propor tionately lighter. The finer the lines taper aft, the easier the front wave displaced finds its way to the vacuum aft. Per contra, the more bluff the midship and stern sections, the greater the difficulty in filling the vacuum aft. Builders hamper themselves by adhering to a red-tape idea that all oarsmen in a boat should be seated at equal distances from each other. So long as designers adhere to this, they require a good deal of beam aft, if Nos. 6, 7 and stroke are of anything like average size. Of course, there must be a minimum of space for each man to reach out in; but there is no 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 inches farther 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. Detractors used to laugh sometimes to see him chalk off his seats, and say, 'A rowlock here--a seat there.' The 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 been surpassed. Modern eights travel faster than of old, thanks to sliding scats and good oarsmanship, but if some of the old lost lines could be now repr...