The courses used in rowing races always have, and perhaps always will, be as varied as the varied as the nature of the waters used even though in very recent years there has been an attempt to bring about standardized to the man-made Olympic 2000 meters courses. While this may trend of this sort overlooks the factors that brought about the varied distances in the first place.
Rowing racing is not an ocean sport involving great distances. It is sport involving concentrated human endurance, which is not infinite and rapidly reduces in a contest to the point where either someone falters out of complete exhaustion or the quality of rowing is so reduced as to make the outcome dependent on something that has little to do with rowing itself. The median distance or most practical is somewhere in between, easily placed somewhere between the extremes of a quarter mile sprint and the four mile long mile long haul. What skills are shown by the furious thrashing of a quarter mile sprint and what is proven, except that someone wins it? And on a four mile course, which of necessity must be rowed on few available expanses of suitable open water, subject to many variables of chance, with the crews playing conservation strategy in mid course at the expense of a sustained race to finish line, somewhat akin to the dull and meaningless roller derby or Olympic bicycle racing.
Race courses are as individually unique as people or places without the standardization of mass produced items. Natural water courses have curves, protected stretches, varying water depths and obstacles that make equality impossible, whether it be against time the same variables apply with probably others in addition. The saving grace is that it is a sport and everyone takes their chances on assumption that all are subject to the same opportunities under the umbrella of sportsmanship.
At M.I.T., as at any rowing institution the home waters for practice afford an adequate variety of conditions to prepare the crews for almost any condition to be encountered in races on foreign waters. When the Charles River was tidal and there were many more boathouses than at present, though fewer interferences of pleasure craft under power of sail, the race courses used are probably currently indeterminate. With a winding channel, varying depth of water due both to the stage of the tide and river bottom contours, absence of coaching or support craft and development of the shores either in progress or under consideration, the courses were in all probability matters of movement of the Tech campus to Cambridge from Back Bay and rowing to the BAA from Union boathouse formal college competition used either the 1 3/4 mile maximum available between the St. Mary's Street Bridge and the West Boston (Longfellow) Bridge or the Henley 1 5/16 mile form the St. Mary's Street Bridge to a marker in front of Walker Memorial. There was a shorter one mile course close to Memorial Drive used for class crews and some informal brushes, also when wind and rebounding swells made the lower basin too hazardous.
The removal of the St. Mary's Street Bridge, which permitted not only a straight course from the Cottage Farm Bridge to the Longfellow Bridge but a two mile distance and still not get into a maelstrom off the Union Boat Club dock and under the Boston end of the bridge. , The two mile became the long course for the Charles leaving the traditional Henley distance for light-weight crews and training for crews preparing to go to England for competition on that famous parent course.
In recent years there has been serious controversy regarding the adoption of the Olympic course 2000 meter distance for all racing. It is a sprint distance, about 300 feet less than the Henley mile and five sixteenths and approximated a mile and one quarter distance, which may be fine for light-weight crews and class or schoolboy rowing. But for heavyweight men's crews and class or schoolboy rowing. But for heavyweight mends crews, conditioned to heavy work and endurance, it is an occupational difference similar to that experienced by draft and trotting horses. A draft horse would not be put on a trotting track or a trotter on a stone drag at a country fair.
In competition away from the Charles River, Tech crews have had to adapt to the course most suitable or traditional for the host institution, or a compromise to the Henley or 200 meter distance. This has sometimes resulted in the ironic situation of our light-weight crews rowing a longer course than the Varsity heavyweights. But in general the major competitions, IRA for the heavyweights and EARC for the lightweights, for many years followed common sense with the IRA adjusting to the best capability of oarsmen by having the Varsity a four mile race, the Junior Varsity three miles and the freshmen two miles with all lightweight crews at the EARC Sprints using the Henley distance. However, everything has been made simpler for training of all crews and planning for regattas capabilities of the rowers or potentials of the water courses, thereby standardizing on the 2000 meters. Simpler, of course, but the charisma, status and esoteric details been sacrificed.
To the rowers, especially in a race situation, vision is limited to a narrow tunnel centered on head and shoulders of another coxswain equally lost in time and space. Dependent on the coxswain for enlightenment as well as pace, recognizable landmarks are a positive indication of progress to the finish line compared to the never ending calls for "another ten". On the Charles it is the Harvard Bridge that had meaning, in the early days forewarned by the rattling of loose planks that gave it its alternate name of "Xylophone Bridge" before passing under the gloom and hollow sound of an arch.
Race courses on the Charles River have perhaps had more survey performed than others that did not have close by an active school of engineering. While some were official determinations of course and distance others were field training runs by Civil Engineering students as a variation from the training runs by Civil Engineering students as a variation from the more common closures along the grass and pavement of Memorial Drive, when ice and weather was appropriate.