Inches on the Severn

In the morning, onetime (1929-33) Secretary of the Navy Charles Francis Adams put on a pair of old sneakers, hopped into a Star Class yacht, beat the Naval Academy's champion small-boat skipper, Midshipman David Seaman, by 50 yd. in a 2 1/2 mi. race in Annapolis Harbor. In the afternoon, President Roosevelt snuggled down into the referee's launch, streaked up the river from Annapolis to watch three crews, two of them the ablest in the East, race 1 3/4 miles down the Severn for the Adams Cup. Pennsylvania had beaten Princeton, Yale, Columbia. Navy had beaten Cornell and Columbia. The regatta, in which a Harvard shell was also entered, climaxed the season of sprint races in the East. Because the Washington Sophomores who nosed out California by 2 yd. (TIME, April 22) at the start of the season have lately been so sluggish that their coach has threatened to demote them to the junior varsity, the winner of the Severn race may well be favorite in the 4-mile regatta which climaxes the year of college rowing at Poughkeepsie this month.

Actually, it almost turned out that the race had no winner. When it was over old oarsmen agreed that it was the closest thing to a dead heat they had ever seen. Decision went to Penn, which had built up a half-length lead at the mile mark, struggled to stand off the Navy challenge from there on to cross the finish line a few inches in front and win by an official 1/10 of a second.

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