Those Wild And Crazy Ancient Mariners Keep On Stroking

Now then, what do we make of these old geezers who call themselves the Ancient Mariners? What do we make of guys - average age 55 - who row an eight-oared shell in pitch-black winter weather on Lake Union?

They do this at 5:30 a.m. before winter dawn arrives. They do it on Lake Union because there are shoreline city lights to keep them from crashing or capsizing. What do we make of them?

Their coach, Charley McIntyre, age 66, explains:

``We have one guy who catches the 4:30 a.m. ferry from Whidbey Island to make these workouts. He's crazy. The rest of us are just mildly insane.''

The Ancient Mariners. Rowing under an age-handicap system, this gang edged out the UW varsity crew one time at 2,000 meters.

Wait, there's more. In addition to these mildly insanes, there is another group of veteran oarsmen being formed. These will be called RAM, an acronym for Really Ancient Mariners. They will average more than 60 years old.

``They are compulsives,'' Charley said. ``But at least they have healthy compulsions. They gave up their unhealthy compulsions a long time ago.''

The other day, I sat down with Charley McIntyre and Guy Harper, 58. Charley, a long-ago Northwest immigrant, used to row for the famed Vesper Boat Club, of Philadelphia. Harper was a Washington oarsman under the late great Dane, Al Ulbrickson. This was back in 1954.

The only young member of the Ancient Mariners is their coxswain,

Leslie Albertson, a 25-year-old woman out of the Seattle Yacht Club.

No. 2 oar is John Aberle, age 62, Vesper Boat Club, 1945; No. 3 oar is Bruce Bradley, 54; Princeton, '58; No. 4 is Harper, UW, '54; No. 5 is Dave Haworth, 51, Cornell, '56; No. 5 oar is Art Wright, 55, Naval Academy, '57; No. 6 is Roger Seeman, 46, of Wisconsin, '66; and No. 7 is Lance Wallen, 48, from Green Lake Rowing Club, '58.

Rowing bow is Gene Price, 54, out of Green Lake; stroke is Jerry Heffernan, 54, Vesper Boat Club, and McIntyre, who can row either port or starboard oar, sits almost anywhere. The Ancient Mariners also have an illustrious name as co-coach: Stan Pocock.

``We got our shell from the Pocock people up in Everett,'' Charley said. ``It comes in two pieces because then we can break it down and carry it on a pickup truck.''

The shell itself cost this group $15,000. They can afford it. Their activities range from orthopedic surgeon to Ph.D. to investments to property management to construction. Not rich, but well off.

``We figure each of us are into this thing for about $2,000, when you throw in the oars,'' Charley said. ``We pay our own transportation and this summer we plan to compete in Torino, Italy.''

Italy aside, the Ancient Mariners travel to Vancouver, Portland, San Diego and the Bay Area to compete against other veteran crews.

Now it follows, to be sure, that these guys are not going to win on brute strength. They are very much into ``technique'' and, to explain this, we have to go back a long way and stay quite a while.

You see, there used to be a guy around here named George Pocock, an urbane Briton, who once held a world monopoly in building red cedar shells. Pocock was also a great rowing craftsman, a technician who could actually teach.

Via Ulbrickson and others, Pocock became the seminal stylist for all U.S. rowing, especially at Washington.

The Huskies began to produce great rowing coaches, ``descendants,'' so to speak, of George Pocock, whose techniques, like his shells, dominated rowing.

These rowing descendants included Jim McMillan, of MIT; Stork Sanford, of Cornell; Rusty Callow, Navy; Vic Michaelson, Brown; Loren Scholl, Syracuse; Dutch Shoch, Princeton; Bud Raney, of Columbia; Tom Bolles, Harvard, and, of course, Al Ulbrickson and George Pocock's son, Stan, of Washington.

``Then, West Germany came along in the 1960 Olympics and won the eights,'' Charley said. ``And about this time, all those great coaches began to retire. And the Americans started to go in for raw power, brute strength.

``What nobody noticed at the time was that when West Germany won the eights, the University of British Columbia was second, by only a couple of feet, and UBC's coach was coached by George Pocock.''

U.S. crews, obsessed with power, have not won an Olympics since 1964. The laurels have gone to European crews, mainly East and West Germany, who emphasize technique.

And Charley said: ``If American rowing doesn't go back to what George Pocock taught, it will continue to take gas.''

This may be what the Ancient Mariners are all about. Most of them being schooled in it, all of them being coached in it, they are disciples of the Pocock rowing tradition.

As Guy Harper nodded approval, Charley said: ``And now, you might understand why the Ancient Mariners are looked upon as mildly insane.''

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Emmett Watson's column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday in the Northwest section of The Times.