Princeton University

Princeton University serves two connected roles in the book: it represents the prestige and resources long associated with eastern collegiate rowing, and it provides the setting for the 1936 Olympic trials that determined whether Washington’s working-class crew would reach Berlin. The contrast is concrete. Washington’s rowers arrived at a manicured, affluent campus with a private racing lake, then had to confront not only their competitors but also the unequal resources shaping who could afford to represent the United States.

Place in Collegiate Rowing

In the 1920s and 1930s, collegiate crew drew crowds and press coverage on a scale comparable to baseball and college football. Eastern private schools, taking Eton College as a model for rowing as a gentleman’s sport, sent young oarsmen on to prestigious universities including Princeton University, Harvard University, and Yale University. Newspapers covered major regattas, fans followed crews through their seasons, and some collected trading cards of their favorite teams. Princeton belongs to this eastern world of established institutions and sporting prestige, though the book’s account does not make its own crew the center of the story.

That prominence sat within a wider imbalance. The Intercollegiate Rowing Association regatta at Poughkeepsie was a storied competition, but eastern colleges dominated much of its early history. Western crews faced costly travel with delicate shells, as well as condescension from fans and journalists accustomed to seeing the sons of senators, governors, industrialists, and presidents in racing boats. Washington’s 1923 victory at Poughkeepsie began to unsettle that hierarchy; by the following decade, western rivals had built large local followings, but the center of gravity in American collegiate rowing still lay among the eastern universities and rowing programs. Princeton University thus figures in a sport whose traditions conferred status while also reflecting regional and class divisions.

Lake Carnegie and the Princeton Setting

The Washington crew reached Princeton on July 1, 1936, after competing at Poughkeepsie. For the young men, many of them working-class, the university represented unfamiliar but intriguing terrain: the world of bankers’ and lawyers’ sons, inherited status, and refined surroundings. They stayed at the Princeton Inn beside the manicured fairways of the Springdale Golf Club. From their rooms, they watched alumni in knickerbockers, argyle socks, and tweed caps. They explored Lake Carnegie and visited the Princeton Boathouse, a large stone building with Gothic arches over its boat bays. To the Washingtonians, it looked more like a grand university landmark than the clapboard homes most of them had known, and it stood in stark contrast to their Seattle shell house, an old airplane hangar.

Lake Carnegie itself expressed the difference in resources. Earlier Princeton crews had rowed in the Delaware and Raritan Canal, where coal barges and recreational vessels shared the water. The arrangement proved inconvenient for the Princeton boys, so Andrew Carnegie bought properties along a three-mile stretch of the Millstone River, dammed it, and created a private rowing course. The project cost roughly one hundred thousand dollars at the time. Its shallow, straight, protected water offered a course without coal barges—a purpose-built sporting environment, not simply a stretch of public water adapted for racing.

The 1936 Olympic Trials

Six crews sought the right to go to Berlin: Washington, California, the University of Pennsylvania, Navy, Princeton, and the New York Athletic Club. The trials divided them into two preliminary heats on July 4, with the top two boats from each advancing to the final the next day. Princeton University was therefore both host to the decisive contest and one of the Washington crew’s opponents. Washington’s preliminary was against Princeton and the New York Athletic Club; the book characterizes neither as a serious contender compared with the crews Washington might face later.

The boys spent several days at Princeton preparing, working lightly in the shell and practicing high-rate sprints and starts, which had recently caused them trouble. As the races approached, oppressive humidity and anxiety made sleep difficult. On July 3, Al Ulbrickson went from room to room urging the crew to settle down. Joe Rantz and Roger Morris stayed awake joking and telling stories, while Chuck Day smoked a forbidden cigarette in the dark. The following evening, several thousand spectators gathered along Lake Carnegie for the qualifying heats. Washington backed its shell toward the starting position, where a large white swan obstructed the way; Bobby Moch finally persuaded it to move by shouting through his megaphone and waving his arms.

At the start, Washington’s Husky Clipper went out at a stroke rate of thirty-eight. After about a minute, Moch told Don Hume to lower the rate, first to thirty-four and then, in the third minute, to thirty-two. The boat continued to lead and opened water on Princeton and the New York Athletic Club. When the New York crew surged near the finish, Moch had Hume raise the rate again. Washington crossed two and a half lengths ahead of its closest challenger. It had won comfortably enough that the crew was surprised by how little effort the heat seemed to require. The following day, the four qualifying crews raced the final before a crowd of perhaps ten thousand people; Washington’s performance there secured the place in Berlin that made the trial at Princeton a turning point in its season.

Class, Money, and Consequences

Princeton’s role in the trials extended beyond the racecourse. After Washington’s victory, the crew celebrated at the annual Loyal Shoudy banquet, where a purple necktie and five-dollar bill waited at each place setting. That night, however, the team learned at the Princeton Inn that winning did not guarantee passage to the Olympics. Henry Penn Burke told Ulbrickson, George Pocock, and Washington athletic director Ray Eckman that the boys would have to pay their own way to Berlin. The American Olympic Committee was short of funds, and Burke set a deadline: Washington needed to produce five thousand dollars by the end of the week or the University of Pennsylvania could take its place.

The demand exposed how differently the burden fell on the crews. The Washington rowers were working-class Americans who could not finance an international trip themselves; the university had already struggled to raise money for their eastern competitions. Burke pointed to earlier teams that had found private funds, but the book stresses the differences in circumstance, including the Depression-era economy and the distances involved. Within hours, Seattle began a public fundraising drive. Contributions came from businesses, civic groups, students, and the rowers’ hometowns: Sequim sent seventy-five dollars for Joe Rantz, while other towns raised money for their own crew members. On the second day, a five-thousand-dollar certified check was airmailed to Ulbrickson.

Princeton University is consequently more than a prestigious backdrop. Its private lake and imposing facilities make visible the material advantages embedded in collegiate rowing, while the Olympic-trial crisis shows how financial privilege could determine access even after a crew had won. At Princeton, Washington proved itself on the water and then faced a separate test of whether its city could supply what the national organization would not. The university’s setting concentrates that contrast: a purpose-built course for elite sport, and a visiting crew whose opportunity to compete abroad depended on a hurried public collection.