In spite of the unfavorable rowing weather encountered yesterday, Charlie Whiteside and his first Varsity launched the new shell which was completed during vacation. It will be several days before the boat has been broken in and the stiffness and newness worked out of her sufficiently to tell whether she will make a good shell or not, but every effort has been made to improve the design over that of recent models and to insure the most careful attention to materials and workmanship.

Novel Design

The new boat, more streamlined and less v-bottomed than last year's product, is the first one to be built by Harvard of domestic wood and is looked upon as an experiment, but to date it has seemed in no way inferior to the foreign woods formerly considered indispensable.

New Kind of Wood

Clear, straight-grained Western cedar, selected and sent to Cambridge by Lewis H. Mills '14, a former Varsity oarsman, was used instead of the Spanish cedar of which all the shells now in use are made. This last named wood was usually ordered from South America by the H.A.A. and the future shells arrived as heavy logs. These had to be sawed, planed, and finished to the specifications of the Crimson boatbuilders after which the strips were brought out to the Newell Boat House and construction could be begun.