George Walker Weld, benefactor of the boat house which bears his name, would smile on this relationship. In 1889, when he founded "The Harvard Rowing club," he donated the initial building and a store of boats to function "as a University-wide facility for students who are not members of a rowing club, but who wish to participate in the sport for recreation."

Weld rejoiced in high level Harvard-Yale competitions as much as anyone, but he also believed that establishing rowing in a broader foundation than that afforded by the "University eight and the four class crews" was a worthwhile goal.

Informal recreational rowing actually began at Harvard in the 1840's--long before the first Harvard-Yale race. At that time the club crews were often organized less for competition and more for pleasure outings to Boston.

In 1852 and 1855, races against Yale were in really rowed by individual clubs. It wasn't until 1856 that the first recognized crew picked to represent the entire college.

With the advent of Harvard-Yale regattas in the mid-1800's, and later the formation of the Rowing Association of American Colleges in 1871, Harvard rowing moved into a more competitive stance, focussing on varsity rowing and de-emphasizing the club rowing system from which it grew In the past several years, however, Harvard House Crew seems to have enjoyed a bit of a renaissance.

Through generous alumni donations and fund-raising by individual houses, equipment has been upgraded to include carbon-fiber oars and electronic "cox-box" systems. The boats remain traditional in hull-shape and undifferentiated from one another, in order to avoid unfair advantages between the crews.

Another recent change has been the relinquishing of the Eliot coaching launch--a boat owned by Eliot House that could travel along side it crew.

The Eliot launch was the last and often troublesome vestige of an era when every house had its own coach and launch. For lack of funding, not every house could sustain the expense of keeping a launch.

Now all the crews are coached the old-fashioned way: from the coxswain's seat or a bicycle pedalled along the shore.

Rumor has it that Eliot, which usually dominates the May races, will be given a serious challenge this year by Leverett and Dunster.

But only the and of the season will really tell which crew is on top.