The Boys in the Boat

In January, Ulbrickson posts the team lists, and Joe is surprised and overjoyed to find his name on the number one varsity boat. By late February, Ulbrickson starts to “form solid ideas about what a first varsity boat—a boat for Berlin—would look like” (231). This boat will include Bobby, a smart, older coxswain, the one who directs and steers the boat and crew.

Following Thula’s death, Joe and Joyce play parents to Thula’s traumatized children. As his family life improves, Joe opens up to his teammates and begins to count on them. After a temporary demotion to the third boat, Joe returns to the first boat and throws himself into rowing. Pocock builds the varsity team a new boat, which he christens the Husky Clipper. The new boat helps strengthen the varsity team’s cohesion as a unit: “Every time they climbed into the Husky Clipper together, [the varsity boys] just seemed to get better” (241). Still, before they reach Berlin, the team must win the Pacific Coast Regatta in Seattle, then the Poughkeepsie Regatta, and finally a race at Princeton in July.

At the Pacific Regatta, the team to beat is, once again, Cal Berkeley. Both varsity teams are exceptional, so it will “come down to watermanship, and guts” (247). The race starts with Cal in the lead, but then Bobby ups the stroke rate, and Washington takes the lead and wins, setting a new course record.

In Germany, Hitler sends troops into a demilitarized zone and waits to see what the other Western powers will do. They do absolutely nothing, showing Hitler “the feeble resolve of the powers to his west” (252). He is aware that it will be harder for leaders to convince their people to fight against a strong, “civilized” power, and he sees the Olympics as a much-needed “PR win” (252).

Meanwhile, Leni Riefenstahl is hard at work on her film about the Olympics, Olympia, which is a “political and ideological production” (253). Racial tensions are high in the US after German boxer Max Schmeling defeats American heavyweight champion Joe Louis. Men in Harlem weep in the streets.

In Seattle, the new varsity boys, including Joe, struggle to pass their finals, but everyone does, if only just. They travel by train to Poughkeepsie, and Joyce sends Joe off with a sign painted with a four-leaf clover. Once in New York, Ulbrickson advises coxswain Bobby to keep the stroke rate low and let the other boats get out in front before gunning it. The freshman race goes to Washington, as does the JV race. Next is the varsity race featuring Bobby as the coxswain and Joe.

Bobby eases the stroke rate early, allowing the other teams to push ahead. A mile into the race, “Washington remained four full lengths behind the leaders” (268). Ulbrickson gets nervous, but Bobby doesn’t take the stroke rate up. Washington slides into last place, and Ulbrickson nearly has a fit on the dock. With only a mile left to go, Bobby finally ups the stroke rate, and the boys row easily, without pain, catching up to their exhausted rivals and beating Cal by a full boat length. Ulbrickson congratulates them on an excellent race.

The next week, the boys travel to the official Olympic trials in Princeton, where they revel in the “posh” surroundings and practice lightly. In their first elimination heat, the boys pull ahead and win easily. California, in a different heat, rowed much faster, leaving Ulbrickson worried. In the final trial, the boys go up against Cal, Penn, and the New York Athletic Club. Despite a poor start, the Washington boys keep their strokes steady. Bobby ups the stroke rate again and again, driving his teammates to 40 strokes a minute, all of them rowing “with extraordinary grace and power” (282). They win the race, ensuring their ticket to the Olympics: “For the first time ever, Seattle was going to play on the world stage” (282).

That night, Henry Penn Burke, leader of the national rowing association, informs Ulbrickson and Pocock that the boys will have to pay their own way to the Olympics. If they are unable to do so, the boys from Penn (where Burke is coincidentally the chairman) will go to Berlin instead. Ulbrickson is “stunned and livid” (284) at this underhanded play, as he and Burke both know the Washington boys are sons of impoverished men and could never pay for transportation to Berlin. Burke demands $5,000 by the end of the week. Ulbrickson and Pocock send wires back to Seattle explaining the situation, and “the entire town went to work” (285), raising the money in two days flat. Washington is now officially the eight-oared Olympic rowing team.

The boys travel to New York and make use of the New York Athletic Club’s facilities. They visit New York City and eat hot dogs on Coney Island. Bobby, eager to meet his distant relatives in Germany, discovers that he is Jewish, something his father, an immigrant, concealed after coming to the US. The boys pick up their passports and uniforms, and they set sail for Germany on the luxury liner Manhattan, “venturing out onto the black void of the North Atlantic, on their way to Hitler’s Germany” (295).