University of Washington

This guide to the University of Washington's old shell house in Seattle asks whether farm boys and loggers' sons training out of a converted navy seaplane hangar could out-row the world's best oarsmen. It follows boatbuilder George Pocock, who set up shop inside these walls and shaped the racing shells University of Washington crews used, and the eight-man crew steered by coxswain Bobby Moch and rowed by Joe Rantz and his seven teammates as they trained on Union Bay before dawn. Their season carried them from this shoreline all the way to the nineteen thirty-six Berlin Olympics, against crews from Italy, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary and Switzerland.