The fluid strokes, high endurance, and mental discipline required for racing combined with the peaceful
environment of rivers and lakes define the sport of
rowing. Rowing is also known for its frail skinny
“shells” that blend high technology with Old World
craftsmanship.
History
Rowing followed the discovery that long oars moving
against a fulcrum so that their blades could push ships
through water were far more efficient than paddles. Its
beginnings were harsh: more than 2,000 years ago the
Greeks and Romans chained criminals and slaves to
their mighty warships to power the heavy oars.
As rowing evolved, the social status of rowers rose.
The Egyptians used ferrymen to transport nobility
along the Nile, and the Vikings of Norway rowed
the longboats they used for the their voyages of discovery. Gradually rowing became a trade, practiced by
“watermen.”
Competition followed as races became popular features of village celebrations, with fishermen, ferrymen,
and even galley ships as the competitors. Meanwhile,
the world began to expand beyond the Mediterranean,
demanding longer voyages over open water, and sails
first supplemented and then replaced oars.
By the 1700s the practice of rowing was almost entirely confined to ferrying goods or people along or
across rivers and harbors. Nowhere was this more apparent than on the Thames River in England; there
rowing began to take on the trappings of a sport.
Competion in England began in1716 when a grateful actor endowed a race for the apprentice watermen
of the Thames who had ferried him back and forth for
years. The race takes place each summer, a 7.8-kilometer (4 mile, 7 furlongs) course between the London and
Chelsea Bridges. In the United States, racing began 50
years later among ferrymen in New York harbor. By
1850 racing in the United States had spread to Philadelphia, Detroit, and San Francisco.
Collegiate racing followed quickly. In England, the
first Oxford and Cambridge race took place over a 3.2-
kilometer (2-mile) course at Henley in 1829; in the
United States, Harvard and Yale competed for the first
time in 1852 on New Hampshire’s Lake Winnepesaukee. It became known as “crew” because teams used
four- and six-man shells.
Mid-19th-century rowers were primarily brawny
ferrymen who in their spare time rowed for the pride of
winning. Between 1850 and 1890 rowing competitions
became particularly popular in the United States. Legions of professional rowers found racing to be far
more lucrative and enjoyable than taxiing passengers
or rowing cargo along rivers and across harbors, and
competed for purses of up to $1,000.
The sliding seat spurred the growth of rowing. This
major technological innovation enabled them to use
their legs, the body’s strongest muscle group, to provide
most of the power. A few years later the swivel oarlock
further refined rowing by allowing rowers to take much
longer strokes than the thole pins used previously.
By 1900, beset by scandal, professional racing had
all but disappeared. Collegiate rowing, faced with more
accidents and higher costs, could not sustain its momentum in the early 1900s.
Yet rowing continued at such larger institutions as
Yale, Harvard, the University of Washington, Pennsylvania, Navy, and Syracuse. These schools switched to
the eight-oared shell with coxswain, thus minimizing
the collisions. U.S. crews proved powerful in international competition. From 1920, American eights won
eight successive Olympic gold medals. After 1960, West
Germany and Eastern European countries dominated
rowing.
In Europe, hundreds of rowing clubs provided the
point of entry for participants. As a result, in spite of
the interruption of World War II, the sport steadily attracted participants who were nurtured by the clubs. In
contrast, rowing in the United States lost ground during the 1950s and 1960s. Although still a revered tradition at the larger institutions, it had become too exclusive to engage great numbers of people. By 1970,
rowing had little new blood to keep it going.
Two developments in the early 1970s, both unexpected, ushered in a renaissance that is continuing
through the 1990s. In the late 1960s, Arthur Martin
(1917–1990), a naval architect from Maine, designed
what came to be known as the Alden Ocean Shell. He
was persuaded to manufacture 20 of the boats, which
were introduced to the market in 1971. They sold. The
Alden has elements of racing shell, canoe, and kayak,
and became the shell for every rower. With little instruction, older women and older men could row it; it
needed no boathouse, and initially cost under $1,000.
The Alden identified a market for so-called “recreational” shells, and several other shell manufacturers
responded. Many rowers learned on Aldens, then gradually moved into racing shells.
Women had rowed in small numbers. After 1962,
with the formation of the National Women’s Rowing Association, the pace quickened, but with the passage of
Title IX (mandating equal funding for women’s sports)
women’s rowing took off. Today more women than ever
are entering the sport and sticking with it. Women’s
rowing was introduced at the 1976 Olympics. Today estimates are that nearly half of all rowers are women.
Internationally, rowing has also experienced
growth, particularly since 1984. Between 1984 and
1995, membership in the Fédération Internationale des
Sociétés d’Aviron grew from 55 to 98 nations.
Rules and Play
Rowers pull their oars against a fulcrum, known as a
rigger, to plant the blades in the water and send the
shell through the water. The sliding seat differentiates
rowing as a sport from rowing a rowboat as transportation. Good rowers are powerful but never rough,
with no jerks in the stroke cycle. When they row as a
crew they move their bodies in near perfect unison.
Most power comes from the legs and the transition between the drive of the legs and the follow-through of
the back should be smooth. Oar blades should enter the
water at a 90-degree angle with little splash.
The “stroke rate” of a boat is the number of strokes
per minute. Most eights sprint at the start of a race with
a beat of 38 to 44 strokes per minute and then “settle”
during the body of the race to 32 to 36. Watched most
closely is the teamwork in rowing and how precisely
the rowers’ oar blades enter and exit the water together
and how precisely they move their slides to the stern of
the boat as they recover from the last stroke and prepare for the next. The coxswain faces forward, sitting
opposite the first oarsman, who is called the “stroke.”
Together they orchestrate the performance, with the
cox not only steering, but also determining what the
other competitors are doing and how to respond.
In the United States rowing is typically learned in
secondary schools and colleges where the shell of
choice is four- or eight-oared. In Europe, where clubs
more frequently provide the point of access, many rowers begin in single sculls. The clubs also provide a
cheaper means of entry to the sport and so attract the
less affluent. Many excellent rowers do not begin until
they are 40, 50, or even 60. Rowing remains popular in
the former Soviet Union, and is gaining followings in
Third World countries.
Equipment
The standard eight-oared shell is more than 18 meters
(60 feet) long; even single racing sculls measure about
8 meters (27 feet) and less than 0.3 meters (1 foot)
wide for a racing single, about 0.6 meters (2 feet) wide
for an eight.All of the craft are called shells, but “sculls”
and “shells” differ. The scull is the oar used for rowing
when one rower uses two oars. The practice then is
known as “sculling,” and the name scull is used for the
craft so propelled.A shell is rowed by two or more oarsmen or women, each using one oar.
The fastest boats are the eight-oared shells with a
coxswain, who steers the craft and encourages the rowers. Their smaller siblings are the four-oared shells,
some with coxswain and some without, and the pair,
accommodating two rowers, each with one oar, again
sometimes with a coxswain. Made of wood until about
1970, shells today are fiberglass, as are oars, now
hatchet and triangle shaped for faster, easier rowing.
The single is by far the most common in the scull
category. The racing singles weigh about 30 pounds (14
kilograms), seemingly too fragile to accommodate
rowers weighing between 100 and 220 pounds (46 and
100 kilograms). The racing single’s many cousins in the
“recreational” category are all wider, shorter, more stable in the water and 30 to 40 pounds heavier.
Rowing workouts require at least a mile of open water, the more sheltered the better. Traditionally, rivers in
urban settings, as well as lakes and reservoirs, have
been the most popular. However, the development of
the Alden Ocean Shell in the early 1970s has made
ocean rowing increasingly popular.
In the rest of the world, rowing is popular on the
Thames River in England and on the Nile in Egypt, as
well as at Geneva, Switzerland; Ratzeburg, Germany;
Vichy, France; Donaratico, Italy; Buenos Aires, Argentina; and Melbourne, Australia. In the words of one
historian, rowing has become a “quiet phenomenon” of
the 1990s.
—LEWIS C. CUYLER
Bibliography: Churbuck, D. C. (1988) The Book of Rowing.
Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press. Ivry, Benjamin. (1988)
Regatta: A Celebration of Oarsmanship. New York: Simon
and Schuster. Mendenhall, Thomas C. (1986) The History
of Rowing. U.S. Nationals Program.