Oars before sport
For most of its history rowing was work, not recreation. Oars moved ferries, fishing boats, harbour craft and, above all, warships. Egyptian river craft used oars and paddles, and by the first millennium BCE the oared galley was the characteristic warship of the Mediterranean. Rowers sat in rows along the hull and pulled together to drive a ship fast enough to ram an enemy.
The best-known Greek warship was the trireme, traditionally said to have had about 170 oarsmen arranged in three levels. The oarsmen were skilled and, in Athens at least, often free citizens, rather than the slaves of popular imagination, though the evidence for manning varies by place and period. The Battle of Salamis in 480 BCE is the most famous clash involving these ships. Roman fleets also used oared warships, a subject covered in the account of the Roman navy fleets, and galleys remained important in the Mediterranean for many centuries, down to the sixteenth century. The mechanics of oars and hulls are the subject of a separate article on how rowing boats were designed.
A caution is needed about early “races”. Ancient writers describe boat races held as part of festivals, and Virgil gives a famous fictional one in the Aeneid. Boat contests existed, but there was nothing like the regulated sport of today.
Watermen and wagers
Rowing as a contest in Britain grew from the trade of the river. The Thames in London was crowded with watermen who ferried passengers across and along the river. Wagers between watermen were common, and the earliest well-documented organised race is Doggett’s Coat and Badge, which has been rowed since 1715 and is still held today. It was founded, according to tradition, by an actor and theatre manager named Thomas Doggett, and the prize was a coat and silver badge.
By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, regattas were popular. Venice has a long tradition of rowing contests, and in Britain, public events on the Thames drew crowds. Pleasure rowing and the use of gigs and skiffs became part of leisure on rivers.
Schools, universities and clubs
Rowing became a central sport at English schools and universities. Eton and other schools took to the water in the early nineteenth century, and Oxford and Cambridge students began racing each other. The first Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race took place at Henley in 1829, and the race moved to the Thames in London in 1845, along the course from Putney to Mortlake. Henley Royal Regatta was founded in 1839 and became one of the main events of the rowing year.
In the United States, college crews raced from the 1850s, and a Harvard and Yale race in 1852 is generally counted as the first American intercollegiate sporting event. Clubs flourished in cities with rivers, and professional scullers drew large crowds, sometimes with heavy betting, until amateur governing bodies took over much of the sport.
The sport’s rules also reflected social attitudes. In Britain, amateur associations for a time excluded manual workers from competition, on the argument that their jobs gave them an unfair advantage. Such rules now seem a notable example of class distinction in sport.
Organisation and the Olympics
International organisation followed. The international federation for rowing, known by its French initials as FISA, was founded in 1892, and European championships began soon after. Rowing was planned for the first modern Olympic Games in Athens in 1896, but the events were cancelled because of bad weather. It made its debut at the Paris Games in 1900 and has been part of the programme ever since. Women’s rowing was added to the Olympics in 1976, at Montreal, after years of growth in women’s clubs and national championships.
Equipment and technique
Over the same period, boats changed. Wide, heavy craft gave way to narrow shells, fixed seats to sliding ones, and wooden oars were later replaced by carbon fibre blades. These developments are described in the article on hull design, and they changed the sport’s technique and speed. Both sweep rowing, with each rower holding one oar, and sculling, with two oars each, are practised, and coxed and coxless boats exist.
Rowing today
The sport continues in several forms: regattas, head races over long courses, indoor rowing on machines and coastal rowing in traditional craft such as the Cornish pilot gig. Rowing has also been used for ocean voyages by adventurers, which is quite different from the old working boats but draws on the same technique. The history of the sport is a reminder that something as simple as the oar can support work, war, spectacle and exercise across thousands of years.