an oar working against a fulcrum

(sometime after 1000 B.C.) until the present,

rowing has been an efficient means of

transportation. In the past 500 years whale

boats, captains' gigs, surf rescue boats,

ferrymen, fishermen and many others have turned

to oar-propelled boats. And from the beginning,

any time there were two or more boats, sooner

or later there was a race, whether for

business, for honor, or purely for the sport of

it.

Rowing began to develop as a sport in the early

19th century. In England, boys at Eton were

racing in eights by 1811, and the first Boat

Race between Oxford and Cambridge was held in

1829. In the United States, the first boat club

appeared in New York harbor in 1834, while a

Yale student began intramural college rowing

with the purchase of a second-hand Whitehall

boat for $29.50 in 1843. Soon rowing had spread

across the country. The Detroit Boat Club

(founded in 1839) has the honor of being the

oldest club in the country still active in the

sport. The Schuylkill Navy was organized in

1858 by the Philadelphia boat clubs, and is the

oldest sporting organization still in

existence.

As the country's population began to move to

the cities following the Civil War, they soon

seized upon sports and outdoor activities to

fill their free time. Leading the way were

horse racing and boat racing, the latter

involving amateurs, professionals and college

students. Regattas increased from 10 or 12

before the Civil War to over 150 in 1872, and

were held from Savannah to Sacramento and Maine

to Milwaukee. By 1873, there were 289 rowing

clubs, 74 in New York, 12 in Georgia, 14 in

Michigan, 5 in Iowa and 14 in California.

Professional rowing was enormously popular in

the second half of the 19th century, but by

1900 had virtually disappeared. Prizes varied

from $25 for beginners to $6,000 or more for

the famous Canadian, Ned Hanlan. The

professional scullers became popular as

colorful personalities, while the regattas

themselves became exciting events with crowds,

food, drink, entertainment, and gambling. It

was the gamblers who hastened the end of

professional rowing, with rigged races and such

dirty tricks as boats sawed in half.

Both the amateurs and college athletes wanted

to distance themselves from the professionals.

The National Association of Amateur Oarsmen

(renamed the United States Rowing Association

in 1982) was established in 1872. It was the

first national sports governing body in the

country, and also the first to establish a

definition of an amateur. This early schism

between amateurs and professionals is unique to

the sport of rowing, and has continued to this

day.

The popularity of amateur rowing clubs waned

somewhat in the early part of the 20th century,

but the stronger clubs survived. One of the

strengths of the clubs has been their emphasis

on small boats, which demand greater skill yet

also allow working adults more flexibility.

Early college racing was in sixes, with no

coxswains. Due to the endless fouls and

accidents, they gradually switched to eights

with coxswains. The first intercollegiate race

was in 1852 on Lake Winnipesaukee, New

Hampshire, between Harvard and Yale. What soon

became an annual race between the two schools

changed locations several times before settling

in New London, CT, in 1878. Other colleges were

soon rowing and, in 1875, 13 eastern schools

(Cornell, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Dartmouth,

Wesleyan, Amherst, Brown, Williams, Bowdoin,

Hamilton, Union and Princeton) raced before

25,000 people at Saratoga, NY.

Various match races and at least one collegiate

association came and went, until the ancestor

of the present-day Intercollegiate Rowing

Association was established in 1895 at

Poughkeepsie. Initially made up of eastern

colleges, Wisconsin (1897), Stanford (1912),

Washington (1913) and California (1921) soon

joined. In 1929, the NAAO voted to accept

college members, but the clubs and colleges

remained separate, with few college oarsmen

continuing to row in the clubs following

graduation.

The distinction was clear in Olympic rowing.

Beginning with Navy in 1920, American college

eights won eight successive Olympic Gold

medals. The small boats were filled by club

oarsmen, who usually gained 3 or 4 medals in

each Olympiad. American domination of the

Olympic eight event ended in Rome in 1960.

Changes in style, training methods, and rigging

led to the emergence of first the West Germans

and then other countries as major world rowing

powers. The biggest changes have been in

training: speed, endurance and strength can be

improved much more effectively and efficiently

today.

Two other changes have also affected American

rowing in the past 25 years. The first is the

appearance of women. Although women were rowing

at Wellesley College in 1877, and soon after in

a few other isolated clubs and schools around

the country, the activity was strictly

intramural, and intended to be primarily

"healthful and recreational". A few women were

rowing, but women were not a part of rowing.

That began to change in the early 1960s. The

National Women's Rowing Association was founded

in 1962. Four years later, the first NWRA

Nationals was held in Seattle, with fewer than

100 competitors. Today, American women rowers

are among the best in the world, they are a

part of the USRA governing structure, they row

at nearly every college and club at which men

row.

The other major change has been the development

of the "recreational" shells. Less expensive

than a racing single, the recreational single

has an even more important feature: a complete

novice can get into one and start rowing

immediately. A racing single is often only 12

inches wide, and learning to row usually

involves a fair amount of swimming. The extra

stability of the recreational singles and

doubles allows the beginner to enjoy the sport

from the start. It also lets the more

experienced row in the rougher water of bays,

ocean coasts, and large lakes and rivers, where

a racing single would swamp. The recreational

single has been a major factor in popularizing

the sport.

Today the United States Rowing Association has

a diverse membership of 14,000 and is growing

with every year. In 1995, almost 530 clubs,

colleges, and high schools from around the

country were member organizations -- the

highest total in association history. The sport

is quietly becoming a phenomenon. Olympic

athletes, homemakers, business people, youth,

senior citizens, disabled individuals, athletes

from other sports and those discovering the

sport for the first time, those who wish to

race and those who row for fitness are finding

that rowing can meet almost any need and

interest. If rowing is, indeed, the sport of

the '90s, it is certainly easy to see why.

This information was taken from A Short History

of American Rowing by Thomas C. Mendenhall. The

book is available from KGA at 1-800-314-4769.