Rowing

Materials

The Gallery doesn’t just look at the people and boats, but also to the developments in materials and technology that have accelerated the International sport of rowing to the incredible speeds and feats we see today. Lift sections of oars to see which would be most effective, or feel the materials that make up hi-tech composite racing shells used today by the Unbeaten Boat in the centre of the gallery.

Women’s Rowing

Rowing is a diverse sport and there have been huge achievements in the fields of Women’s rowing and para-rowing in recent years. Our display at the end of the Rowing Gallery champions these stories. Through training diaries, outfits, medals, equipment and much more – loaned from the athletes themselves – you can find out about the challenges and the successes along the way.

Glass Casket

Luigi Colani designed a boat unconventional in every way for the West German Olympic eight in 1972. It has a titanium frame with integral outriggers and a translucent skin of epoxy, glass fibre and carbon fibre. It weighs only 65-70 kilos, about 40 kilos lighter than a conventional eight. It was disabled by a manufacturing fault in the seats, and was never used, earning the nickname Glass Casket.

Have a Go!

Climb aboard our life-sized model of an Ancient Greek trireme to see how it felt to row together on the high seas. A trireme was a large, rowed ship, powered by oarsmen arranged in three tiers or levels (the clue is in the name – tri is the Greek origin of three).

Developed from 650BC and designed for power, speed and agility, the trireme could outpace and out-manoeuvre all other ships of its time.

Discoveries at all heights

The Rowing Gallery is packed with discoveries wherever you look, from boats overhead that pioneered new technology to help rowers race even faster, to Olympic medals, training kit and stories of famous and lesser known sporting champions all around.

Olympic Torch

In 2012 the Olympic and Paralympic Games came to London. We are very fortunate to have an Olympic Torch from the Games in our Rowing Gallery. This torch was carried through Cardiff by Katharine Gourley on 26th May 2012. Katharine lives in High Wycombe and was nominated as a torch bearer for her work helping local young people prepare for employment.

British Rowing was hugely successful in the 2012 Games, leading the medal table with 4 golds and 9 medals in total.

The photo shows Olympian Alex Gregory holding the torch, ahead of taking gold in the coxless four at the 2012 Games.

Look out for the Olympic cauldron in the gallery too!

Row2Recovery

This section of the gallery tells the phenomenal story of a team of six British army veterans – four of whom had been severely wounded in Afghanistan and Iraq – who took part in the notoriously difficult Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge in 2011. The competition, known as the toughest rowing race in the world, sees teams row all the way across the Atlantic Ocean, from the Canary Islands to Barbados.

Their boat became their whole world for the gruelling 51-day journey, with the men working in shifts, rowing for 3 hours on, 3 hours off and catching sleep when they could in the tiny cabin. Outside the Museum you can see ‘Endeavour’, the boat used by the 2013 crew to imagine just how hard the journey would have been.

Discover the full story in the gallery through shark repellent, dried food, film footage and even a prosthetic leg to find out about the near-misses and huge trials they had to overcome to complete this incredible feat.

Oxford 1829 Boat

The Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race is one of the big name events in the rowing world, and we are used to seeing the sleek racing shells that are rowed to success today. By contrast, this was the boat that was rowed to victory by Oxford’s dark blue crew in the very first Boat Race, in 1829. It is much wider and would have been far slower in the water but demonstrated how far the technology in competitive rowing has come.

Did you know, before the Boat Race moved to London it was held annually in Henley on Thames!