ABSTRACT
Rowing emerged as a sport in Scotland at the same time as yachting, about 1820. Regattas in the sea usually included both of these sports, and members of the professional crews of the yachts doubled as the oarsmen. Those on rivers and canals were confined to rowing, and were found over most of the Lowlands: on the Tweed at Sprouston and Coldstream in the 1840s, for example, and on the Clyde at Glasgow Green in the middle of the century. As other sports expanded in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, rowing became relatively less important, not least because Scottish schools and universities took only a limited interest in it.
