Rowing in 19th Century New York

Excerpt from “The Wild and Crazy Professionals”
By Bill Miller

If you’re like me, you have a very squeaky clean image of rowing. It is a sport of honor, pure competition, and strong camaraderie. Whether in victory or defeat, you respect your competitor and develop a bond with everyone who rows. In the 19th Century, rowing had a very dark side. Cheating, interfering, throwing and fixing races, damaging equipment, and poisoning and threats of death were known to occur. The professional rowing crowd in the 1800s would fit right in with the infamous 1919 Chicago "Black Sox."

From fishermen and whalers to pilot gigs and life-savers, from naval frigate tenders and harbor ferries to Whitehall taxis and ships’ provisioners, many people pulled an oar for a livelihood. This led to contests, although fairly disorganized, and caught the public’s attention and interest. With this attention and interest grew the opportunity to make a quick dollar by betting on the outcome.

The top professional oarsmen were the famous figures of their day. Many were the New York Whitehallers who were the taxis of the day. They would row passengers across the East and Hudson Rivers for a fee. Being a faster sculler attracted more fares. Races between them showed professional supremacy.

Each oarsman or crew had a committee of supporters or backers that served as managers. They would make all arrangements for a race including raising the cash prize. The backers would then set out to book bets on the race and they would reward their oarsmen for a successful venture. Huge sums of money were bet and many times less than upright people bet more than they could afford to lose. If there was a way to influence the outcome in favor of your sculler or crew then it was tried. Samuel Crowther wrote in Rowing & Track Athletics in 1905:

The professional racing drew the crowds and created the public excitement; a race between prominent scullers or crews was witnessed by from ten to fifty thousand people, and the betting was like that on a horse-race. The modern police arrangements were unknown, and the referee seldom decided against the home crew; the patriotism of the small town for its base-ball team is as nothing compared with the feeling in New York for the Biglins or other favorites, and that of the Hudson dwellers for the Wards.

The visiting oarsman had little chance; if the crowd did not break his boat before the start, he would have to run a gantlet of crafts as soon as he took the lead, and many a man had his boat cut in two by a barge when leading toward the finish. In one of Ellis Ward’s races on the Harlem against a number of local favorites, he had to dodge four barges that went at full speed for him, and, all else failing, the boats massed at the finish so that he could not cross on the proper side of the stake-boat, and then the opponents claimed that the race should not be given to him because he had not finished in the correct place. It was the universal custom for the leading boat to give the nearest competitor the "wash" and every trick possible was played. The referee was the sole judge, and if he decided a race a draw, no matter what the outcome had been, the bets were off, and there are several recorded cases where such a decision was given simply because the home crew had been heavily backed and had lost.

Courtesy of Friends of Rowing History