Dart Gig
Dart Gig Club
Although Dart Gig Club owes its foundation to a meeting in the Dartmouth Arms perhaps now fourteen years ago, the origin of gig rowing on the Dart goes back to the conception of the pilot gig itself. Even in the 1830’s a purse of twenty sovereigns was being offered at Dartmouth Regatta for the first ship’s six-oared boarding gig that crossed the finishing line, a truly fantastic amount for the time. Queen Victoria herself actually proffered a purse for a gig race after she and Prince Albert took shelter in Dartmouth during a late summer channel storm. The Royal patronage of today’s regatta stems from this visit. Gigs were, in truth, tools and as such were used to put pilots on ships wishing to enter harbour all around the south west. Prince Albert was so impressed with the newly finished workmanship of a Kingswear gig called Omar Pasha that he had her hailed alongside the royal yacht for a better look.
Times were hard and so the crews would race to be the first aboard any vessel heading into the Dart. If a crew was successful and arrived first they put their pilot on board to navigate such a vessel into harbour and they also got the job of working the cargos and supplies. The urgency of this led to fast and fit crews and lean fast gigs which back then cost around twenty pounds (not the twenty thousand a fully rigged gig might cost today). Despite their cost, these are rowed equally as hard at events all over the South West.
There may well have been a full half dozen gigs carrying out this perilous trade not only out of Dartmouth but out of Kingswear as well, in a rivalry that has not diminished today. Lightning, Comet, Fly, Bee, Elizabeth, are all names reputed to be those of old now long gone Dart gigs. The Britannia Royal Naval College also owned at least a dozen four oared gigs which were raced here at the Regatta until the early fifties.
Gig racing returned to Dartmouth 16 years ago when Kevin Pyne invited rowing friends from the Yealm to bring their gig along for the people on the Dart to try out. They were joined by boats from Looe and Truro. After this Mike Emsley set about starting a gig club on the Dart. The club was accepted into the Cornish Pilot Gig Association in 1997. The club has been hugely successful over the years. In their second year, the club won the men’s veterans race at the World Championships in the Isles of Scilly.
The club has also won both the county men’s vets and ladies’ vets and in recent years the men’s super vets and mixed super-vets. In the club’s early days, the under fourteens crew also won the U14s County Championships. The club has two wooden pilot gigs, Volante and Lightning and a fibre glass gig, Dilly E. The club is undertaking a 24 hour sponsored row on 26th September to raise funds for a second fibreglass gig, such is the interest in rowing. The club is very grateful for all the support and sponsorship it receives from the town.
Any one wishing to try gig rowing may contact the club Captains Colin and Halina Brown on 834885 and should they wish to race, can be assured trips all over Devon, Cornwall, Dorset and to the Isles of Scilly where gigs are raced en masse on the May bank holiday weekend .
First Published September 2008 By The Dart
