23 August 2023
By Ralf-Peter Stumme
I was surprised when I read in the caption of one of the great pictures in Tim Koch’s “Emprunter á la bibliotheke”, published on 21 August, that the coxed single sculls was never popular.
The coxed single was one, if not the, most popular boat in the late 1800s and the first decades of the 20th century in France, Germany and the Netherlands.
The special type in the photo in Tim Koch’s article is a “Canoë francais” or “Canoë a rame”. The first boat of this type was built in England but grew very popular in the Paris region from the 1880s and onwards. The idea is a light boat for touring and racing. It was inspired by the Innuit-kayak via the Rob-Roy canoe. It was adapted for rowing purposes.
There were many thousands of them built throughout France, Belgium, Switzerland and Italy. Most of them were built as coxed singles. Several hundred of them are still existing and lots of them are still in use.
In Germany and the Netherlands, the “Canoë francais” never found many friends. Though the coxed singles were very popular there, these and all the other touring boats were more sturdily built.
For this article, I have picked some images from the 2015 edition of the “Regate 1900” in Joinville-le-Pont. This place was once one of the centres of Paris metropolitan boating, rowing and boatbuilding.