TABLE OF CONTENTS Credit for inventing the rowed boat seems to belong to the Egyptians. Boats with oars appear in carved relief on monuments built in Egypt between 3300 and 3000 BC. Boats, before steam power, could be propelled by poling, by sail, or by oar. Oars gave more control than the other two, the military potential of which was well understood by the Romans, the Vikings and the Venetians.
Records of rowing races on the Thames in London extend Back to 1716. Originally the competitors were watermen, rowing the ferries used to carry people and goods across the river. Gradually gentlemen became involved (notably the young gentlemen of Oxford and Cambridge), sophisticating both the rules and the equipment. The real stimulus for development of boat and oar came in 1900 with the establishment of rowing as an Olympic sport. Since then both have drawn to the full on the craftsmanship and materials of their day. Consider, as an example, the oar.
Mechanically speaking, an oar is a beam, loaded in bending. It must be strong enough to carry, without breaking, the bending moment exerted by the oarsman, it must have a stiffness to match the rower's own characteristics and give the right "feel", and very important it must be as light as possible. Meeting the strength constraint is easy. Oars are designed on stiffness, that is, to give a specified elastic deflection under a given load.
The upper part of Figure 6.1 shows...
