5 October 2023

By Göran R Buckhorn

In a seven-part article, which ended yesterday, Tim Koch has told the story of Chester Regatta on the River Dee, which is 20 miles from Liverpool and 200 miles “from the pernicious influence of London”. It is said to be “the world’s oldest regatta”, a claim Tim has looking into.

Tim Koch’s research included the newspapers the Chester Chronicle, the Chester Courant and the Cheshire Observer. He also read John Vernon Glass and J. M. Patrick’s Royal Chester Rowing Club Centenary History (1939), Neil Wigglesworth’s A Social History of English Rowing (1992) and Keith Osborne’s booklet 1000 Years of Rowing on the Dee (2003).

Tim writes:

Unfortunately, the studies of both Wigglesworth and Osborne suffer from the fact that they were researched when the Internet was young and Glass and Patrick when it was non-existent. Today, I can accurately search newspaper archives from home in seconds while Wigglesworth et al had to physically trawl original papers or microfiche copies, a laborious task that was both time consuming and prone to inaccuracies.

Tim’s research shows that the claim that the Chester Regatta is the world’s oldest regatta is from an article from 1883, which states that the regatta on the Dee was recorded in a print in 1733. “Sadly, while everyone seems happy to quote the existence of this mysterious print, which is the sole ‘evidence’ for the date 1733, no one has reproduced it or revealed where it could be found,” Tim writes.

If you have missed Tim’s seven-part article about the Chester Regatta or would like to reread them, you will find them all here.