The Race
The race constists of about 11 teams of between 4 and 8 members who steer and row 30 ton barges over a seven mile course for about 90 minutes from Greenwich to Westminster Bridge. Considerable skill is needed to pilot unpowered barges 'rowed under oars' or sweeps and ride tidal river currents alone, up river. The event commemorates the skills of lightermen who moved freight this way along the Thames up until the 1930s and in a wider context it encourages ongoing interest in moving cargo via water and as a way to recruit younger people back into river trades.
The teams are normally made up of employees of Thames Lighterage companies, Port of London Authority or are sponsored by local businesses. The best places to view the race are Tower Bridge, London Bridge and Westminster Bridge.
Read more about this topic: The Thames Barge Driving Race
Famous quotes containing the word race:
“I never feel so conscious of my race as I do when I stand before a class of twenty-five young men and women eager to learn about what it is to be black in America.”
—Claire Oberon Garcia, African American college professor. As quoted in the Chronicle of Higher Education, p. B3 (July 27, 1994)
“Nobody is glad in the gladness of another, and our system is one of war, of an injurious superiority. Every child of the Saxon race is educated to wish to be first. It is our system; and a man comes to measure his greatness by the regrets, envies, and hatreds of his competitors.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)