Shell and Outrigger development over the decades.

Shells

By the time that rowing was established at UCLA in the fall following the 1932 Olympics, George Pocock Racing Shells had established itself as the leading American manufacturer well beyond the West Coast.  Both Cal and Washington were successful and that they were rowing in Pocock shells further establishing the brand and led it to monopolizing the American market. Pocock pioneered many innovations in manufacture that were later copied by other boat builders. 

Pocock shells, outriggers and oars all pieces of a unified system. Prior to 1965 American collegiate crews exclusively used Pocock shells with all the rigging dimensions fixed.  Pocock had a standard of 32-inch (81.3 cm) spread, five degrees of lateral pitch, one or two inches of work through the pin and an oarlock height of 6 ¼ inches (15.875 cm).  These dimensions were the same for Pocock pairs and fours.  The shells were matched with Pocock oars that were also of fixed dimensions.  While the load that these measurements produce are considered very heavy by today’s standards the shorter Pocock oars with a smaller blade surface of that period would have decreased the load somewhat.[1] 

At the beginning of World War, I rowing was suspended on a wide scale and there were no shells being purchased so the Pocock brothers worked for Boeing to build seaplane pontoons during the war and several years after its end.  “The reason that Pococks became ubiquitous was that they were cheaper than any of the others.  Why? The Pococks had made a fortune [through part of their payment in Boeing stock] during WWI building pontoons for Bill Boeing, and basically didn't raise his prices for half a century.”[2]  Maintaining their low prices also likely also kept Pocock’s “potential competitors at bay.”[3] 

A dozen shells were ordered from Pocock in 1924.  The company’s best year prior to the Great Depression was sixteen eights.  The company survived the Depression while during a two-year period there were no orders through the favorable agreement it had with the University of Washington and that George could find work for his staff at Boeing. Demand for oars and cedar shells built by George Pocock rebounded after having closed down during World War II and resulted in 47 eight-oared shells being built in 1968.[4]

George Pocock came to appreciate the local western red cedar, which gave his shells their distinctive color.  His appreciation grew after he made the switch in his hull material from Spanish cedar that was becoming more expensive and difficult to acquire. He  wrote, “I found the native red cedar to be marvelous material, ideal for the skin of racing shells; impervious to rot and light in weight.”[5]  This wood proved to be more durable than Spanish cedar boats and reduced the cost of the shell by half. 

His red cedar shells were called “banana boats” because of the unique features of the wood.  Rowing historian Gordon Newell quotes George Pocock as explaining: “The name banana came from the fact that the western red cedar boats had an unusual amount of camber, which curved them like a banana.  This feature was not built into them.”[6]“Western cedar swells very little across the grain but can expand lengthwise as much as one inch in 60 feet” resulting in the “banana boat with a natural camber.”[7] Though built flat, the bowing occurred naturally as the cedar of the hull’s end sections expanded and the cockpit section did not.[8] The hull’s ability to plane on top of the water was a popular among the rowing community.

Some of the Pocock innovations listed by Mendenhall included, “by the 30’s George began using waterproof glue to fasten the skin to the ribs, shaping it down until the glue set and thus saving many hours of nailing.”[9] Another “revolutionary development” was George’s “molded eight” in the late 1930s where “two layers of cedar [were] laminated together over a mold under pressure” producing a shell that was “easier and less expensive to make.”[10]

“‘Ribs have been our nemesis for years,’ George explained, ‘because they frequently cause unevenness of the outer skin.’ While he refused to go into technical details of what was certainly a major trade secret, he explained that the ribless boats were made possible by what he called a ‘cedar sandwich,’ with fiberglass applied over both the inside and outside of the boat’s skin, so thinly as to be absolutely transparent.  It required a well trained eye to distinguish between the old style of shells and the new.”[11]

Other European builders, Karlish, Empacher (Germany) and Donoratico (Italy) during the 1960s-1980s created the skin of their wooden hulls using two thin layers laid diagonally and an outer layer laid straight.  Although the intent was strength it created the potential for strain against the grain.

In the four Olympic games 1952 through 1964, all the crews representing the United States raced in Pocock shells in the seven boat categories.[12]  However, 1966 was the final year that all the shells and oars used by crews competing at the IRA regatta were manufactured by Pocock.[13] 

Like most boat builders as they began the transition from wood hulls to composite, Pocock continued to offer both wood and composite hulls. In 1968 Pocock Racing Shells produced 125 boats of which 47 were eights,[14] however by 1980, as foreign and domestic builders competed for sales, Pocock Racing Shells built only 20 eight-oared shells, half being cedar and half being composite.  In the same year Pocock’s company built eight four-oared shells, six pair-oared shells and 60 singles.[15] Early Pocock composites used wooden ribs and latticework superstructure with little difference from its wooden version attached to a molded Kevlar fiberglass hull. George’s son Stan Pocock stated in 1982 that his early Pocock “C shells” were in response to customer demand for shells that were lighter and stiffer.  In addition to being much lighter in weight [195 pounds without outriggers] and stiff, Stan Pocock wanted the shells to have a long lifetime. Longevity was a problem for early composite shells since often the foam cores being used suffered from excessive water absorption, causing the shells to increase in weight over time.  In response to the weight issues Pocock used layers of fiberglass, Kevlar and carbon fibers with a PVC foam trademarked as Klegecell between the layers. There were no ribs and the standard Pocock stainless steel riggers were mounted on the side of the hull. Stan Pocock however bemoaned that stiffer shells required better rowing skill than the cedar version that were designed to “compensate for the movements of rowers inside the boat,” and further, that Pocock Racing Shells had produced some lighter weight , SuperCedar, cedar version shells but they were not able to stand up to the forces of a powerful, heavyweight crew.[16]

By 1990 there were three basic man-materials available to manufacture the hulls of rowing shells: fiberglass, carbon fiber and Kevlar which was a nylon fiber.  All of these come as a woven cloth with different characteristics and could come in different weaves, thicknesses and strengths.  These would be laminated together using polyester or epoxy resins which also varied in characteristics.  Polyester resin being too brittle for its application to rowing, but epoxy resin was more flexible.[17]  It became clear that total rigidity was not ideal especially in regard to torsional rigidity where the shell twists if one side of the boat is down, otherwise the boat was difficult to row and “deadens the feeling that the rower gets from the movement of the boat.”[18]  Early composite shells gained their stiffness from their frame while wooden Pocock shells utilized the hull for stiffness.[19]  Borrowing from the aircraft industry, though still by trial and error, shells were formed as a monocoque where the entire hull was a single piece, with the bow and stern decks and each of the rowing stations each molded in individual pieces then bonded together, eliminating the need for separate bracing but providing a rigid structure.[20]  At first, a cold-molding technique was used where the layers of fiber were placed inside the concave mold and then saturated with epoxy resin at room temperature and the resin sets up relatively quickly.[21]Another method is heat-curing that English boat builder Carbocraft borrowed from English aircraft design in 1981 which was less labor intensive, used a vacuum bag over the mold to draw the fiber and resin to the mold, and then cured for ninety minutes at 130°C [266°F].[22]

[1] Andy Anderson, “The Game Changers”, Rowing News, Volume 19, Number 1 (February 2012a), 52.
[2] Mallory, email, 2014.
[3] Stanley Richard Pocock, Way Enough! Recollections of a Life in Rowing (Seattle: BLABLA Publishing, 2000), 118
[4] Mendenhall, “The Pococks: Part II”, 25.
[5] Gordon Newell, Ready All! George Yeoman Pocock and Crew Racing (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1987), 93-94.
[6] Newell, Ready All! George Yeoman Pocock and Crew Racing, 95.
[7] Mendenhall, “The Pococks: Part II”, 27.
[8] Mallory, The Sport of Rowing, 441.
[9] Mendenhall, “The Pococks: Part II”, 26.
[10] Mendenhall, “The Pococks: Part II”, 26.
[11] Newell, Ready All! George Yeoman Pocock and Crew Racing, 146-147.
[12] Mendenhall, “The Pococks: Part II”, 25.
[13] Pocock, Way Enough! Recollections of a Life in Rowing, 213.
[14] Pocock, Way Enough! Recollections of a Life in Rowing, 237.
[15] Mendenhall, “The Pococks: Part II”, 26.
[16] “Stan Builds C-Shells”, Rowing U.S.A., Volume 14, Number 3 (June/July 1982), 16-17.
[17] Dodd, The Story of World Rowing, 115.
[18] Dodd, The Story of World Rowing, 118.
[19] Pocock, Way Enough! Recollections of a Life in Rowing, 274.
[20] Dodd, The Story of World Rowing, 116.
[21] Dodd, The Story of World Rowing, 117-118.
[22] Dodd, The Story of World Rowing, 119.

Outriggers

George Pocock did not believe in the value of the “flood of innovations in rigging” and instead believed that “fast people, not fast boats, were his first choice.”[1] According to rowing historian Thomas Mendenhall, “although not unwilling to experiment, George’s designing remained empirical. Trusting his eye and hand rather than any formula, he believed that if a thing looked right it was right.” [2]

The commonly used material for outriggers had been tubular stainless steel since early in the twentieth century.  However, that did not stop efforts to find a lighter but strong material suitable for outriggers.  Following a loss in 1938 by the Cal Freshman when the bow oarsman’s oar got stuck against his rigger’s top brace, California coach Ebright made a request to Pocock that the rigger be made with only two legs [main stay and front stay] instead of what had been traditional with three that included a top stay/brace also going toward the bow that potentially caught the oar when a rower caught a crab. Instead, a bracket stabilized the top of the oarlock pin and attached to the same sill plate as the base of the oarlock pin. After California’s win at the IRA in 1939 with this type of rigger it became the standard for Pocock shells.[3]  Decades later, an adjustable back stay was reintroduced to rigger configuration to maintain oarlock pitch.

Fixed outriggers as produced by Pocock did not allow for any adjustment, aside from physically bending the outrigger or oarlock pin, applying tape to the oarlock to adjust pitch, or shims or plates to raise or lower the oarlock.  Technical style, racing strategy and individual athlete biometrics are among the reasons to adjust rigging. Adjustable outriggers and later pitch bushings in Concept2 oarlocks allowed for the desired adjustments in rigging. 

Prior to 1965 American collegiate crews exclusively used Pocock shells with all the rigging dimensions fixed.  Pocock had a standard of 32-inch (81.3 cm) spread, five degrees of lateral pitch, one or two inches of work through the pin and an oarlock height of 6 ¼ inches (15.875 cm).  These dimensions were the same for Pocock pairs and fours.  The shells were matched with Pocock oars that were also fixed dimensions.  While the load that these measurements produce are considered very heavy by today’s standards the shorter Pocock oars with a smaller blade surface of that period would have decreased the load somewhat.[4] 

American crews began to use European produced shells in the middle 1960s after decades of domination by Pocock made shells and oars.  Coach Harry Parker of Harvard was the first to bring a Stämpfli shell to a U.S. college in 1965, after Oxford won the Boat Race in a Stämpfli that year.  The Stämpfli had some ability to allow adjustment of the rigging.

In the 1970s and 1980s Helmut Schoenbrod’s shells, first wood then fiberglass, were an American challenger to Pocock’s monopoly and  featured four-stay adjustable outriggers.  These outriggers were sometimes fitted to Pocock hulls, but soon after most boat manufacturers, except Pocock, followed in offering adjustable riggers on their shells.[5]  These adjustable outriggers continued to be side-mounted to the hull but were of lighter materials such as aluminum still attached by bolts passing through the wooden ribs/shoulders of the hull.  Some of the early type of adjustable outriggers were difficult to adjust and were not reliable in holding their position from even one practice to another.  Various clamps attached to the main stay that was held in position by a combination of front and back stays, with another clamp holding the oarlock pin and the desired spread and pitch.  The early Vespoli outriggers had a fixed two-arm frame that attached main and front stays with a separate back stay that attached to the top of the oarlock pin with an insert in the main stay that was positioned with a clamp holding the oarlock pin to adjust spread.  Since this insert fit in the tube of the main stay adjustment of pitch and spread would have to both be managed during adjustment.  The next Vespoli version, called “Euro Riggers”, still utilized a side-mounted frame and separate back stay, but the oarlock pin could be reliably adjusted wider or narrower in a slot, leaving pitch to oarlock pitch bushings. 

The next development in outriggers was a unit that extended across the top of the gunnel called a wing rigger.  A Pocock newsletter in 1997 cited that wing riggers had been proposed by Walter Hoover in 1956, but “unfortunately, the materials of the day were neither stiff enough or strong enough to carry the idea to fruition, so it lay fallow until the advent of carbon fiber.”[6] Rowing journalist Andy Anderson [Doctor Rowing] credits Ted Van Dusen as the innovator of wing riggers in 1984 to make the very light singles and doubles that he was manufacturing meet the new weight mandated by F.I.S.A. since the wing riggers were heavier than side-mounted riggers but had less wind drag.[7] 

Although a wing rigger is heavier than a side-mounted tubular outrigger, it is stiffer and more aerodynamic.  Wing riggers are attached on a lip on top of the gunnel thus eliminating the need for structural ribs while providing an exterior bracing for the shell.   The elimination of ribs that had been required for the attachment of riggers lead and the riggers spanning the shell to increased torsional stiffness of the hull since they acted as cross bracing.[8] The gunnel lip is made with a uniform width though the hull tapers at bow and stern.  There are typically several sets of attachment holes drilled in the lip allowing variation of the placement of the wing outrigger either toward the bow or stern usually to adjust the trim of the shell and work through.  The lip is also capable of deflecting water outside the hull downward in rough conditions.  Aluminum wing outriggers mounted to the stern of each seat became the standard.  In most cases, an adjustable backstay was also used attached to the top of the oarlock pin and a point farther to the bow on the gunnel, usually where the next outrigger attached to the gunnel.

 The early wing outriggers were made of either aluminum or carbon fiber with the carbon fiber typically lighter and more expensive.  The carbon fiber outrigger is stiffer and as such provides improved performance characteristics.  Since the carbon fiber stern mounted wing outriggers utilize a sill on which the oarlock pin mounts there is slightly more adjustability in rigging options that the earlier slotted Euro type slot of the aluminum wing.[9]  Typically in sweep boats the stern mounted wing outrigger is fitted with a back stay. Rosemary Mayglothling OBE past British national team oarswoman and recently retired chair of the Competitive Rowing Commission of World Rowing states that the back stay keeps the pin “stiff and upright” but doesn’t increase the boat’s racing weight since shells are already at minimum weight.[10] Boat manufacturer Filippi states that a carbon wing, “is lightweight, highly adjustable, and designed specifically to transfer the athlete’s energy into forward motion. When every bit of performance matters, the carbon sweep rigger is your best option.”[11]  During the past forty years the weight of wing riggers has decreased, this has allowed boat builders to maintain the weight minimum by adding more carbon to the hull producing increased stiffness.[12]

Wing riggers first appeared in the men’s varsity eight event at the Intercollegiate Rowing Association championship in 2003, when three teams (Washington: 2nd, Northeastern: 5th, and Stanford: 14th) used Pocock [carbon] shells with wing riggers.  In 2004 there were four teams, one a Hudson hull [aluminum wing], and in 2005 there were nine teams, including two with Vespoli hulls [aluminum wing].  From photographic records of the 2007 women’s NCAA Division-1 eight there were six of the sixteen teams that raced with wing riggers, three in Vespoli [aluminum wing] shells (Yale: 1st, Virginia: 5th, Minnesota: 7th), two in [ Pocock [carbon wing] shells (UCLA: 14th, Washington: 15th) and one in an Empacher [aluminum wing] shell (Stanford: 10th)].

By 2021 Empacher and Pocock began to offer a bow mounted carbon wing outrigger.  This eliminated the need for a backstay. A bow mounted wing outrigger is stiffer thus producing a quick acceleration curve at the catch but is less forgiving for less technically skilled rowers, and with the absence of the backstay sometimes requires more attention to maintaining oarlock pitch. Pocock offered their G8 outrigger on medium and small size hulls and claimed that a “bow-mounted wing rigger eliminates twisting and bending forces inflicted on the pin. Not only does this setup maximize the transfer of athlete power into boat speed, but also eliminates the need for a bowbrace.”[13]  Empacher began to offer their new X sweep back wing and claimed “nearly lossless, better power transmission at beginning and middle phase of the stroke. This new sweep back wing gives the rower a more precise feeling for propulsion and boat movements.”[14]  The bow mounted outrigger is fitted with a C-shaped bracket that attaches to the top and bottom of the pin with the oarlock in the middle of the bracket. While this configuration prevents deformation of the outrigger there is a good deal of force and torque on the oarlock pin that can result in Rosie Mayglothling, retired chair of the World Rowing Competitive Rowing Commission,refers to as “subtle change in pitch” requiring frequent monitoring and adjustment.[15] According to Fred Honebein, of Empacher North America, the choice between the bow and stern mounted carbon wing outrigger is based on the “comfort for the crews” since the bow mounted has greater stiffness resulting in a “really quick acceleration curve at the catch.”[16]However, Honebein prefers the lower stiffness of the stern mounted wing outrigger when coaching novice and freshmen men since it is “more forgiving” and thus helpful “in rougher conditions and with athletes that have a lot of power, but not a lot of skill.”[17]

In the 2021 men’s Olympic finals two (second place Germany and fifth place Netherlands) of the five Empacher eights in the final featured the newly available bow-mounted carbon wing outriggers.  Among the 2024 men’s Olympic eight event, one of the three Empacher shells had bow mounted outriggers (fourth place Germany) while the other two Empacher shells (first place great Britain and sixth place Australia) had stern mounted carbon wing outriggers.  In the same event, two of the Filippi shells had stern mounted wings (second place Netherlands and third place United States) and the other two Filippi shells had bow mounted wing outriggers.  In the women’s 2024 Olympic eight-oared event all four of the Filippi shells had bow mounted wings while all three of the Empacher shells had stern mounted wing outriggers.  It comes down to technical preference.

[1] Mendenhall, “The Pococks: Part II”, 28.
[2] Mendenhall, “The Pococks: Part II”, 27.
[3] Pocock, Way Enough! Recollections of a Life in Rowing, 35.
[4] Andy Anderson, “The Game Changers”, Rowing News, Volume 19, Number 1 (February 2012a), 52.
[5] Anderson, “Survival of the Fastest”, 54.
[6] Pocock Racing Shells, “The Advantage of Wings”, Newsletter (Spring 1997), 2.
[7] Andy Anderson, “Winging It”, Rowing News, Volume 30, Number 5 (June 2023), 66.
[8] Anderson, “Winging It”, 65.
[9] Pocock Racing, web, “Carbon vs. Aluminum: Choosing the Right Riggers for Your Rowing Shell”.
[10] Rosemary Mayglothling, email, 27 January 2025.
[11] Filippi Racing Shells, web, “Riggers”.
[12] Anderson, “Winging It”, 65.
[13] Pocock Racing Shells, web, “xVIII Small / Medium”.
[14] Empacher, web, “Empacher Racing Eight”.
[15] Rosie Mayglothling, retired chair of the World Rowing Competitive Rowing Commission email, 27 Jan 2025.
[16] Fred Honebein, Empacher North America, email, 27 January 2025.
[17] Honebein, email, 2025.