History of the Commercial Rowing Club

Commercial Rowing Clubs Dim and Distant past Commercial Rowing Club was founded in the dim and distant past of 1856. The original membership was drawn from the Commercial heart of Dublin, tailors, bankers and other shopkeepers of Henry Street and Grafton Street. Commercial Clubs were set up in Belfast and Galway with a similar membership. The traditional source of membership lasted right up until the 1950’s after which it started to change. Commercial were one of the original clubs in the Metropolitan Committee, when it was opened at Ringsend in 1873. The Metropolitan Regatta used the wide open waters of the Liffey Mouth within the Port area, an area that has the distinction of being charged by captain Bligh of Bounty fame. Commercial was one of the clubs that formed the short lived Amateur Rowing association in the early eighteen eighties. They were not one of the original clubs of the Irish Amateur Rowing Union formed in 1899 but joined later that year. Members have contributed greatly to the running of the Union over the Century; James Lenehan of Caple Street was the Hon. Treasurer from 1925 to 1939. Billy Wall held the same office from 1946 to 1971. Perhaps the membership of the Union felt the money matters were best left in the hands of the Commercial Men in Dublin.

The Move Upstream

Commercial seems to enter a dark age at the beginning of the 20th Century, perhaps their isolation at Ringsend when other clubs had moved inland left them out of touch. To avoid the inconvenience of the Tides and the port traffic Commercial moved upstream to the peaceful waters of Islandbridge in 1942 to take over the premises of Dublin Rowing Club who had become insolvent. It is said that some of the Dublin rowing Club members jumped the hedge to remain ever hostile to the new invaders.

The Sixties Revival

Everybody connected with the club will know the ups and down that time dished out. Commercial nearly met her Waterloo in 1960, membership dropped and debtors came pressing. One dark stormy night the remaining membership met in the gloom of the small bar to here the last will and testament. Various members agreed to donate materials and money to build a new bar and the club carried on. In the sixties recruitment was mainly among young working men who rowed mainly in Novice grades. Sometimes crews passed onto Intermediate but the pressure was always on the oarsman to “stop wasting time”, settle down and bring in wages. With the boathouse locked up for the 1969 season the club decided to go in an entirely different direction and bring in juniors in Big Numbers. Oarswoman had to be secretly introduced and trained to a standard where they would win at their first regatta. The site of a Commercial “ladies” crew in front on the winning straight was too much for even the most hardened misogynist and the girls were on. There followed some hilarious years of club building were all the mistakes were made, but the general enthusiasm and crack was supreme. James street CBS and Coláiste Caoimhin were happy hunting grounds for new recruits. In no time at all the membership went from 3 to 50 or 60 of all ages and both sexes. The development of Commercial coincided with a new policy of the IARU to encourage small boat rowing. From a situation which existed in the Sixties where there might have been six sculling boats and pairs in the country, there are now six sculling boats and pairs in most clubs. Commercial Learned from this policy and soon the wins started to come. The Irish National Championships soon started to mount up so that by the dawn of the new millennium almost 100 had been clocked up, putting the club nationally in second place after much earlier starters.

The Great Fire

 A club member’s account On New Years Eve 1992 I was awakened, by the telephone from a deep slumber, where I dreamed of the wonderful party I would have to welcome the New Year. Who could this be I wondered as I came down the stairs, a client, a relative or a wrong number. “Hello this is pat a hysterical voice broke into my woolly brain, I am sorry to tell you but the club has burnt down” I soon saw for myself that the club had been burnt down from “bow to stern” with most possessions in it. At 8 a.m., Lar Collins had arrived to take his boat to go out training. He was greeted by smoke pouring from all parts of the boathouse. Quickly he raised the alarm, rousing Jim Wallis and his family from the house next door. Together they made every effort to save the boats and oars. Just as they had put their hands on the best eight, amid smoke and flames, a tank burst in the roof void sending them scurrying, the rescue had to be abandoned, new eights, fours, pairs and sculls melted into rubble, cupboard of spares all lost. Six units of the Dublin Fire Brigade poured thousands of gallons of Anna Livia into the flames as they hacked their way through the burning building. Sometime at night thieves had broken through a window to gain access to what they knew would be there on a New Years Eve. Thieves don’t see the logic in shopping in a supermarket when they can get their booze in your rowing club. The grill on the window was easy but the Fort Knox like steel doors, which surrounded the bar were another matter. Humped and upset they set three fires which took hold on the mainly timber fabric of the building. Work which had been painstakingly put in place over the last couple of years, to renovate the club, was now a smoldering wreck, only ghosts of well known craft remained, The total lost was £250,000.