River Teign Rowing Club

River Teign Rowing Club has been going strong since 1994. Our collective members represent the heart of our rowing club – the largest rowing club in the UK and possibly Europe.

Traditional River Teign Seine Boats are seventeen feet long and clinker built with English Elm bottoms and larch topsides. They were propelled by oars or sails and were usually named after the owner’s mother or wife.

These boats have been used in the Teign Estuary for hundreds of years working salmon seines. A salmon seine is a net that is two hundred yards long and over half a ton in weight. A seine boat carries the net and a four-man crew and is rowed by two fourteen-foot oars. The boats must be able to carry a ton of shellfish and still float in less than eighteen inches of water. In the past the seine boats were also used in the winter months for catching herring and sprats. The conditions would be hazardous when working over the bar entrance of the River Teign and the seine boat, with its excellent safety record, was ideal.