The RMA Gig Club is a specialist branch of the RMA-TRMC and its objectives are to promote, teach, and facilitate the sport of Cornish Pilot Gig Rowing, both competitively and recreationally.
Our club was formed in 2019 with the aim of actively encouraging our military veterans, serving military, their family and supporters to participate in a sporting activity while forging strong bonds of friendship and camaraderie.
The club is open to all serving and retired members of the Royal Marines Association-The Royal Marines Charity (RMA-TRMC) and veterans from all of the Services as well as civilians wanting to share our love of a great sport. At present we meet four times a week rowing out of the Mountbatten Watersports & Activities Centre, Plymouth. We hope to take part in as many regattas as possible throughout the whole year.
Rowing a 32 foot gig in ‘open’ water can be challenging and demanding. Taster sessions are held as an introduction to Cornish Pilot Gigs, instruction on the basic rowing techniques and then a session out in Plymouth Sound mixed in with some of our more experienced rowers.
Please visit the New Members page to find out more.
The Cornish pilot gig is a six-oared, 32 feet long rowing boat, clinker-built of Cornish narrow-leaf elm. It is recognised as one of the first shore-based lifeboats that went to vessels in distress, with recorded rescues going back as far as the late 17th century.
The Cornish Pilot Gig
Dating back to the 1800’s, Pilot gigs were originally general workboats within coastal communities of the South West, used to transport cargo, for rescue and salvage, and of course smuggling! Sometimes used under sail but more often rowed by a crew of six.
Pilot gigs were also used to transport a local pilot out to approaching sailing ships to navigate them through local hazards and safely into harbour.
A ship only needed one pilot, so the first gig to arrive at the ship got the job… and the pay.
Gigs needed to have length, lightness and flexibility for good handling in potentially heavy seas, to be fast when needed, but also to be adaptable work boats.
Gig racing was born out of the competition between pilots and the testing of newly built gigs against others to measure their performance, but by the end of the 19th century gigs began to decline as the industrial revolution gathered speed and engines increasingly replaced sails and oars.
Many gigs were subsequently broken up or left to rot, but Newquay in Cornwall managed to retain a few and formed Newquay Rowing Club in 1921. One of their boats, ‘Treffry’ built in 1838, still races and is used as the standard measurement for the construction of all new gigs.
In recent years, there has been a development of glass reinforced plastic (GRP) training gigs which are built to the same dimensions as the wooden boats but are stronger and heavier. GRP gigs are not allowed to race against wooden boats at regattas for safety reasons but there are regattas each year, mainly in the winter months, specifically for the GRP gigs.
The sport is governed by the Cornish Pilot Gig Association, which monitors all racing gigs during the construction phase. The Association's Standards Officer is responsible for measuring every gig at least three times during construction, to ensure that it conforms to the standard set by the Association. Gigs are crewed by six rowers, and helmed by a coxswain. Modern gig racing dates from 1986, the founding of the CPGA, and the codification of class rules for the construction of new gigs
