was the deadliest year in modern US rowing history: four rowers drowned in three separate incidents. In 2022, three more rowers drowned in the United States. The recorded deaths in 2021 included a high school student who fell overboard during an epileptic seizure; two college students who capsized on cold water; and a an experienced masters rower. In September, 2022, two middle school students and a masters rower died in two separate accidents. None was reported to have been wearing a lifejacket or PFD that might have saved their life.
[PLEASE NOTE: THIS PAGE IS NOT CURRENTLY BEING UPDATED. MORE INFORMATION IS AVAILABLE ON THE ROWING ACCIDENTS PAGE ON THIS SITE.]
Since the year 2000 more than a dozen rowers have drowned or been killed by motorboats in the US and Europe, in addition to rowers who apparently suffered heart attacks while rowing and coaches who drowned after falling overboard, and deaths that occurred in other parts of the world. Most of these accidents occurred on cold water. None of those who died was wearing a lifejacket or PFD.
The Accidents page of this website lists more than four dozen near-fatal accidents and twenty fatal rowing accidents that have occurred in the US and Europe since 1976. Several of those fatal accidents are highlighted here. Six occurred at major universities; Columbia University, Northwestern University, Oxford University, the University of New Hampshire, and Iowa State University. One involved a university rower who didn’t know how to swim. One was a high school student. One was a collegiate rower coaching novices. In August, 2019, a 33-year-old rower drowned at the World Rowing Championships. In May, 2022, two 14-year-old rowers drowned when overtaken by a squall in India.
Most of these deaths resulted from routine accidents with coaches and safety launches close by, Most were on water temperatures below 50f/10c, and all could — or most likely would — have been prevented by wearing a PFD.
“We had only been taught to row,” one of the survivors of a tragic accident said after two of his classmates perished in a squall. “Had we known our boat would not sink, my friends could have survived by simply holding on to it,” Devanshh Chakraborty told The Telegraph Online. Only after his friends had drowned did he learn that his rowing shell had been designed to support the rowers in the event of such an accident.
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