The Regattas
Perhaps the most sensational and spectacular of the Lake District entertainments were the regattas, held on lakes Windermere, Bassenthwaite and Derwentwater.
The beauty of the lakes was already being exploited by inns and guides who offered boats for hire, but these regattas were a much more concerted and large-scale effort to take advantage of visitors’ disposable income.
The events were prominently advertised in newspapers and drew great crowds of fashionable visitors, local gentry and nobility and would have included a great number of exciting and interesting competitions and races.
Events could include boat races, mock-sea battles, foot races, horse racing and wrestling, with bets made on the results and prize money for the winners. Fireworks would close the evening on special occasions, and celebratory balls or dinners for the more prominent competitors and spectators.
The organisers of these spectacular events tended to be men of means and influence and were often prominent figures within the local community. The 1779-80, Bassenthwaite Lake regatta, for example, was organised by John Spedding, with the Keswick regattas organised by the combined efforts of Joseph Pocklington and Peter Crosthwaite.
Spedding’s Bassenthwaite regattas were particularly notable for the use of animals, including horse and dog swimming races in the lake. Horses were towed out to the middle of the lake on a raft which was then sunk; the horses must swim to land to the jeers and shouts of the gambling onlookers.
W. Gauci after James Baker Pyne, Lake Windermere, Regatta from The English Lake District, Manchester: Thomas Agnew and Sons, 1853, lithograph, The Wordsworth Trust.