The strangest mix of people survive disasters. If one grabbed a random selection of people from a busy street and dropped them into the heart of an earth-shattering disaster one would have little means of predicting who could or would not survive.

For those who do survive whilst others die, the sense of self-blame and guilt can be overwhelming: throughout the rest of their lives there is, in the darkest hours of the night, a constant murmuring refrain …. “Why me?”

Rowing is one of the most strenuous activities we humans can engage in, but competitive rowing over long distances for several days on a river is a very different sport to rowing a kilometre or two on a man-made lake.

Late in the 19th century in central and western Europe a new sport began to be popular; rowing from one city to another. Prague to Dresden or Hamburg, Paris to Le Havre, Strasbourg to Dusseldorf. By modern standards the boats were large, wide, heavy and cumbersome; the sliding seats familiar from modern racing shells were almost unknown; the oars were large hunks of ill-carved timber. It’s a wonder the teams managed to move their boats at all, despite the fact that they mostly rowed with the current.

Rowing a river in the lowlands is relatively straightforward, despite the pressures of any competition, or the hazards of shallows, gravel bars and bends. Rowing out of the foothills of a mountain range in the spring thaw when the rivers are in spate, where there are weirs and white water and drops not quite large enough to be called falls, but large enough to take any unwary boat; that’s a serious challenge even in modern zodiacs: in an antique broad-beam eight seat wooden rowing boat with only the clothes one rowed in is insanity. Or sport.