Photo: Judith Packer

Text: with thanks to Tim Koch

The Boat Race community mourns the death of Charlie Newens, known as Chas, on 7 September 2025, a long-time member of the team that makes the race happen.

Born in 1942, Chas and his wife Julie Newens set up Chas Newens Marine, which provided coaching boats, engines, chandlery, spares, courses, repairs and advice to rowing clubs all along the Thames Tideway and was until recently supplied launches to the Boat Race and numerous other rowing and river-born events. Chas’ many contributions to the Thames community resulted in him being made Master of the Watermen’s Company in 2001.

Sometimes clichés are unavoidable and the sad loss of Charles George Newens must be described as “the end of an era”, Chas being the last of the old school Putney boatmen and watermen.

Chas drove the Boat Race Umpire for many years and said he was taught to steer the Boat Race course by Ted Phelps of the famous rowing and boat building family. He also demonstrated the “Putney Whistle” used by the old watermen afloat to gain the attention of someone on the shore.

In a newspaper article of 2004, he described his relationship with The Boat Race: “The Boat Race is in my blood. At this stage in my life, I could easily leave it to the younger men, but on the morning of the race I get a real tingle and the adrenalin runs. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

Chas spoke to Tim Koch on Boat Race Day in 2019: “I started working down here at Putney when I was 14, and I’m 77 now so I’ve seen a lot of Boat Races!

“In the early years, I took the press launch out, but later I drove the umpire when it was decided that he should be in a neutral boat. Before that, a Cambridge Umpire would use the launch carrying the Oxford Old Blues, and vice versa. As you can imagine, a lot of barracking went on, but when he was on his own, he just had his own thoughts….

“For years and years, people said ‘No, no, we can’t have women’. I said, ‘Why? They row the Head of the River the other way, so why can’t they row the Boat Race this way….?’ I think it’s fantastic, I really do.”

Chas is survived by his wife Julie.

For more tributes to Chas, please visit Hear The Boat Sing.