Pocock Racing Shells is a Seattle, Washington-based racing shells manufacturer, founded in 1911. Pocock Racing Shells is the oldest rowing shell manufacturer in the world. History Pocock Racing Shells was founded in Seattle, Washington in 1911. The roots of the company began in England back in the 1800s. Founder George Pocock grew up in England, where his father was the head boat builder for prestigious Eton College at Windsor around the turn of the century. As a young man, George raced single shells on the famed River Thames. At one of these races he won £50, and with the money purchased passage for himself and his brother, Dick, on a cattle boat bound for Canada. In 1911, on George’s 20th birthday, they arrived in Vancouver, British Columbia, with $20 in their pockets and a dream of building fine racing boats. They were commissioned to build two single sculling boats for the Vancouver Rowing Club’s boathouse, without moorage, and found that at low tide they rested precariously on the mud flats. During the ensuing year, they nearly starved. Help arrived that winter when University of Washington rowing coach Hiram Boardman Conibear convinced the brothers to come to Seattle and build boats for the university after hearing about their fine work in Canada. In 1916 the shell building business was still struggling, and they began building pontoons for William E. Boeing’s new airplane company, Boeing. George eventually became foreman of the assembly department, Dick became boat-builder for Yale University, and their father returned to England. In 1922 George returned to the University of Washington to build boats again, and in 1923, the unknown Washington rowing team went east and won the national sport rowing championship in a Pocock boat. For the next 50 years George built racing shells for nearly every racing college in the country and several abroad. His reputation spread as he strived to maintain the highest possible quality at a price that even small colleges or high schools could afford. Pocock Racing Shells went on to win many national sport rowing and Olympic championships. Upon George’s death in 1976, the Lake Union-based company was taken over by his son, Stan. Stan grew up in Seattle, was an oarsman at the University of Washington and graduated with a degree in Engineering. In the late 1960s, management of the company became Stan’s responsibility while George devoted himself to constructing cedar single