Bow hauliers were men who towed boats up the Wye (and the Severn) in the eighteenth century. The boats were called trows.

Trows on the Wye were mostly used for carrying goods up-river. Typically, they were goods that were transhipped at Chepstow or Brockweir. They were flat-bottomed boats of about 20 tons. They had a mast which could be easily lowered so as to get under bridges. But when going up-stream, they were generally towed by gangs of men.

Trows were used on the Severn and also in Gloucestershire on canals, and in Devon. There too they were propelled by bow hauliers.

The word is pronounced to rhyme with "crow"; it was also pronounced as in "cow".

The Wye trows took goods upstream (goods such as coal, iron, bricks, and wine) and downstream (goods such as bark, timber, lime, cheese, and cider). The men were called bow hauliers. There would be about 1 man per ton of cargo. They travelled quickly - typically 20 miles a day (eg: Lydbrook to Hereford in two days). These gangs were itinerant and were hired for the trip. They were powered by alcohol and were notoriously unruly when they stopped for the night. Many trows started from Brockweir; bow hauliers hung out there waiting for a job; in the eighteenth century Brockweir was renowned as the roughest town in England; it was both lawless and godless; it had twenty pubs.

A bow haulier pulled a trow by having a leather strap around his chest; the strap was attached to a tow rope which went over a pulley attached to the mast head. How they were organised so that everyone pulled his weight, I don't know.

They went upstream to Hereford and beyond - even as far as Hay-on-Wye and Glasbury, and to Leominster on the Lugg. There was also trow traffic to Bristol from Chepstow and Llandogo (a few miles upstream from Tintern). These were trows too, but were generally bigger as they were sea-going and largely wind-powered.

Navigation on the Wye was very difficult until the eighteenth century. The Rivers Wye and Lugg Navigation Act of 1695 required that all 56 weirs on the Wye be dismantled (except the weir at Symonds Yat where a lock was built).

Men were used rather than horses because of cost. It was only by about 1800 that horses became cheaper. Bow hauliers worked the Wye until 1811.