In 1924, Walter Riggs won a silver medal in the 8-metres class at the Paris Olympics. He was one of the five-man crew aboard Emily, of which his son Tom was also a member. Riggs’s wife Lillian died in a boating accident near Aldeburgh, Suffolk, during a family holiday aboard their yacht The Alde in 1913. Riggs had returned to London the morning of the accident, but both Tom, then aged 10, and his younger sister Freda (aged 7) witnessed their mother being swept away to her death.
Riggs lived and worked in a London as an electrical contractor but eventually moved to Suffolk in rural England. He was involved in the Aldeburgh lifeboat, and in 1932 was invited onto the committee of the Royal National Life-boat Institution. Riggs also continued racing, and at the age of 60 won the Gareloch Class at the 1937 Harwich Regatta with his own yacht Catriona.
Great Britain