Young Woman and the Sea: How Trudy Ederle Conquered the English Channel and Inspired the World

by Glenn Stout

  Kellerman didn't have a chance but that really didn't matter. All during the summer of 1905 stories about Kellerman's training regimen appeared in the newspaper, many of them commenting on her beauty and accompanied by illustrations, making her a public figure. She made several attempts to swim the Channel, failing each time, although during one attempt she managed to stay in the water for an impressive six hours before being forced to quit due not only to seasickness, but chafing under her arms and on her thighs as a result of the rough surface of her woolen swim dress.

  The attempts made her famous but also caused her to rebel. Men who tried to swim the Channel knew full well about the dangers of chafing and avoided it altogether by swimming in the nude. Kellerman decided that simply wasn't fair.

  She didn't swim nude—not yet. But she did toss out her swimming dress with its long sleeves and skirt and bought a boys' one-piece suit, similar to a leotard. To this she sewed a pair of black silk stockings to the legs that covered her bare skin and nominally adhered to prevailing standards of modesty. She called her outfit the "one piece all over black diving suit." The public didn't care what it was called but couldn't take their eyes off her when she was wearing it, for the garment revealed as much as it concealed, accentuating and even enhancing every curve on Kellerman's already curvaceous body. In an instant Kellerman became the world's first sex symbol.

  The impact on her career was instantaneous. She became a sensation and soon took her act to the United States, where she attracted a huge following. Her vaudeville show was an ingenious mixture of sex and sport. Kellerman revealed herself slowly. She first threw the diablo (a form of juggling), then put on an exhibition of swimming and diving in a glass tank before "dancing" behind a backlit curtain that etched her silhouette—and more—into the mind of every man who saw her performance. For publicity reasons Kellerman also continued to make long-distance open-water swims. At Revere Beach, just north of Boston, she created a huge scandal when, in an act of defiance that guaranteed her the front page, she removed the stockings from her suit, exposing her bare thighs to onlookers. Shocked local officials charged her with public nudity. Kellerman fought the case, arguing that the modification had nothing to do with morality but everything to do with women's rights—it was safer for her to swim unrestricted by heavy stockings—and the case was dismissed. The notoriety of the case made Kellerman both more notorious and more heroic, part sex symbol and part suffragette, a combination that was both tantalizing and—to some—threatening.

  Dudley Sargent, the longtime director of Harvard University's Hemenway Gymnasium, was obsessed with measuring the human body and convinced Kellerman to allow him to take her measurements. He then declared that out of ten thousand women he had measured, she was the first whose proportions matched those of Venus de Milo.

  Kellerman soon began appearing in the movies and her fame only increased as she now could be seen all over the world. She created one last sensation when, in the film Daughter of the Gods, the movie industry's first million-dollar-plus production, Kellerman's character went skinny-dipping and she became the first big-name screen actress to appear nude.

  Those who hoped to make swimming a respectable activity for women in the United States first had to overcome the licentious image created by Kellerman, one that, rightly or wrongly, found every fear confirmed by her curvaceous figure and left the impression that women's swimming—as a sport—was destined to be as much about titillation as competition.

  Yet while modest men—and many women—found Kellerman threatening, other young women found her both inspirational and liberating, not for the way she exposed her body but for the way she exposed contradictions and inequality in the way women were treated. One after another, they followed her into the water.

  Charlotte Epstein wanted to swim. The Jewish-born native of New York was only twenty years old when the Slocum burned and sank, and Epstein was mortified. A graduate of the Ethical Culture School, a nonsectarian, nontheistic religious and educational movement still in existence today, Epstein was unfettered by the restrictions and prejudices that kept most women her age in their place—at home. She firmly believed in the group's three major precepts: to teach the supremacy of moral ends above all human ends and interests; to teach that the moral law has an immediate authority not contingent on the truth of religious beliefs or of philosophical theories; and to advance the science and art of "right living," a life lived according to those standards.

  To that end, Epstein was a rarity—an independent, single woman with a career. She worked as a court stenographer and was involved in women's rights and the suffragist movement, something "right living" made a moral prerogative.

  For most young women of the time there were absolutely no outlets for sports of any kind, not to mention swimming. While there was still staunch resistance to teaching women to swim simply for pleasure, in the wake of the Slocum disaster, instruction in "lifesaving," was another thing entirely. Reluctantly, the United States Volunteer Life Saving Corps (USVLSC), a group formed after the Civil War that previously had trained male swimmers in lifesaving techniques, began to allow women to join the group.

  Epstein was fully aware that being allowed to join the group was an important step in the fight for equal rights for women. An unlikely pioneer, beneath her mouse-colored hair and behind her wide-set brown eyes, the slightly built Epstein appeared quiet and demure, the model of restraint and decorum, the polar opposite of someone like Annette Kellerman. Yet in the sport of swimming and in women's athletics, Epstein would prove to have a more profound impact than the Australian bathing beauty. She immediately joined the group and soon became the Susan B. Anthony of swimming.

  Epstein was one of the first of a small contingent of women who were taught to swim and then taught basic lifesaving techniques by the USVLSC. Using the breaststroke, the young women of the USVLSC learned to swim one hundred yards or more, support struggling swimmers, safely dive into the water, and free-dive to depths approaching fifty feet. The group touted its efforts in silent films and newspaper articles and held public exhibitions and races to attract new members. On occasion, women members were allowed to participate, and they proved so popular that the group began holding occasional "water shows" featuring female members. Epstein, although not the best swimmer in the group, was competitive, excelling at deep diving and relays. But this first generation of women swimmers soon became frustrated by the league. The "water shows" trivialized their skills—the women weren't allowed to swim long distances and often competed in relay races in which each woman swam only thirty yards or so.

  There seemed to be little opportunity within the group to change that. The open chauvinism and prejudice that prevented women not only from competing in sports, but from breaking a sweat anywhere but in the kitchen had become institutionalized in the United States, a factor that had its roots in the 1890s, when the Olympic movement was still in its infancy. Olympic founder Baron Pierre de Coubertin of France adamantly opposed the participation of women. Like most men of his time, particularly those involved in athletics, de Coubertin found the notion of a woman competing in athletics physically dangerous for such delicate flowers and morally offensive as well, once stating that women athletes simply did not create a "proper spectacle." De Coubertin himself personally selected the members of the first International Olympic Committee (IOC), and although not all shared his outlook in regard to women, many did, and de Coubertin found a powerful and important ally in American committeeman James Sullivan.

  Sullivan was the founder of the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU), then the preeminent governing body of virtually all amateur sports in America, a position the group would hold for decades. Together, even as the membership of the IOC started to act independently, the two men managed to keep women from participating in sports in any meaningful way both in the United Sates and elsewhere in the world, as the IOC authorized only nominal competition for women in "proper spectacles" such as golf, yachting, tennis, archery, and figure skati
ng.

  That was it. Apart from these few pursuits and the sporadic, unorganized efforts of individual female athletes, like Boston's Eleanora Randolph Sears, who garnered headlines for long-distance walking, not only were women kept away from athletics, but they might as well have been kept locked up in a separate room away from all sporting activity. For all intents and purposes there were no women athletes in the United States, no organized sports programs for women, and, apparently, little chance of that ever changing. Most men and women believed that strenuous exercise was not only inappropriate for a woman of good standing, but physically dangerous.

  But in 1912, much to the dismay of both de Coubertin and Sullivan, the IOC broke ranks and elected to add women's swimming as an official sport. At the 1912 games in Stockholm, Sweden, women competed in both the 100-meter freestyle swim and the 4-by-100 freestyle relay. But France and the United States stubbornly refused to accept the decision. De Coubertin was the reason France chose not to participate, and James Sullivan, who served as AAU president from 1906 to 1908 and then became executive secretary, managed to block American participation. The AAU oversaw the selection of the American Olympic team, and Sullivan simply would not allow women to join the AAU, thus effectively preventing American women from competing, not only in swimming, but in any sport for as long as he was in charge.

  In 1911, while Annette Kellerman was attracting all the wrong kind of attention and the IOC was still pondering the question of adding women's swimming to the Olympics, Charlotte Epstein led an insurrection. The female members of the USVLSC broke off and formed their own group, the Women's Life-Saving League. Its aims were far loftier than those of the USVLSC. It wasn't enough that women simply had the opportunity to learn how to swim. The Women's Life-Saving League wanted to institutionalize the sport of swimming for women. It wanted lifesaving swimming instruction to be a mandatory part of school education, and it wanted to foster athletic competition among women for health benefits.

  "Eppie," as Charlotte Epstein was known to her friends, became the chairman of the athletic branch of the group. She was well equipped for her position. As she sat in court every day working as a stenographer, she watched and listened as male attorneys and judges battled one another using not only their intellect, but their powers of persuasion, rhetoric, and political savvy—all skills that would come in handy in the fight for the right of women to compete in swimming. She was not intimidated by men, and she both knew how to make—and win—an argument, sometimes on the merits of her claim, but also through the shrewd manipulation of her opponent.

  In 1914, after a successful visit to the United States by an organized group of Australian women swimmers, the AAU sensed that despite its efforts to suppress women's swimming as an organized sport, it was nonetheless gaining a foothold. Someone had to take charge, and, ever so reluctantly, the AAU assumed the role as the sport's governing authority, overseeing Epstein's fledgling competition wing of the Women's Life-Saving League. Although Epstein and other officials of the league grated under the AAU's domineering influence, which relegated women's swimming to second-class status within the organization and allowed the actual participants, coaches, and managers like Epstein little influence over their own sport, Epstein realized that if she openly fought the AAU, she was destined to lose. Eppie wisely chose another tack.

  In Australia, a separate swimming association for women ruled their sport, and in occasional competition against American swimmers, the Australians, who used a variation of the trudgen known as the Australian crawl, were clearly far superior, beating American swimmers handily. The losses were embarrassing and offended the AAU's sense of nationalism, making the notion of an American swimming association based on the Australian model intriguing. After all, the AAU still wasn't certain it wanted to be in the business of women's athletics at all, and an American association based on the Australian model might relieve them of that responsibility.

  Following the death of James Sullivan, in September 1916, Epstein sensed an opportunity. Over the next few months she worked behind the scenes and used the local press to her advantage, methodically extolling the advantages of having a women's swimming association managed by women, while deftly praising the example set by the AAU as an organizing body without peer, essentially killing the organization—and its male overseers—with kindness. She wrote the New York Times that while she was certain there would one day be some kind of women's association, "If we are left to our own resources now, totally unprepared to meet the situation, much harm could and probably would come to it." She was just as politic in person, at least initially. Almost waiflike in her personal appearance, underneath her complacent exterior was the heart of an athlete who did not like to lose and was determined to do what was right.

  Epstein's calculated brand of passive-aggressive reasoning played on the AAU's inflated sense of superiority. In 1917 she struck out on her own again, creating the WSA, a group that slowly evolved from an idea into a working organization whose stated purpose was not to compete, but to encourage "girls and women to swim for self-protection, then to practice swimming for health, physical improvement and recreation," all ideals that made it clear that, even though Annette Kellerman was, in many ways, an authentic pioneer of the sport, America's first female swimmers had nothing to do with the swimmer herself or anything she represented. The club's slogan was similarly passive, declaring, "Good sportsmanship is greater than victory." Their goal—to be seen and appreciated as athletes rather than sex symbols—would prove to be a challenge for the sport.

  Epstein deftly convinced the AAU that, for all intents and purposes, the WSA was not only subservient to the AAU but had been its idea in the first place. In this way she turned the AAU from a potential obstacle into an ally vested in the success of the group, outflanking the AAU and creating the WSA to her own liking. The best part was that the AAU was completely oblivious to what had happened.

  It was a masterstroke that gave the group some instant credibility, but Epstein was savvy enough to know that unless the group quickly established itself as a legitimate athletic organization, the moral crusaders who equated all women swimmers with Annette Kellerman were certain to attack the group and bring it down. To survive, the organization needed to grow and prove that it was providing a service and not just an excuse for young women to splash around in the water half undressed.

  Epstein proceeded with a zeal that was almost evangelical. To grow the group, she needed swimmers, and to get swimmers, the WSA needed to go to where the swimmers were—the beaches and resort towns around New York City. Public demonstrations such as the one it planned for that summer day in 1918 at the Highlands both gave the group publicity and served as a recruiting tool. After all, without sufficient membership, the WSA was nothing more than a grand idea.

  On the day Trudy and her mother and sisters reached the pier along the estuary where the demonstration was being held, a small crowd of mostly curiosity seekers, mothers, and young children had already gathered. No one quite knew what to expect, for while the WSA was becoming a familiar name in the newspaper, few in the crowd had ever viewed a swimming competition or demonstration of any kind. Trudy like to swim, but watching swimming? Well, that was something different.

  The demonstration began with diving. That was nothing new to Trudy. She and Meg often watched young men jumping from the piers and did so themselves. But as the first WSA swimmer mounted a small platform at the edge of the pier, stood on its edge with her toes curled over the side, raised her arms perfectly symmetrically over her head, then bent slightly at the knee and jumped, back arched, first up, then out and down, entering the water with hardly a splash, the crowd let out an audible gasp like they were watching the fireworks on the Fourth of July. This wasn't some show-offy young man preening for the attention of some giddy young girl. This was beautiful, athletic artistry.

  One after another the young women launched themselves into the air, backward and forward and twisting through space, each dive more m
iraculous and more elegant than the one before. Trudy and her sisters could not help but notice, as the swimmers surfaced and returned to the pier, that they swam not the breaststroke or the dog paddle, but the overarm stroke like the men and boys used, only the women didn't thrash through the water so much as they churned through it, far more efficiently and more beautifully than Trudy had ever seen before.

  Then it was time for the swimmers. During a brief demonstration of lifesaving techniques, the Ederle girls again noticed that the WSA swimmers almost always used that same overarm stroke. When the lifesaving demonstration ended and a very young girl stepped to the edge of the pier, most of the crowd thought the demonstration was coming to an end. In fact, it was just getting started. This is what Charlotte Epstein wanted everyone to see—and remember.

  Most members of the WSA were teenagers and young women, but the young girl on the edge of the pier was only seven years old. Her name was Catherine Brown, and when they announced her name, some members of the crowd nodded knowingly. They had heard of her.

  Catherine Brown was already something of a local celebrity. Her father, Alfred, was a commodore in the American Life Saving Society and a well-known figure himself. Several years earlier, in 1913, he had become the first person to swim from the Battery in lower Manhattan to Sandy Hook, a distance of twenty-two miles. That same year he also swam the Panama Canal before it opened to boat traffic, and those two accomplishments led him to refer to himself as the "long distance champion swimmer of the world," but even he knew that claim would ring hollow unless he accomplished the sport's Holy Grail, the swimming of the English Channel. Unfortunately any chance Brown had to accomplish that goal had been thwarted by World War I, which turned the Channel into a battle zone as the English enforced a blockade and made any attempt to swim the Channel far too dangerous. In the meantime, he turned his attention to his daughter.