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

by Glenn Stout

  One by one, as the scheduled 3:00 P.M. start of the race approached, each girl climbed over the side of her dory and entered the water, swimming a few strokes back and forth, then dog-paddling to stay warm, before returning to the boat and clinging to the side while awaiting the start of the race. Although it was August, the water had not quite reached its warmest temperature of the season—that would not come until September. Still, the temperature of the shallow waters of the inlet was comfortable, hovering around seventy degrees, warm enough for the swimmers to remain in the water for an hour or more on the muggy afternoon, despite the wind and the rain, without risking hypothermia.

  The course was simple: It began from Riche's Point and extended a half mile due north toward Point Breeze, just over a mile east of Manhattan Beach, where spar buoy number 9, marking the local shipping lane, was anchored offshore. From there each swimmer would round the buoy and head west, swimming parallel to the shore for another three miles, past Manhattan Beach, before turning north and swimming back to shore directly in front of the Brighton Beach Baths. Two temporary towers erected in the shallows served as the finish line.

  As laid out, the course was not particularly dangerous, but it could be. Only seven years before, in 1915, when the race had been sponsored by the Women's Life-Saving League, race officials had neglected to account for the influence of the tide and local currents, which impacted swimmers just as the tides in the English Channel did. Swimmers found themselves either swimming in place or being swept out to sea. Every single swimmer had to be pulled from the water, causing those who thought swimming was beyond the capability of women to smile with knowing satisfaction. But the race was then rescheduled during a more fortuitous tide and went off without incident. Organizers learned their lessons and in subsequent years made certain to consult tidal charts far ahead of time to make sure the race would run with the tide. Only at the start of the race, when swimmers would be at a right angle to the current, would the tide prove to be a problem. The poor weather made the waters of the inlet a bit choppy, but that was more a nuisance than a real danger.

  As the start of the race approached a few pleasure boats strung out along the course, although most hung near the start, jockeying for position. Many planned to shadow the swimmers, sailing a parallel course that kept as many girls as possible within sight.

  Finally, at 3:30 P.M., all the swimmers were in the water and the dories were more or less even. On the main boat a race official raised a starter's pistol into the air and fired a shot signaling the start of the race. In an instant, fifty-two young women let loose of the dories and started to swim toward Point Breeze.

  For a few moments the water fairly churned with swimmers as each girl set off, arms whirling and legs kicking. Some spectators unfamiliar with modern swimming methods couldn't resist pointing and shaking their head in befuddlement, for although Handley's American crawl had been used by WSA swimmers from the very start of the organization, the stroke was still something of a novelty to the general public and was seldom seen outside sparsely attended swim meets.

  There was some early anxiety among race officials for the girls' safety, for it was difficult to see in the gloom and it would be several minutes before the field stretched out and each dory pilot could locate his swimmer and follow behind. The start was the most dangerous point of the race, for in such close quarters, water splashing all around, a swimmer could accidentally get kicked in the head or be struck by an oar, lose consciousness, and even drown before anyone noticed. Almost immediately race officials began counting heads, making sure every swimmer was accounted for.

  Undoubtedly there were still some in the crowd who, upon seeing more than fifty women swimming in the water at once in the start of the race, recalled the Slocum tragedy. Here, nearly twenty years after that event, the folly and needless tragedy of that day was fully exposed. Fifty-two young women were now swimming in the open ocean toward channel buoy number 9, in the wind and the rain, oblivious to the white caps, not just staying afloat but sprinting through the water at a speed most observers found absolutely astonishing.

  At first all eyes of the spectators and the press on board the tug were drawn to the favorites, Hilda James, Aileen Riggin, Helen Wainwright, and Ethel McGary, all of whom had started the race in close proximity to one another on one side of the course. The race was but a few minutes old when Wainwright appeared in open water out front, swimming powerfully a few yards ahead of McGary, Riggin, and then James, as the other swimmers all fell back.

  It was at this point that someone on the officials' boat looked across to the other side of the course and spotted another swimmer, all alone, out in front of everyone, even leading Helen Wainwright by some twenty yards. Her identity was, at first, a mystery. Then a member of the WSA put a name with the face and blurted out, "It's that Ederle girl!"

  Most thought she was referring to Margaret Ederle, now seventeen years old. That was a mild surprise, for although Margaret was a fine swimmer who had finished seventh in the long-distance race in 1921, finishing seven minutes behind Bleibtrey, she was nowhere near as accomplished as Wainwright, Riggin, or at least a dozen other WSA swimmers. Her appearance at the front was truly astonishing.

  But after another moment someone blurted out that the Ederle out front was not Margaret Ederle at all. It was her little sister, fifteen-year-old Trudy.

  That was truly astounding. Although Trudy had been a member of the club since the day she accompanied her mother and sisters to the demonstration in the Highlands and had shown some promise as a swimmer, she was not considered to be among the club's best. In 1921 she had won a few junior races and, in fact, had competed in the 1921 distance race but finished well back. In September at Madison Square Garden, in a complete surprise, she had finished second in a 220-yard race won by teammate Charlotte Boyle, in which Boyle set a new world record, and had later teamed with Boyle, Riggin, and Wainwright in a relay that had set a record in the quarter mile, but such performances were the exception. More often she performed indifferently and had even quit a few races before the finish. In the weeks before the Day Cup race she hadn't even been training with the other girls and seemed disinterested in competition. When Trudy did compete it was only because Meg had filled out the forms for her and then cajoled her into appearing.

  In fact, Trudy apparently hadn't been scheduled to compete in the Day Cup race at all. Earlier in the week the WSA sent out a press re-lease that read, "Family strife threatens to add considerable interest to the Day Cup race," and cited four sets of swimming sisters scheduled to compete—the O'Maras, the Chesters, the Delaneys, and the Donahues. The two Ederle girls were not even mentioned.

  Yet here was Trudy, out in front and swimming strongly. At first most observers thought that she must have been the fortunate beneficiary of a tidal surge in shallower water that pushed her ahead. They expected her to soon fall back, but as the swimmers drew together as they approached the buoy off Point Breeze ten minutes into the race, it became clear that her lead, which now approached an astounding fifty yards, was genuine. She appeared as if she were simply out for a weekday swim, without a care in the world, while some of her better-known competitors were struggling. Given the quality of the competition, it was as if a schoolboy had stepped from the stands at the ballpark, toed the rubber on the pitcher's mound, and without warming up, blew fastballs past Babe Ruth.

  As the swimmers rounded the buoy and turned west, parallel to the shore, Ethel McGary, unaccustomed to such choppy conditions, got off course and had to be retrieved by her dory and set back on track. So, too, did Hilda James drift off, fighting with the water instead of swimming with it, battling to stay abreast of both Helen Wainwright and Aileen Riggin. Some of the lesser swimmers also struggled. Most were far more accustomed to swimming in more controlled conditions, in tidal baths, freshwater pools, or more-protected bays. Out in the open water, however, the swells that looked inconsequential from shore lifted the swimmers up and down relentlessly. Some were getti
ng queasy, particularly those who had inadvertently swallowed seawater as their bodies heaved up and down.

  This situation was little better on the boats that kept pace with the swimmers. Even those spectators who were accustomed to spending time on the water were not necessarily accustomed to moving at a snail's pace, which subjected the boats to the swells as well. The water wasn't very rough, but it was enough to send some bending over the rail.

  Only one person really seemed to be enjoying herself, and that was Trudy. She swam along like a happy machine, never showing any distress and hardly showing any effort. She plowed steadily through the waves, never stopping to rest or look back.

  It was nothing new to her, this long-distance ocean swimming, even in the wind and the rain. No one outside her family knew it at the time, but of all the swimmers in the race, none had more experience swimming in the ocean. What was a new and somewhat intimidating challenge for most of the swimmers was, for Trudy, as familiar as an evening bath. Summer after summer swimming at the Highlands made her completely comfortable in the open water. Unlike some other swimmers, the thought that she was swimming in twenty, forty, or a hundred or more feet of water did not frighten her, and she was not bothered by the lively waters of the open sea or burdened by thoughts of what possibly lurked beneath. To Trudy, crossing Amsterdam Avenue when it was choked with vehicles was scary, swimming in the ocean was not.

  She forgot herself there. It was that simple. The other girls swam to get back to land, but Trudy swam, well, to get away from everything, and in doing so, out in the water she found own true self, the place where she felt most comfortable, where she did not think or worry but simply felt the water holding her up and pushing her along.

  The race to shore, such as it was, was over. Wainwright and James each made several charges to try to head Trudy off, but after a minute or two of sprinting saw them gain only one or two hard-earned yards, neither was able to keep up the pace and had to drop back. Observers noted that, unlike the competition, Ederle's stroke never varied. In fact, if anything, as she approached the finish she seemed to swim even faster than at the start, as if more time spent in the water somehow allowed her to increase her momentum.

  As she turned toward shore at the Brighton Beach Baths, she led Helen Wainwright by a comfortable sixty yards. Trudy then sped past the finish line between the two stationary towers in front of the Brighton Beach Baths nearly a minute ahead of her more accomplished teammate, finishing the course in one hour, one minute, and thirty-four seconds. Although that was five minutes slower than the winning time of Thelda Bleibtrey one year earlier, observers were far more impressed by Ederle's effort, which had been made under much poorer weather conditions.

  The crowd on the beach clapped and cheered as she emerged from the water, an embarrassed smile on her face as if she was surprised to be first. She looked as if she had just come out after taking a quick, cooling dip. Even those who had come to gawk were impressed. Far from exhausted, Trudy bounded out of the water, scanned the crowd, spotted some girlfriends waiting, and joined them before startled race officials could even congratulate her on her victory.

  Helen Wainwright struggled from the water a full forty-five seconds behind Trudy to finished second ahead of third-place finisher Hilda James, who waded to shore nearly three minutes later, followed by Aileen Riggin and Ethel McGary, but only five other swimmers managed to finish the course within ten minutes of Ederle's winning time. Yet despite the conditions, all fifty-two swimmers who started the race completed the course, the last being ten-year-old Julia Mannostein, the youngest swimmer in the field.

  The Day Cup went to the WSA team of Wainwright, Riggin, and McGary, but Trudy Ederle's stunning individual victory made the team trophy seem like some booby prize given away by some sympathetic Coney Island carnival barker. But after the race Trudy was so nonplussed by her achievement that when the press went looking for her she was nowhere to be found, perhaps because her parents, in Germany visiting relatives, had left the girls in the custody of their aunt and uncle.

  Hilda James, heretofore considered the greatest all-around female swimmer in the world, was left to meet with reporters and give her estimation of fifteen-year-old Trudy Ederle, a girl neither she nor anyone else outside the WSA had ever heard of before.

  "The best girl won," gasped an exasperated James. "Of that I have no doubt."

  10. The Next Man

  NO TWO FIGURES in the history of Channel swimming are more emblematic of both the great pull the English Channel can exert on the human spirit, and the personal cost than Jabez Wolffe and Thomas William "Bill" Burgess. From the time each man first entered the Channel waters, the quest to swim the Channel proved to be an attraction as strong and relentless as the flood tide. For nearly three decades, over and over and over again, Wolffe and Burgess tested themselves against the same twenty-one-mile stretch of water.

  On August 24, 1901, the anniversary of Matthew Webb's crossing, the British cyclist and swimmer Montague Holbein made the first of several of his own unsuccessful attempts to swim the Channel. He employed a Yorkshire-born resident of Paris, a blacksmith named Thomas William Burgess, to serve as one of several pacesetters. The son of a cook and a blacksmith who had been employed as a tire maker by the Earl of Shrewsbury, Burgess had been sent to France by the earl to open another branch of the tire business. Well known in Parisian swimming circles, Burgess had been a member of the British Olympic team in the 1900 Paris games, competing in the 1, 000-and 4, 000-meter freestyle competition and the 200-meter backstroke, and in water polo, winning a bronze medal in the final event. He stood a full six feet and weighed 210 pounds, with a barrel chest and arms that reflected his long use of the blacksmith's hammer, and a natty Vandyke beard that gave him a distinguished, if somewhat well-worn, air. Burgess, primarily using the sidestroke that Holbein favored, swam alongside Holbein for a time, providing the swimmer with some company during the monotonous ordeal and helping him maintain a steady stroke rate.

  Although Holbein failed in this quest despite spending more than twelve hours in the water, he nevertheless made a significant contribution to all those who followed him into the Channel. Instead of depending solely upon the skill of a local boat captain, Holbein was the first Channel swimmer to make use of available scientific evidence concerning the tides and currents, utilizing British governmental records and reports to create complex charts and maps as he tried to use the tides and current to his advantage.

  Holbein refused to give up and made another five attempts to swim the Channel, each time learning a bit more about the currents. On August 28, 1902, swimming from France to England, Holbein came within one mile of success, closer than any man since Frederick Cavill.

  Bill Burgess paid attention. He emerged from the Channel waters full of ambition and determined to become the second man to swim the Channel. Taking his cue from Holbein, he took an almost scientific approach toward his task.

  He recognized that to swim the Channel one had to better understand the influence of the tides. To that end Burgess not only studied charts, but spent hours at Cape Gris-Nez looking out over Channel waters and made dozens of experimental swims to gauge the strength, direction, and duration of the tidal currents. Burgess also experimented with various oils and greases to coat his body, both to protect it from chafing in the corrosive salt water and to help retain precious body heat. Taking note of how long exposure to salt water caused his eyes to become inflamed, Burgess was one of the first Channel swimmers to wear a bathing cap, which he tied under his chin, and goggles, adapting those used by early motorists. Burgess even filled his ears with wax to prevent water from entering his ear canal.

  He made his first attempt to cross the Channel in 1904 and failed, but Burgess was even more determined than Holbein. The cyclist stopped after six attempts, but Burgess kept on going, banging his head against the Channel wall more than a dozen times; each time he entered the water completely convinced that he would succeed, only to fail. If anything, h
owever, defeat made him ever more determined. And if he needed any further motivation, that was provided by Jabez Wolffe. Like Burgess, Wolffe was also determined to be the second man to swim the Channel.

  The moon-faced Jewish Scotsman from Glasgow, who lived in London and trained in Brighton, became Burgess's main competitor. Although Wolffe, like Burgess, was powerfully built and highly motivated, compared to Burgess's more intellectual approach, Wolffe, although a fine swimmer for the era, was both quite a bit less athletic and quite a bit more pugnacious. He didn't so much try to swim the Channel as wrestle it into submission, trying to make up for what he lacked in ability with grit and fortitude. Wolffe's particular forte was self-motivation, and he recognized that if a combination of the tides, the water temperature, and the weather provided the main physical barrier to swimming the Channel, one's own mind created a similar psychological barrier.

  In one sense swimming the Channel is not unlike being immersed in a sensory deprivation tank. Once a swimmer overcomes the rush of adrenalin from the initial immersion in the Channel waters and settles in to a steady pace, the remainder of the swim is often mind-numbingly the same. Until the swimmer is within a few miles of the land the view never changes, there is only the swimmer and the pilot boat, the Channel waters and the sky, cold and wet, and light and dark, for many swimmers either begin or end their journey during nightfall, and sometimes both. Swimmers often lose complete track of time, thinking hours have passed when in fact only minutes have, and as exhaustion and the cold take their toll, many swimmers slip into the early stages of hypothermia with all its attendant mental effects. Swimmers can become disoriented and hallucinate both visually and aurally, seeing and hearing what does not exist, slipping ever farther into themselves.