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

by Glenn Stout

  The board readily agreed. Epstein booked passage for the pair, as well as for herself and her assistant, Elsie Viets, and began making arrangements for accommodations overseas. They planned to train in England then swim the Channel from Cape Gris-Nez to Dover.

  To that end she needed to hire an experienced trainer who could make the necessary arrangements and oversee the girls' training while overseas. Jabez Wolffe was the best-known Channel swimmer in England, and Epstein had already made contact with him and was in the midst of negotiating a contract. Bill Burgess, the other obvious choice, was based in France, and Epstein felt that it was better to train in England. Besides, most Channel experts, despite the fact that Burgess's swimmers had been more successful, still wondered precisely how much that had to do with Burgess. After he ushered three swimmers across in 1923, none of his charges were successful in 1924.

  Until it was time to leave, both Trudy and Helen Wainwright were placed in the steady hands of Louis Handley. The swimming coach was particularly cautious with Wainwright, getting her back into shape slowly so that by the time it came for her to go to England, her leg would be completely healed.

  But just a day or two after the board approved Trudy's Channel excursion, Wainwright slipped again, this time on wet pavement, tearing the same muscle in her leg. Doctors told her it wouldn't heal unless she gave her leg some rest. Swimming a lap in a sixty-foot pool was temporarily out of the question, not to mention trying to swim the Channel.

  The young swimmer was crestfallen and withdrew from the trip. "Under the circumstances," she said, "I felt it would hardly be fair for me to allow the club to go to the heavy expense of sending me abroad ... It goes without saying that I am terribly disappointed. For several years the Channel has been my greatest ambition and I hate to lose the opportunity to try it this season." While she hoped to try again at some future time, at age nineteen her competitive swimming career was just about over.

  Now Trudy would have to swim alone. But that did not mean she would have the Channel to herself. Already, as spring began turning into summer, other female swimmers planned to beat Trudy across.

  Mille Gade Corson, who had tested the Channel in 1923 and promised to return, was, for the time being, left on dry land, caring for her two young children. But while the eyes of the world had been focused on the Olympics in the summer of 1924, another woman, Lillian Harrison of Argentina, had been testing the Channel waters.

  Harrison appeared to have all the necessary skills to complete a swim across the Channel. Born to an English father and Argentinean mother, she first gained notoriety in 1923, at age twenty, when she swam across the mouth of the River Plate, a distance of thirty miles across the estuary formed by the confluence of the Uruguay and Parana rivers forming the border between Uruguay and Argentina downstream from Buenos Aires. Not only was she the first woman to swim the river at this point, she was the first person of either sex to do so. Even Enrique Tirabocchi, who had bested the Channel, failed when he tried to cross the Plate. Moreover Harrison had remained in the water for twenty-four hours and nineteen minutes, a remarkable demonstration of stamina even if the waters were many degrees warmer than those of the Channel and the currents and weather conditions far less treacherous.

  Training under Thomas William Burgess, Harrison based her Channel crossing in France and intended to swim to England. Unfortunately, her first attempt to swim the Channel in 1924 ended in ignominy. As she gingerly tried to enter the waters along a rock-strewn beach at Cape Gris-Nez in France, she lost her balance, tumbled into the surf, and was tossed by the waves back onto the shore. She cut her leg badly on a rock and was forced to crawl back out of the water, setting a record for shortest Channel swim attempt of all time. But in a later try she had managed to stay in the water for nearly ten hours before turning back.

  Despite these failures, in May 1925 Harrison again traveled to France, far in advance of Trudy, to train for another attempt. She was well aware that becoming the first woman to swim the Channel guaranteed a certain measure of fame and fortune.

  Yet when Harrison arrived in France, she discovered a Frenchwoman, Jeanne Sion, already in the water. A matronly looking woman of forty-seven, Sion was nevertheless an accomplished swimmer and already familiar with Channel waters. Like Harrison, she, too, had engaged Bill Burgess as her trainer.

  Trudy began training for her Channel swim in earnest in April, soon after the WSA gave approval. Rather than put in hours swimming laps in a pool, to acclimate herself to colder Channel waters as soon as it was warm enough she did the bulk of her training in open water—swimming, rowing, or making use of what was known as a "bubble boat," a contraption made of canvas and a metal frame that supported a swimmer in the water by means of four large air-filled metal "bubbles" about twice the size of a basketball. The bubble boat allowed Trudy both to work on her form without unduly fighting against the waves and surf, as well as train without the need of an accompanying boat—if she got cramps or was otherwise physically indisposed, being on the bubble boat allowed her to stay afloat.

  Louis Handley was in charge of her training schedule, but Trudy needed little encouragement to train in the open water. He cautioned her to make sure she ate well and to keep her weight up. Handley knew that, particularly in open water, women benefited from extra buoyancy due to their higher fat content and that a layer of body fat was also of benefit in shielding the swimmer from the effects of cold water. Although tastes were changing and the lean figure of the flap per was now the goal of every young woman, no flapper was ever going to swim the Channel, and he wanted to make sure Trudy realized that.

  But Handley's greatest contribution to Trudy's effort was the American crawl. Unlike most of the other women and men who aspired to swim the Channel, Trudy was fully committed to the American crawl—the others, at best, used the crawl only rarely and not nearly as efficiently as Trudy. Prevailing wisdom, perpetuated by the men who had succeeded in swimming the Channel, still held that the breaststroke and sidestroke were the best strokes to use in the crossing.

  For the next two months Trudy hardly competed for the WSA, choosing instead to focus her efforts on training for the Channel. Already, however, some observers, looking at her background and her training methods, were predicting not only that she would succeed, but that she could set a record. As one anonymous reporter noted, "She is even faster than Miss Wainwright ... and she possesses all other essential qualifications, including exceptional strength and stamina, imperviousness to cold water, determination and gameness. In addition she is an experienced outdoor swimmer, quite at home in rough seas." Another accurately noted that she was "the first speed champion of the modern school to undertake the quest ... She is a faster swimmer than any man who ever set out to conquer the Channel," but admitted that task remained difficult, for "many question that any woman is possessed of the necessary qualifications to accomplish the great feat," whatever those qualifications—apart from her sex—were.

  Just a few days before she was scheduled to leave, on June 14, she made one final appearance for the WSA at the Olympic Baths in Long Beach. Despite the fact that she had been focusing on the Channel, she nevertheless set a world record in the 150-yard invitational race in the sixty-foot pool. But she was just warming up. As if taking note of those who questioned whether women were even capable of swimming the Channel, less than twenty-four hours after setting the world record over 150 yards, Trudy took on another challenge.

  If there was an American equivalent of the Channel, it was the swim from the Battery, Manhattan's southernmost point, to Sandy Hook, in New Jersey, the barrier beach just north of the Highlands, a distance of sixteen miles. Like the Channel, swimmers had to negotiate the tides and currents of New York Harbor, adding five or six miles to the swim. In 1914 the New York Herald-Tribune had sponsored the first such swim, and it had been won by George Meehan of Boston, a proponent of the sidestroke, in seven hours and eighteen minutes. An Australian woman, Nell Kenney, claimed to have completed the
swim later that summer in nearly ten hours, but no one had witnessed her swim and it was discredited. No other woman, not even Mille Gade Corson, was known even to have tested herself over that distance.

  Little wonder. Despite a strong tailwind, of the thirty-one men who had competed in the Herald-Tribune race in 1914, only four had been able to finish—the rest had been beaten by the tides and the currents and the cold water. The swim was anything but easy—swimmers first had to negotiate the waters of Upper New York Bay, where the Hudson River meets the sea and the East River commingles with the waters of Long Island Sound, then ride the swift current through the Narrows between Staten Island and Brooklyn before finally heading south through Lower New York Bay off Coney Island and then across Raritan Bay between Staten Island and Sandy Hook. The entire route was a confusing mix of currents and tides that pushed a swimmer back and forth like a rubber duck in a tub, and was made even more difficult by the amount of shipping traffic that ran nonstop along the same course, constantly sending out wakes in all directions. Just as they did in the English Channel, swimmers had to account for every change and variation of tide and current or risk being swept far away from their chosen destination, turning an already difficult and dangerous journey into an impossible and potentially deadly one.

  After going to bed early in the evening on June 14, Trudy awoke around 2:00 A.M., ate a light meal of cantaloupe, cereal, toast, and coffee, and then, together with her father and sister Meg, met Charlotte Epstein, WSA president Margaret Johnson, several journalists, and a small boat crew at the pier in Battery Park. Apart from the lap of the water along the shore and the distant sound of boat traffic far offshore, it was nearly silent. Lights twinkling on the horizon marked the far shores of Staten Island and Brooklyn, and a cool, soft breeze rustled the leaves of the trees in nearby Battery Park.

  At precisely 4:42 A.M., in the darkness, Trudy carefully entered the harbor, put her face in the water, and began to swim, followed first by a rowboat and then, a few minutes later, by the Helys, a small powerboat. Only one day before leaving to swim the Channel, and less than twenty-four hours after setting a world record over 150 yards, Trudy Ederle was attempting to swim to Sandy Hook.

  To maximize the impact of the swim, the WSA had kept her attempt a secret from the general public. Far better, they believed, for the public to learn of her accomplishment after the fact. If she succeeded, her attempt to swim the Channel was certain to generate terrific publicity, yet if she failed she'd provide evidence for those who believed the Channel was too much for a woman, as well as risk destroying her own self-confidence. The swim was a gamble, but one Trudy and the WSA felt was worth it.

  Although Trudy and her crew had taken care to make enquires in regard to the tides and currents, after only a few short minutes in the water she felt the rush of water wash over her face. While her pace never varied, it felt as if she were swimming upstream in a rushing river.

  She was. Her crew, which included the fire commissioner of Hoboken, New Jersey, had assured everyone that it was familiar with the tides and currents between the Battery and Sandy Hook. While that may well have been the case, familiarity didn't mean expertise. It was clearly misinformed. Rather than catching the harbor in ebb tide, flowing out to sea, a strong flood tide was racing in, running directly in her face as the sea tried to push its way up the Hudson River, making Trudy's task infinitely more difficult.

  For an hour and a half Trudy gamely slogged along, each stroke of her arm and pull of her hand gaining her only a few feet against the current as she slowly cut across Buttermilk Channel between the Battery and Governor's Island, and then finally clear of the island itself. She was already exhausted but had covered less than two miles and occasionally turned over on her side to relieve her muscles of cramping. In midharbor the water temperature barely reached sixty degrees. At the break of dawn, Sandy Hook was hardly any closer than it had been when she had started.

  There was concern aboard the Helys, where Epstein and the others looked at the girl, clearly struggling, with grim faces and spoke to one another in hushed tones. They openly wondered if Trudy should abandon the attempt. There seemed little chance that Trudy, who appeared lethargic and beaten, could succeed, and they didn't want her confidence to suffer.

  Then, as if the struggle jolted her awake, Trudy began picking up her pace, finally fighting the tide rather than allowing herself to be pushed around. As she did, first slowly and then in a rush, the tide turned and the sun lifted in the sky and hit the water. As the conditions changed, so did Trudy's mood. Her rate of speed in the water doubled, and then tripled as the Hudson River chased the tide out to sea in a rush and Trudy rode the current back out.

  Trudy and the two accompanying vessels stayed close to the Brooklyn shore through the Narrows and then caught a current that sent her out into the deeper water of the shipping channel. Sandy Hook was still out of sight, hidden by morning fog still lingering farther out at sea, but the crew on the Helys directed her way with an on-board compass.

  At 10:30 the fog began to lift, first revealing the Highlands, Trudy's second home, and then, finally, the low beach and dunes of Sandy Hook, a fine white line along the horizon.

  Victory was in sight, barely one mile away. But over the last few hours the tide had slowed and then turned slack. Now it began to run again and was pushing back against Trudy just as her energy began to fade. The motorboat slowed to keep pace, barely crawling through the water. From her seat on the boat, Meg could see that Trudy was losing ground, and the success that a few moments before had seemed so certain now seemed far off. And no one was doing anything about it.

  Meg had enough. She jumped from her seat, cupped her hands around her mouth and called to her sister. "Hey!" she shouted, startling everyone. Meg's voice cut through Trudy's fatigue and the swimmer's head snapped around. "Get going, lazy bones," Meg called out. "You're loafing!" Indignant at the insult, Trudy fixed her sister in her sights.

  "Loafing, am I?" she called back. "For that I'll make it if it kills me!" Then Trudy turned back to the water, put her head down, reached out with her arms and with each stroke pulled the shore closer again, turning inside herself, swimming as if she was doing intervals in the WSA pool, her stroke strong and true. Meg watched with a satisfied smile as Trudy began to put some distance between herself and the Helys. The boat pilot leaned on the throttle, and as the Highlands peaked over the horizon, Meg exhorted her sister to swim even faster.

  As the buildings of Fort Hancock, on the northernmost point of the Hook, began to appear, Trudy picked up her pace even more. The fort commander had been informed in advance of their plans, and a small crowd of Trudy's friends and her family were waiting onshore as she sprinted the final hundred yards before finally reaching the shallows. When her arms hit bottom she popped to her feet and began wading to shore, rubbing her eyes, which were red and raw with irritation from the salt water. She had swum for much of the last few hours with her eyes closed, all sounds muffled due to her hearing loss, her arms and legs numb from the cold, yet this had not deterred her or even caused her to slow down.

  It was 11:53 A.M. She had been in the water for seven hours, eleven minutes, and thirty seconds, finishing nearly seven minutes faster than the existing record. She had not only succeeded, but she had shattered a record previously held by a man, and done so only one day after she had set a world record in a 150-yard race. As soon as their boat hit the beach, several newspaper men dashed off in search of a telephone to call the story in to the evening papers.

  After spending a few moments to collect herself, Trudy pronounced herself fit—and hungry. She had neither eaten nor taken any drink during her time in the water. A reporter asked her whether she was tired and she replied, "Not much. I could have kept on going if I had to."

  When another made mention of a "second wind," Trudy shook her head disparagingly. "I've heard other swimmers talk about it," she said, "but I don't think I have a second wind. I usually feel a little tired during the fi
rst mile but after that I am all right." With that she was escorted to the fort's dining room for a meal, and then boarded the boat for the journey back, where she amazed everyone as she alternately sat and stood on deck, chatting away as if she had just returned from swimming practice.

  The next day her achievement made headlines in sports pages all over the country. In his nationally syndicated column "It Seems to Me," Heywood Broun of the New York World did not miss the significance of her achievement, writing, "When Gertrude Ederle stepped onto the beach at Sandy Hook the shake of her shoulders sent flying many things besides drips of water. As she crawled and kicked down the bay the churning of her feet beat against tradition and bruised it. In the face of the fact that she beat the best time ever made by any man over the same course the various theories about male superiority may have to be amended."

  Anyone who had not known that she was about to tackle the English Channel did so now. Based on her time in the Sandy Hook swim, she was expected not only to succeed and become the first woman to swim the Channel, but to beat the existing men's record and prove, forever and for all time, not only that women could be athletes, but that they were the equal of men, if not better. As Broun noted, Trudy's swim pointed out that "the reason men excelled so markedly in sports for so long a time did not lie in any lack of potential equality among women, but was explicable rather on the ground that women didn't get the chance to try ... Little girls were brought up to believe that the games of boys were not for them ... But now the challenge has come, and before we know it the old legends against which we have leaned so heavily will crumble."

  For the first time ever since men and women looked across the Channel and dreamed of one day swimming across it, there was finally a swimmer to whom swimming the English Channel was not just a personal challenge, but a charge and a responsibility.