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

by Glenn Stout

  Trudy didn't quite understand it, but she didn't feel right. She wasn't exactly seasick, but she felt woozy and light-headed. Every time she told herself to pick up the pace, there seemed to be a slight delay before her body responded, and even when it did, it was as if the message faded. Despite her best efforts she kept slowing down.

  She had never quite felt that way before, not during the Sandy Hook swim, not at the Highlands, and not during any of her training swims. Of course, she'd never been in the Channel quite as long as this before, but still ... she just didn't feel right.

  Those aboard the tug could tell that Trudy was beginning to labor. She would swim strongly for a hundred yards or so, then slow and occasionally roll over in the water as the rough seas washed over her head. Then she'd turn back over and start up again, a pattern that was completely out of character.

  She was at a critical time in the swim, like a mountaineer about to make the final push to scale a peak and then head downhill. Those aboard the tug could see the English coast just coming into view and knew that in a short time the tide would turn again in Trudy's favor and rush her toward her goal.

  Yet while Trudy had certainly been struggling as conditions deteriorated, from the tugboat she didn't appear to be in great trouble. Those who had spent any time in Gris-Nez had seen her swim in similar conditions many times. Then, as they watched from twenty-five feet away, observers on the tug saw a series of great swells roll in and swamp both swimmers.

  Helmi, bigger than Trudy and much fresher, managed to duck under and stay atop the water. But the seas hit as Trudy was taking a breath and she breathed in and then swallowed some seawater. Helmi noticed her spitting and sputtering. "Steady, Gertie," he told her, "Steady. Take it easy." Then as Trudy rolled over on her back, seawater and a trickle of vomit streamed from her mouth.

  She acted as if she hadn't even heard Helmi, and looked up, her eyes glazed and her skin pale. She wasn't swimming anymore, but simply floating.

  For the next moment or two those on the tug watched with curiosity as Trudy bobbed in the water, her face turned to the sky, and Helmi dog-paddled around her. Wolffe rowed closer, fixing the swimmer in his gaze, a bitter look on his face.

  Trudy knew what was happening—sort of—but she was a bit nauseous, dizzy and disoriented, and suddenly as tired as she had ever been in her life. She just wanted to float for a moment, to rest. She was so tired all of a sudden, so very very tired.

  Jabez Wolffe watched from the rowboat only a few yards away, his stare never wavering as his boat lifted and fell with the two swimmers in the water.

  Wolffe then turned his head to Helmi and spoke, barking out an order in a tone of voice the big Egyptian knew better than to ignore. "Take her out," spat Wolffe. "That's enough."

  The swimmer reached out and put his great arm around Trudy's chest. She felt the pressure, and the warmth, and then her mind began processing precisely what was happening, and it was as if she were waking from a deep sleep and slowly becoming aware of her surroundings.

  It was 3:58 P.M., and the instant Helmi touched her, the swim was over, a realization that was only slowly making its way into her consciousness. She had been in the water just short of nine hours. Dover was six and one-half miles away, near enough for those on the tug to see the coastline jutting up out of the sea.

  20. Poison

  TRUDY DID NOT RESIST, could not resist. By the time she realized that Ishaq Helmi had touched her, it was too late—the swim was over. With a few sweeps of his arm Helmi drew the bewildered swimmer to the rowboat. Wolffe swung a towel out over the water, and Helmi wrapped it under Trudy's arms so Wolffe could gain some leverage on Trudy's greased body, then Helmi pushed and Wolffe pulled and Trudy, passive, was pulled into the boat like an exhausted fish after a long battle. She sat, and Jeanne Sion put her arm around her shoulder and pulled her close.

  From the tug, where observers watched closely and a newsreel cameraman captured Trudy's few moments in the rowboat, it was at first unclear precisely what had just happened. Why had she stopped? Trudy was clearly conscious, eyes wide open, and sat upright in the boat, but she didn't look at anyone, barely moved, and seemed almost emotionless, oblivious to everything—either too exhausted, too disappointed, or too stunned to react. She didn't move at all until Wolffe tugged at the towel around her waist. At that Trudy's head snapped back, as if startled, and with a look of utter disgust on her face, she called out that it was too tight and he was hurting her.

  For a moment the journalists and observers on board the escort tug were as stunned as Trudy. For days they'd been preparing to write a tale of success, and for the last eight hours they'd been filling in the blanks of that story. Now they had to reverse course and beat one another to the scoop as to why she had been stopped. As the rowboat approached the tug, the scribes on board grappled for position along the rail and called out questions.

  Elsie Viets pushed her way past, and when the rowboat drew alongside the tug, she helped Trudy climb on board, and then, as reporters gathered around with their notebooks at the ready, Trudy stalked off to the opposite side of the ship, livid, before Viets spirited her away below decks. Trudy's only recorded comment at the time was somewhat ambiguous. She didn't mention being pulled from the water but according to Alec Rutherford, probably the most dispassionate and trustworthy of the observers on board the tug, said only, "It was the roughest going I have ever known. I was going well till the storm came up."

  Her sudden unavailability didn't stop the presses as the scribes created a scene far more dramatic than what actually took place, and half-baked bulletins were sent crackling to shore over the wireless as others prepared finished copy to be ferried back on the next motorboat. One account insisted that Trudy had passed out in the water, only to be saved by Helmi's heroic action. Another writer suggested that she was hauled aboard the tug "limp and crying" and insisted that she blamed her failure on the ingestion of "too much salt water." Most overstated the bad weather. No one mentioned the fact that she had covered an incredible twenty-three miles in eight hours, a performance no other human being in the history of Channel swimming had come close to.

  Since Trudy wasn't talking, Jabez Wolffe did. He told reporters that "she was two hours going in the worst possible channel conditions," before adding the expected bromides about her effort and perseverance, a dramatic turnaround from his statements only a few days before that questioned her fortitude and her physical condition. Ishaq Helmi made only a brief comment, stating that he reached out for Trudy at the direct instruction of Wolffe.

  But to Elsie Viets, who knew Trudy better than anyone else, her behavior after boarding the tug was so odd as to arouse suspicion. After her Sandy Hook swim for example, Trudy had been energetic—she usually was after a swim, even a long one in cold water. This time, however, Trudy was sluggish and closed mouthed. She seemed to have a hard time focusing, as if only dimly aware of her surroundings. She asked Viets for a piece of chocolate and then curled up under a blanket below decks and, despite the choppy seas and swells, fell into a deep sleep, her breathing long and laborious. When the boat finally made it back to Boulogne at 6:30 P.M. Viets had some difficulty rousing her from her slumber, and the chaperone spirited her off to her quarters without additional comment, further frustrating the press, who were impatient to get Trudy's account of the swim. As soon as Trudy reached her room she collapsed on her bed and once again fell asleep.

  Trudy didn't emerge until late the following morning, at 9:00, nearly seventeen hours after she first fell asleep. She hardly resembled the girl who had been pulled from the water less than twenty-four hours before.

  She felt fine and wasn't even sore from the swim. She went for a brisk walk through town and then ate an enormous breakfast, for her stomach had settled down completely. Apart from a few jellyfish stings and some chafing under her arms, she felt fine.

  Although Viets still kept the press away from her, one reporter did manage to corner Trudy for a moment and get her to c
omment. She seemed as curious about what had happened as they were, asking rhetorically, "It was funny how I sank, wasn't it?" even though no one on the tug had seen her sink, and Trudy said she remembered crying a little after being stopped—again, something no one remembered her doing—but added, "I don't know why. I wasn't sad. I wanted to go on."

  Viets was able to keep her sequestered for one more day, but the press was relentless, and Trudy made another brief statement. Now with two full days to reflect on her effort, Trudy seemed even more mystified than ever, telling a reporter, "You guys are crazy, saying I collapsed," she said. "You must have been affected by seasickness. I thought I was going good." With that she and Viets left for Dunkirk, where Jeanne Sion had invited her to get away from everything for a day or two at her home.

  When they returned to Boulogne, everything had changed. Viets fired Wolffe, and despite the fact that just a few days before Trudy's attempt Viets had indicated that whether Trudy was successful or not, she would make only one attempt to swim the Channel, those plans had now changed. Viets had been in contact with the WSA. It had authorized her not only to fire Wolffe, but to hire Bill Burgess to oversee Trudy's training in anticipation of a second attempt if conditions allowed. But Viets still prevented Trudy from speaking to the press.

  Over the past two days, with time to reflect on what had happened, Viets and Trudy had reached a disturbing conclusion. They thought she had been poisoned, that Wolffe—or someone—had poisoned the beef tea she had consumed either before or during her swim. All Trudy knew was that she had felt fine before drinking the tea, and then became increasingly queasy and lethargic until she had nearly passed out in the water. She barely remembered her final moments in the Channel, and her memories of the swim were hazy.

  Viets concurred. Things seemed to be adding up. Wolffe had already made it clear that he didn't think Trudy would succeed and had plenty of reasons to want her to fail. He alone had been in charge of the logistics of her swim—including providing her nourishment that day—and when he had given Trudy her first bottle of beef tea and she had dropped it, he had become angry all out of proportion. Early in her swim Trudy had commented that the beef tea had unsettled her stomach, saying she could still taste it, and as her swim had continued, Trudy had slowly become increasingly unresponsive. Her collapse after boarding the tug and her near-eighteen-hour nap afterward were both completely out of character. Her symptoms—lethargy, nausea, and confusion—can also be symptomatic of drugs such as opiates and barbiturates, and within twenty-four hours she was fine, enough time for such drugs to pass through her system. Whatever her problem was that day, the WSA decided that Trudy deserved another chance away from the odious influence of Wolffe. But it was sensitive to public perception and said nothing about its suspicions. Trudy was not to speak of it.

  As Trudy recuperated, she soon learned that Bill Burgess was not Jabez Wolffe, either in form or content. When they voiced their suspicions about the poison to Burgess, he didn't dismiss them out of hand but allowed that it was possible, immediately gaining the trust of both Viets and Trudy.

  The more time she spent in his company, the more Trudy liked Burgess. The Channel almost seemed to haunt Wolffe, but in contrast, Burgess seemed to celebrate the body of water, not as an adversary but as a demanding and worthy partner in a quest for greatness. Sometimes he'd gaze out across the water and claim he could see "the twinkle in a young girl's eye on the streets of Dover," and he liked to joke that since he had swum the Channel, "I've been trying to get back to England ever since," a reference to his French wife and home in Paris, something that still caused the British press to sometimes eye him with suspicion. The personality of the two men could not have been more different. There was an impish light in Burgess's eyes, and he expressed a joie de vivre that was entirely lacking in Wolffe, who exuded suspicion and arrogance. Burgess laughed and smiled easily, was far more supportive of his swimmers than Wolffe, and shied away from the spotlight. And where Wolffe looked at the Channel and saw only struggle and failure, Burgess saw triumph and success—he even had a small house on Cape Gris-Nez that overlooked the Channel, as if to watch over his achievement.

  Not that he didn't have his own notions about swimming the Channel—he did—but he was flexible and did not assert his views like a dictator. Instead, he managed to involve his swimmers in the process, guiding them along in the months and weeks before a swim in the same tough yet gentle manner he did when they were in the water, teaching them about the Channel rather than ordering them about. In short, Wolffe acted as if he were the general and the swimmer simply a lowly private; Burgess and his swimmers were partners in the same quest. Even better, he wasn't bothered in the least or threatened by women, women swimmers, or the American crawl. As the second person ever to swim the Channel, his place in history was secure. The success of Trudy—or that of any other swimmer he trained—only enhanced his stature, and under any circumstances he was particularly delighted to snag a client away from Wolffe, particularly one as famous and well funded as Trudy.

  After a few days Trudy resumed training with Burgess and waited for another break in the weather, but the wind she had encountered during her first attempt marked a shift in the weather pattern. Time after time over the next few weeks Trudy and Burgess tentatively scheduled an attempt only to be thwarted by the weather. In the meantime other swimmers who made the mistake of entering the rough seas were just as roughly tossed out—an English woman, Mercedes Gleitze, lasted only five hours in the water, while Masanori Nakamuri of Japan lasted barely three. In the first week of September both Jeanne Sion and Lillian Harrison announced they'd make no further attempts in 1925, leaving Trudy and Ishaq Helmi as the only swimmers still scanning Channel waters for a break in the weather.

  It was not to be. Despite the fact that Trudy got along much, much better with Burgess, calling him "a grand old man and a channel genius," and pronouncing herself in the best shape of her life, the weather refused to cooperate. A cold front moved through the Channel in the first week of September and, as one paper reported, left conditions "positively Arctic," as the temperature of the water dropped to below sixty degrees and the wind continued to blow. On September 10, Ederle reluctantly made the decision to abandon her attempt to swim the Channel that year. On September 12, she and Elsie Viets boarded the cruise ship Mauretania in Cherbourg to return to New York.

  Yet Trudy had, in some ways, still managed to come out on top. The passenger list published in the New York newspapers pending the arrival of the Mauretania made special mention of Trudy's presence on the ship, an honor generally reserved for politicians, motion picture stars, and members of high society, perhaps the first sign that Trudy was becoming better known as a celebrity, a person known principally for her fame, than for her actual achievements as an athlete. Coverage of her attempt to cross the Channel had become something of a regular feature in New York newspapers. Even in failure she had become better known than ever before.

  Purely by accident she was the beneficiary of evolving technology that was impacting American journalism. After World War I, advances in wireless communication made it possible to send news around the world. Guglielmo Marconi had perfected wireless telegraphy more than two decades earlier, and since then it had become easier and easier to transmit information almost instantaneously. News was not just what happened anymore, but what had just happened, a far more dynamic source of information.

  That had been made clear only a few months before. On January 30, 1925, a man named Floyd Collins became trapped in a Kentucky cavern. Over the next two weeks newspapers and radio, which was rapidly becoming a staple in American homes, reported on efforts to free Collins from the cave. Day by day, as rescuers tried to dig a tunnel to reach the man, the public's appetite for the story grew exponentially, and it was possible to transmit bulletins to the entire nation around the clock. By the time Collins was finally located, on February 17, he was dead, but for more than two weeks his story dominated every news report.
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  The tragedy taught newspaper editors and radio reporters a valuable lesson—such "serialized" news stories that took place over days were wildly popular with the general public. The coverage of Trudy Ederle's attempt to swim the Channel in 1925, reported in newspaper stories around the country and in countless updates on the radio, tapped into the same phenomenon—the already sports mad public had a bottomless appetite for the news, and swimming the Channel was inherently far more dramatic than a pennant race or boxing match. As one reporter noted in verse, "But here is the point I would like to stress / She furnished some news for the press—/ And we, at some distance away / Have something to read every day." Once the public got hooked on a story, it couldn't get enough.

  Yet at the same time, Trudy's failure gave new ammunition to those who still believed not only that swimming the Channel was beyond the capacity of women, but that athletics was both inappropriate and even a waste of time for women. Before her failure, no less a figure than Will Rogers had favorably compared Trudy's attempt to swim the Channel to that of heavyweight boxer Jack Dempsey's quest for a boxing title, observing, "Nobody is paying her anything, nobody is guaranteeing her anything ... that is what I call a Sport; a Sport worthy of the admiration of the entire world." Whereas "the most he [Dempsey] can fight anybody is fifteen rounds, three minutes to a round, with a minute's rest between ... Can you imagine Gertrude Ederle being able to stop every three minutes sit down in a chair and have somebody massage her legs?" But upon Trudy's return, those who were against women's athletics again felt empowered; her failure gave them some new ammunition. One syndicated story that appeared nationwide was entitled "Science Warns the New Strong-Arm Beauty." The article cautioned that because of exercise, "the new Strong-Arm Beauty—the girl athlete of 1925" (clearly a reference to Trudy) "endangers her chances of motherhood," her natural physical symmetry, and her girlish approach to life. Even worse, such women could also result in an "emasculated race of men." Furthermore, the article argued that there was a "real likelihood of such women taking on masculine traits to the point where the feminine in their natures may be forced into abeyance." Upon Trudy's return to the United States, such criticism only increased.