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

by Glenn Stout

  Everything was fine until the Mauretania arrived in New York on September 18. On the dock waiting for Trudy were not only her family, but Charlotte Epstein and other members of the WSA. On the journey from England, as one paper noted, Trudy had been "held on the ship incommunicado," by Elsie Viets, who told reporters on board that Trudy would make no statement "until after certain matters have been cleared up." Passengers on the ship reported that Trudy told them that she blamed her trouble on the fact that her bathing cap and goggles had been too tight, clearly an excuse to deflect further questions

  Afraid that Trudy might speak without thinking and escalate a controversy that, as yet, was still very much a secret, as soon as the ship reached the pier, WSA president Margaret Johnson, Charlotte Epstein, and Louis Handley boarded the vessel. They were fully aware of what had taken place overseas and, perhaps fearing that the WSA would be adversely affected if word of the possible poisoning got out, wanted to protect both Trudy and the organization from any unwanted scrutiny from the press. As Epstein later said, "I did not want any half-baked statements," and she spoke to Trudy and cautioned her to watch her tongue. From the perspective of the WSA, trading insults with Jabez Wolffe was pointless—what was done was done.

  Yet over the next few days Charlotte Epstein and the WSA proved that while they were adept at teaching women to swim and at running large swimming events, they were as yet still amateurs when dealing with a controversy in the press. When Trudy disembarked from the ship, after first embracing her mother, she was greeted on the pier by hundreds of well-wishers and reporters who expected, even demanded, that she speak. At first, Viets stood in the way and would not allow Trudy to respond, but as the press began to grow restless and push closer, shoving cameras and notebooks in Trudy's face, Charlotte Epstein caved in and allowed Trudy to take a few questions.

  When one reporter asked if she felt she could have gone on, Trudy answered that she felt she could but couldn't say for sure whether that would have meant success. When another asked, "What caused you to stop?" Trudy was far more blunt.

  "Because Helmi touched me," she snapped, and when the reporter followed up by asking, "What made him do that?" Trudy bounced the ball back across the Channel, spitting out a two-word answer: "Ask Wolffe." Those two words soon sparked a cross-Atlantic argument that readers found nearly as engaging as Trudy's attempt to swim the Channel itself.

  Trudy then went on to provide even more ammunition for the story, saying, "There was no truth to the story that I collapsed, Helmy [sic] was swimming with me and I was going strong when Wolffe suddenly called 'Grab her.' Of course as soon as I was touched I was disqualified. I don't know if I could have gone across but I could have gone further."

  Handley and Epstein then stepped in and continued to answer questions as Trudy, who was beginning to tear up, was hustled away. Handley, speaking in the same calm manner in which he always did, said that he was appalled by much of what he had heard about Wolffe, in particular his demeanor toward Trudy, and asked rhetorically, "Just imagine him coming into her training quarters one day and exclaiming 'What do you know, Gertie, I saw a shark today?' Imagine the effect that would have on a young girl."

  Epstein was even more direct, yet refused to be specific. "There have been many things," she said, "which should be investigated."

  "The suspicion is indicated," added Handley, "that Miss Ederle was taken out of the water prematurely." The WSA then announced it planned to mount an investigation over the circumstances that led to her being touched and taken from the water and then issue a full report on the matter.

  While Trudy was reunited with her family in the Highlands, word traveled fast across the Atlantic, and Wolffe fired back in full fury. For the next few days newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic printed charge and countercharge in banner headlines.

  Wolffe lied, and had no problem doing so. He denied ever telling Helmi to touch her, "But as there was a risk of her being drowned, Helmi went to her aid."

  He refuted everything Trudy said, saying, "Her statements are quite untrue," and explained that "I take it her story was meant to cover her non-compliance with my repeated efforts to get her to train." Then he repeated his previous statement that she had spent much of her time playing the ukulele, leading Trudy to fire back immediately from the Highlands, telling a reporter "That is all a lie. Of course I played my uke, but I played it only in the evenings after my training had been concluded. I did everything Wolffe told me to do."

  Meanwhile, the WSA proceeded with its investigation, contacting Alec Rutherford, Burgess, Ishaq Helmi, and other observers, including some other reporters. By and large they tended to back Ederle's account, as did Elsie Viets, as they all stated that despite the rough seas and the obvious trouble the conditions were causing, Trudy never appeared to be unconscious, although she had rolled over on her back and expelled some seawater. They all found Wolffe's behavior toward her deplorable, although Burgess, trying to be diplomatic and stay out of any public controversy, added that he did believe Trudy was "in trouble" when rescued by Helmi. Significantly, he didn't bother to define precisely what he meant by "in trouble." He could have been referring to the fact that she was in the company of Wolffe.

  The only real dissenting voice—apart from Jabez Wolffe—was that of Ishaq Helmi—sort of. Reached by reporters in Paris, he contradicted Wolffe, saying that the trainer had, in fact, ordered him to pull Trudy from the water, but he also said, "Miss Ederle was completely finished and unconscious when I gathered her in. She never objected to my touching her ... I believe she was too far gone to know what was going on," but even then he admitted that after only a few moments she had recovered completely. No one ever brought up the fact that Trudy's growing deafness may well have played a role in the incident. After eight hours in the water, amid engine noise and the wind, she may not have been able to hear very well and might not have been as responsive as normal, particularly if she were under the influence of some kind of drug.

  Helmi was in a tough spot. In mid-September he'd failed in his own attempt to swim the Channel and desperately wanted to try again in 1926. But his status in England was precarious. Just a few weeks earlier he'd been questioned by Scotland Yard in regard to his possible involvement in the escape of an Egyptian prince who had been incarcerated in London. He still wanted to swim the Channel and was hardly in a position to alienate Wolffe and or anger British authorities. Although they could not prevent him from beginning a swim in France, they could certainly prevent him from landing. In that light his statement seems couched in an attempt to play both sides, agreeing with elements of both Wolffe's and Trudy's account, as if trying not to completely alienate anyone, particularly the British.

  The WSA released a statement on September 21 that backed Trudy to the hilt. It was doing so, stated the report, "in justice to Miss Ederle who has been placed in a false light before the American public by statements of her English trainer [Wolffe]." The statement went on to attack Wolffe at every opportunity, charging not only that he did have her pulled from the water prematurely, but that the tug he enlisted did not have a compass on board, which forced Trudy to swim a circuitous route much farther than necessary, that he tried to get her to abandon the crawl stroke in favor of the sidestroke, that he unnecessarily frightened her about sharks, undercut her confidence, due to his own reticence wouldn't allow her to train far offshore for long periods of time, and "gave her absolutely no encouragement and found fault with everything she did." As evidence, the WSA claimed to have written statements from Helmi and a number of newspaper reporters who had been on board the tug, who informed the WSA that before they had even left Boulogne, Wolffe had given them a statement to be released "after she failed in her attempt." But the report made no mention of any poisoning.

  Later that evening the WSA hosted a welcome back gala for Trudy at the famous Hippodrome, a five-thousand-seat theater on Sixth Avenue. Beneath a banner that ran the length of the stage and read "Good Sportsmanship Is Greater Than
Victory"—a statement that in the light of her experience in the Channel Trudy must have found bittersweet—the theater's eight-thousand-gallon glass water tank was raised to stage level on hydraulic pistons. Annette Kellerman, Aileen Riggin, and several other WSA stars all gave a swimming and diving exhibition in Trudy's honor. Afterward a number of VIPs for the WSA and the AAU took the stage. Trudy was asked to come up out of her seat in the front row and speak to the crowd, but she refused. She was tired of the scrutiny and was already wary about speaking in public, for as she grew older not only was her hearing deteriorating, particularly when she was in training, but she was increasingly aware that she sometimes spoke too loudly, and in large crowds she sometimes misheard what was said. She didn't want to take the stage and then risk being asked a question she could not hear. A representative of the WSA then walked over to where she sat and surprised her with the gift of a diamond bracelet in honor of her achievement. Trudy clearly had the WSA's full support. Speaking from the stage, even the president of the AAU, Murray Hulbert, said that while Trudy had been warned of sharks in the water, no one warned her of "a Wolffe."

  That should have been the end of the controversy—and almost was—but Trudy wasn't quite finished. In a radio interview on WOR a day later she threatened that if the WSA didn't make public the "many suspicions and even facts" that she had against Wolffe, "I will do it myself." There were already whispers that there was more to the story in the press, as Joe Williams, sports columnist for the New York World Telegram wrote, "Gertrude Ederle hints that a dastardly plot conceived in the fiendish noodle of an English trainer robbed her of victory in the English Channel." For his part, Jabez Wolffe had had it. Of Trudy's continuing insistence that he had told Helmi to pull her from the water, Wolffe said, "I shall treat the report with the contempt it deserves, and say nothing."

  Trudy never followed through on her threat to go public with her concerns, and with good reason. Although most of the American public had sided with her during the spat with Wolffe, that wasn't true of everyone in the press. An editorial in the New York Herald-Tribune opined, "To us the controversy seems to be undignified and against not only the best interest of sports but pleasant relations between two friendly peoples ... Defeat is often a bitter pill but the true sportsman takes it without grimace." Reaction in England, predictably, was even harsher. Cecil Hadley, sports editor of British newspaper the People, called Trudy "a petulant miss" and, citing the tendency of American athletes to blame defeat on outside influences, asked, "When will Americans learn to lose?"

  Even worse, however, was the reaction of some women to Trudy's plight. While many were sympathetic to her cause, they were troubled by her attitude. The journalist Dorothy Greene authored an in fluential monthly column in the Washington Post called "The Sportswoman," one of the first regular features on women's sports to appear in an American newspaper. In a scathing column that appeared at the end of September, she hit Trudy hard, writing, "Diana's dress has at last been soiled. The post-failure channel swim war which is being waged between Gertrude Ederle and Jabez Wolffe, with its mingled whining and mud slinging, is becoming just a bit wearisome ... To those who entertained a belief that woman's sports would be immune to the petty quarrels and bad sportsmanship which has been known to mark men's contests, the whole altercation comes as a blow ... She is not only a disappointment to those who had supported her but she is the first to mar the good reputation of women's sports." Although Greene accepted that Wolffe may well have been lacking as a coach, in the end she concluded that "the whole matter is not worth a fiftieth of the publicity which it has received, and we are tempted to agree that 'woman's place, though it may not be in the home, is certainly not in the English Channel.'"

  21. Cape Gris-Nez

  "WE SWIMMERS HAVE to keep in strict training," read the magazine advertisement. "When I first got started a veteran swimmer advised me that I could smoke Lucky Strikes without affecting my wind or throat. I tried them and found he was right. They're great! They have never affected my throat and they taste fine."

  The testimonial was signed by Helen Wainwright, "Olympic Champion," and appeared next to a photograph of the smiling swimmer.

  Apart from entertainers and a few other athletes such as tennis champ Helen Wills, the WSA swimming stars were the best-known women in America. Young, attractive, modern, and vivacious, they were trendsetters and role models for a generation of young women.

  In the fall of 1925, under the direction of public relations pioneer Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freud's nephew, the American Tobacco Company decided to target women in an advertising campaign and looked to America's female swimming stars to pitch its product. An endorsement from a notable swimmer was better than one from an entertainer—due to the efforts of the WSA, the swimmers, unlike motion picture stars, were still considered wholesome. Who better to convince women to smoke than a paragon of health and virtue, a swimmer?

  Although she didn't smoke, Helen Wainwright was made an offer she couldn't refuse. The American Tobacco Company contacted her and offered her a five-figure contract to endorse Lucky Strike cigarettes and appear on billboards and in magazine and newspaper advertisements.

  Thus did Wainwright, completely by accident and for the second year in a row, provide a solution to the quandary facing Trudy Ederle.

  Trudy felt wronged by her experience in 1925 and wanted to try to swim the Channel again in 1926. Besides, after spending the past two years preparing first for the Olympics and then the English Channel, training to compete in races against schoolgirls didn't seem very exciting anymore, and Trudy had gained some fifteen pounds while overseas. Even if she wanted to, she was no longer in the proper shape to swim competitively at shorter distances. While she had been overseas another group of WSA swimming stars had taken over and were setting records nearly every time they entered the pool. Trudy had little left to prove competing for the WSA. From her perspective it made much more sense to use what she had learned about the Channel in 1925 and take aim on swimming the Channel in 1926.

  Wainwright had come to a similar conclusion. Through no fault of her own, Trudy had received a chance that had first been offered to Wainwright. Now Helen Wainwright also wanted to take crack at the Channel.

  That put the WSA in an awkward spot. In the end, Trudy's effort had cost the organization nine thousand dollars, an enormous sum of money, and more than the group had originally budgeted for the journey. While some in the organization felt that Trudy deserved another chance, the disagreement with Wolffe had soured some other members on financing another Channel quest at all, while still others thought it was only right that the organization send Wainwright, who was nearly as accomplished as Trudy.

  Both women made their desire clear to the WSA, but while Trudy and Wainwright waited for the WSA to make a decision, the American Tobacco Company came to the rescue. English Channel or not, Helen Wainwright could not afford to refuse. She accepted its offer, thus becoming a professional and relieving the WSA of any responsibility for financing any attempt she might make to swim the Channel. If Wainwright ever did decide to swim the Channel, she would now have to do so on her own. And if she did, the contract with the American Tobacco Company provided her with the means.

  Wainwright's decision to turn pro also pointed the way for Trudy. Thelda Bleibtrey had been the first WSA star to parlay her career into a professional engagement when she took a job as a swimming coach and agreed to take a screen test. But Trudy was already much more famous than Bleibtrey had ever been, and women's swimming was now much more established as a bona fide sport. As the Wainwright endorsement proved, there were now opportunities available to Trudy that just a few years before had been unthinkable.

  Ederle was soon approached by the Deauville Casino and Hotel in Miami, Florida. The Miami area was booming, and beach resorts and casinos were all the rage. The new hotel, an enormous three-story structure on the beach that featured two large spires and an interior courtyard and pool, wanted to hire Trudy, Aileen Riggi
n, and several other WSA stars to give lessons, entertain guests with swimming and diving exhibitions, and generally be seen in swimwear around the pool. The money was good and the Florida sunshine tempting. Besides, it was becoming ever more apparent that the WSA was less than enthusiastic over sending Trudy back to the English Channel, and the casino led Trudy to believe that it just might decide to finance her trip in exchange for the publicity.

  That was the clincher. Now there was absolutely no reason to remain an amateur. In November, Riggin, Trudy, and two other swimmers, Eleanor Coleman and Alma Wycoff, all signed contracts to spend the winter in Deauville, a decision that cost both Trudy and Riggin their amateur status. Wainwright took a similar position in Tampa.

  On January 1, 1926, Trudy Ederle's contract went into effect, and she became a professional. The WSA, although disappointed to lose Riggin, Ederle, and Wainwright in such close proximity, was also a bit relieved not to have to choose who to support in another venture across the Channel. Both swimmers were made honorary members of the organization for life.

  Trudy was now a professional, living on her own for the first time, although she had her old friend Aileen Riggin for support. Over the next few months she enjoyed her stay at Deauville, which gave her plenty of time to swim and required little else. Whenever possible she abandoned the hotel pool for the ocean and even found time to compete in the annual Miami River swim, a seven-mile race that she won in two hours and three minutes, boosting her self-confidence and proving she was still a swimmer of considerable talent. Like Wainwright, she also was approached by advertisers and agreed to lend her name and image to tout the new Reo Roadster, so named from the initials of Ransom E. Olds, president of Oldsmobile. In the ad Trudy stood on the running board in—what else?—a bathing suit, and the copy stated that when Trudy returned to America and went home to the Highlands after trying to swim the Channel, "she didn't walk to the scene of her first plunge ... She rode in a Reo Roadster, proving that her judgment, so keen in matters of the tides, waves and winds, is just as much alert when she is selecting her motor cars." She didn't earn nearly as much as Wainwright did for her tobacco ad, but for Trudy, who loved cars, it was easy money.