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

by Glenn Stout

  The ship reached Cherbourg on June 8, and the Channel welcomed Trudy as if reminding her she wasn't in the Highlands anymore. The sea was choppy and rough and the sky hung low, the color of a mollusk. It wasn't chilly—it was cold, and Trudy and her entourage immediately boarded a train to Paris, where they stayed for a day before taking another train to Cape Gris-Nez.

  Unlike her previous attempt, this time Trudy would spend all her time in France, at Gris-Nez. Her father had booked several rooms in the rustic, almost primitive Hotel du Phare—the Hotel of the Lighthouse—under the shadow of Cape Gris-Nez.

  The headland—Cape Gray Nose—topped by a lighthouse built in 1837, dominated the landscape, and the name belied the Channel itself, for on dank gray days the headland, indeed, vaguely resembled a gray nose sitting just above the waterline sniffing the salt air. Although today the area is primarily a tourist destination due to its raw natural beauty, when Trudy first visited Cape Gris-Nez it was known more for its desolation and poverty. The cape and the small village tucked in its shadow to the east barely drew enough visitors to keep the two hotels in business, and peasants who lived in the few dozen homes scattered along the main road up from the beach eked out a meager existence, primarily from farming. Residents regularly scavenged the cape itself for goods that washed ashore from shipwrecks, and abandoned gun batteries dating from the Great War dotted the headlands. A generation before it was not unknown for the local peasants to be seen gathering seaweed, which they used as fertilizer during times of plenty and sometimes consumed during tougher times. Although nearby towns and villages along the shore supported a vibrant commercial fishery, only a few fishermen were based in and around Cape Gris-Nez itself. The waters were rough, and the rock-strewn shores of the cape lacked a safe harbor suitable for large vessels.

  Still, the area's rough beauty held a certain exotic charm. Julia Harpman was absolutely captivated, waxing rhapsodic over the "cluster of stone houses, all neatly whitewashed," some with thatched roofs, and the "gardens which are dark with undergrowth and dotted with beds of beautiful flowers."

  Accommodations at the hotel, which was situated almost a mile from the beach on the road that ran to the sea from the village, were Spartan at best. The three-story stone and stucco building didn't have electricity, but Trudy was pleased to note in her initial dispatch from Cape Gris-Nez that Monsieur Blondeau, the proprietor, "had acquired modern ideas since last year. The Hotel now has a wash basin and plumbing in each room and a community bath tub," all improvements designed to accommodate the growing number of Channel aspirants coming to Gris-Nez each summer. Unfortunately, these items, as yet, were for show only—none of the plumbing was connected to a water source.

  Under Burgess's direction, Trudy began training on June 11 with a brief swim to reacquaint herself with Channel waters. But all was not well between Trudy and her trainer.

  Even before leaving New York, Trudy had heard that Burgess was training another swimmer, Lillian Cannon. Cannon had told her as much when Trudy, as a courtesy, saw her off when she had left New York for France in mid-May. That nugget of information left Trudy "greatly surprised," and over the next few weeks press reports had confirmed that it was true.

  Immediately upon arriving in Cape Gris-Nez, Trudy and her father confronted Burgess. He was not only under contract for ten thousand francs, but months before he had been sent a retainer to train Trudy and Trudy alone.

  Burgess reacted sheepishly. When he had signed the contract to train Trudy he had not foreseen that the summer of 1926 would be the busiest Channel season yet, and with all the questions surrounding Wolffe after Trudy's swim, other swimmers were steering clear of the Scotsman, making Burgess everyone's first choice. When Lillian Cannon, flush with cash from her newspaper deal, had contacted him, he had been unable to resist either her charms or her checkbook. Reluctantly, he admitted to the Ederles that he had also agreed to train Cannon, and tried to convince them there was little harm in that.

  But the Ederles had a contract, and now they held Burgess to his agreement and told him he would have to drop Cannon. It made sense, for as Trudy explained, "Suppose one man handles two women ... one is a slow swimmer and the other a sprinter. Obviously it would be impossible for this trainer to accompany both in the water." In this instance, Trudy was the sprinter, as Cannon, like virtually every other woman apart from Ederle who was planning on swimming the Channel, still depended upon the breaststroke and occasionally the sidestroke. In addition, were he to train both women, which of the two would receive priority when it came to actually swimming the Channel? There was simply no practical way for Burgess to train them both. Besides, after the trouble with Wolffe the year before, Trudy wanted no trouble from her new trainer. She needed someone she could trust without the slightest hesitation, and if Burgess was training two swimmers, how could she ever know for sure if he was acting in her best interests? When Burgess complained about the loss of income after he dropped Cannon, the Ederles reportedly increased his salary to make up the difference.

  Westbrook Pegler watched the proceedings with detached amusement, as the disagreement reminded him of the shenanigans that sometimes went on between boxers and their trainers. He noted that the real issue at stake was not so much Burgess's ability as a trainer as much as it was his knowledge of the Channel. According to Pegler, after the disagreement, "Trudy didn't trust Bill as far as she could see him through a stone wall on a dark night ... She went along with him ... only because she thought he had the best route." Pop Ederle shared her distrust and was far blunter about it. Each evening, many of the hotel's residents and the locals took their leave in the hotel's primitive bar, which featured an ancient beer pump that operated on the honor system. According to Pegler, Pop Ederle was a regular, as were both Joe Corthes and Burgess, and "Ederle is a pretty outspoken gentlemen who becomes more outspoken as the evening wears along." Whenever Corthes and Burgess spoke French with each other, Ederle would burst from his chair, shouting, "We all speak English at this table. Burgess speaks English. Corthes speaks English. Then talk United States. We ain't a bunch of dummies."

  Trudy's insistence on holding Burgess to his contract was the cause of a great deal of foot stomping in the Cannon camp. Lillian Cannon was now without a trainer. They'd had Cape Gris-Nez to themselves for nearly a month, but now that Trudy was in town she was getting all the attention—from the press and everyone else—leaving Cannon feeling like she'd been stood up at the altar.

  Despite her newspaper deal, in reality Cannon had very little chance of swimming the Channel. Compared to Trudy, she simply wasn't that strong a swimmer. Pegler, who knew a thing or two about athletes, took one look at Cannon and immediately dismissed her chances of ever successfully swimming the Channel. He called her a "warm water swimmer" and described her as "short, like Trudie [sic] Ederle, but, unlike Trudie, she seems thin and insufficiently upholstered to stand the cold of the Channel water. Lillian's hands are feminine and experts who follow the Channel swims year after year hold that no person with delicate hands can ever swim across because after only a few hours in the water thin hands fold up into fists and can't be opened to make the strokes." Pegler was correct. A woman of Cannon's build and stature utilizing the breaststroke had virtually no chance of swimming the Channel—it simply took too long and the swimmer became too cold. Even Burgess seemed to sense that, as he had tried to convince Cannon to experiment with overarm strokes. Neither Cannon nor her ghostwriter, the Scripps-Howard newsman Minott Saunders, would admit it, but her effort was doomed before it even started. As a swimmer, Cannon was a fiction while Trudy, on the other hand, was the genuine article, a world-class athlete.

  While some have argued that during the summer of 1926 there was a great competition between Ederle, Cannon, and several other female swimmers who were all trying to become the first woman to swim the Channel, that was far more the artificial hyperbole of a few newspaper reporters than fact. Among all the men and women trying to swim the Channel in the summer of 1926
, Trudy Ederle's only real competition was history itself. The other female contenders at the Channel that year were not nearly as accomplished or talented, and as later events would demonstrate, their approach was far different and their chances of success far less likely. Only Trudy looked at the Channel and swam it like she was in a race, with the expectation she would finish. Everyone else just hoped to survive.

  The dispute over Burgess created something of a chill between Cannon and Trudy, at least in Cannon's mind. A few days later, in a snit, she moved out of the Hotel du Phare, taking up residency in the small and even more primitive Hotel du Sirene directly on the beach.

  Now that Trudy had Burgess to herself, she began training in earnest. Of all the swimmers on either side of the Strait of Dover planning a swim, Trudy was the clear favorite to succeed. Bookmakers were more than happy to take wagers on any of the swimmers, giving long odds for everyone but Trudy. A year before, she'd opened at 10 to 1 and the smart money pushed the odds down to 2 to 1 by the time she finally entered the water. This year betting on Trudy opened at 3.5 to 1, and after a flurry of bets against her pushed the odds up to 6 to 1, press reports indicated that bookmakers eventually expected Trudy to go off at even money. The smart money got their bets down early.

  One man who did was Henry Ederle. No one seemed more aware of the financial impact a successful crossing would create—sometimes it was all he talked about. Before leaving New York he'd heard an erroneous report that the odds against Trudy were 50 to 1 and was prepared to bet $25, 000, ensuring a payout of $1.25 million if Trudy succeeded. Although Henry was disappointed to learn that the odds were far less lucrative, he still bet the full amount on Trudy to succeed. Even though Henry Ederle was wealthy, the Ederles had always lived somewhat frugally, their only real extravagance the cottage in the Highlands. But Pop Ederle anticipated that that was about to change. He'd always been a big supporter of Trudy's swimming career, but as her fame and her earning potential increased, Pop Ederle focused more and more upon the money. Although he had been driving the same car for years, now that he had promised Trudy that red roadster if she swam the Channel, he was also thinking that "maybe we get a new sedan for Momma and me."

  Trudy's actual training schedule hardly varied from that of the previous year, consisting of increasingly longer swims in Channel waters, with Burgess either swimming alongside, trying desperately to keep up, or, more often, following Trudy in a rowboat. Meg often joined Trudy in the water, helping the time pass as the girls chattered away like they were back in the Highlands.

  Burgess, unlike Wolffe, knew his role and knew better than to try to get Trudy to abandon the crawl. In fact, before Trudy had left New York, Louis Handley, while seeing her off at the pier, told Trudy, "Do me one big favor. Don't change your stroke. Never once do the backstroke, or the sidestroke." Then, looking her directly in the eyes and measuring every word he added, "Maintain your straight American crawl. It is faster and better, no matter how long the swim." Trudy promised Handley she would, and made certain Burgess realized that point was absolutely nonnegotiable.

  Burgess had targeted several time periods when the tides would be favorable to make an attempt, focusing on a few small windows of neap tides surrounding July 26, August 10, and August 21, but although the weather was delightful when Trudy first reached Cape Gris-Nez, conditions soon turned terrible. The sun stayed behind the clouds, and it was cold and damp—some days the temperature never even reached fifty degrees. Old-timers who knew the Channel well believed the weather would remain off all summer and doubted that anyone would make it across. Even Trudy, who rarely complained about the weather, groused, "It seems like November."

  While waiting for a break in conditions she tried to keep occupied. Once again she spent her spare time golfing on the beach on what she termed the "national course," one she laid out at low tide on the odd afternoon when it wasn't raining, and Trudy even introduced her father to the game. When the weather allowed they sometimes held cookouts, but otherwise there was little to do on Cape Gris-Nez apart from playing one of two Victrolas at the hotel—Trudy had left one behind in 1925 and brought another with her in 1926. Since Victrolas didn't get seasick, this time she planned to leave the band onshore and swim to the accompaniment of a gramophone instead.

  As June dragged on everyone was getting a bit bored, particularly the journalists at the hotel bar, who had little to do but look at the Channel every day. Sydney Williams of the Paris Herald tried to break the monotony. He resorted to writing profiles about a fictitious swimmer of his own invention, an Eskimo he dubbed Itchy Guk, who found the Channel waters too warm and was waiting for them to cool. Then Helmi arrived in mid-June for his annual run at the Channel and was welcomed warmly, even by Trudy—she didn't blame him for the trouble the previous summer. The big Egyptian livened things up at the hotel, for he drank the same way he swam—slowly and for a long time—and he liked to talk and joke. His nickname for Trudy was "the Kid," and he told her a friend of his had named a thoroughbred "the Kid" after her, but joked that it was the slowest horse in the stable.

  Apart from his effect on Trudy's mood, Helmi gave Meg a break by providing Trudy with another training partner. Once the two ventured so far out into the Channel that, as a cruise ship approached, Helmi had to warn her not to get too close. He was afraid she'd be spotted, mistaken for some poor soul who had fallen overboard from another vessel, rescued, and then taken back to New York.

  Trudy continued to train and prepare herself for the ordeal ahead. To that end she sent her sister to Paris with instructions to buy some silk. Trudy and Meg had been experimenting.

  When she had tried to swim the Channel the previous year she noticed that the longer she stayed in the water the more her swimsuit had bothered her. The one-piece singlet had caused significant chafing around her arms and had lost its shape over the course of her swim. By the time she was in mid-Channel, the neckline of the suit was gaping open like the mouth of the basking shark, creating considerable drag on Trudy as she tried to pull herself through the water.

  Although many male swimmers, and even some female aspirants, swam either nude or topless, Trudy was far too modest to try that approach. This year she had brought with her a suit made of silk, which helped with the chafing, but the scoop neck still slowed her down.

  She and Meg took matters into their own hands and came up with their own design. The original suit featured a small skirt, which they removed, and, using the skirt and additional material Meg bought in Paris, they fashioned a two-piece suit, rich blue in color, consisting of a brassiere that opened and closed in the front, and a bottom, akin to a pair of tight-fitting briefs. The clasps on the brassiere would allow Trudy to make adjustments in the water in the event the material stretched and began to bother her.

  The result worked beautifully—Trudy could stay in the water day after day for hours. The tight-fitting top caused comparatively little drag, and she didn't have to worry about chafing. Although they did not realize it at the time, the two sisters had created the world's first bikini some two decades before Louis Reard and Jacques Heim received credit for it. Unfortunately, neither Trudy nor her sister realized they had created not only something brand-new but something with such commercial potential. They never thought to trademark or patent the design and lost the opportunity to earn untold millions of dollars.

  As June turned into July the weather remained unforgiving. With the baseball season in full swing and an upcoming bout between Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney for the heavyweight championship of the world, Westbrook Pegler returned to the United States, leaving Harpman behind until Trudy either swam or failed to swim the Channel. Apart from a holiday party on July 4, Trudy was beginning to get a little stir-crazy as day after day passed with the same rough combination of rain, wind, and clouds. The residents of the Hotel du Phare, virtually all of whom were either waiting to swim the Channel, working with someone waiting to swim the Channel, or journalists covering the Channel swimmers, began to experie
nce the Cape Gris-Nez equivalent of cabin fever. Virtually every conversation, no matter how innocuous, ended up being a conversation about either conditions in the Channel or the weather. Trudy wanted to leave Cape Gris-Nez to spend a few days in Paris herself, perhaps even to participate in a swim down the Seine, but was afraid that if she did she might either miss a brief period of fine weather or that in her absence Burgess just might return to Lillian Cannon. In the meantime, as she told Harpman, "I am fed up on the Channel swim talk. It seems as though everybody I meet insists on talking about no other subject. Especially am I weary of those who delight in telling how terrible the Channel is to swim.

  "I think," she added, "about half the difficulty of swimming the Channel is caused by having to listen to so much discouraging talk before you get started. Then, when you're in the middle of the Channel, you are apt to think all of this that you have heard and you lose your nerve."