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

by Glenn Stout

  Burgess, however, had recently reached a different conclusion. The previous summer he had watched not only Trudy's swim, but the swims of both Lillian Harrison and Jeanne Sion, and he had since taken to the water himself dozens of times and checked his theory personally, feeling the pull of the current on his own body.

  Unlike Ederle, in 1925 Lillian Harrison had started her swim from the small sand beach near the Hotel du Sirene. As a result she had begun her journey in the calmer waters, protected by Cape Gris-Nez itself, giving her an opportunity to set her pace before being buffeted by open water. She had not entered the current until she cleared the cape, and as a result, she had not been pushed quite so far to the west, so that when the tide changed and turned back she had not quite so much distance to cover. Later, when Jeanne Sion had left from the cape itself, like Ederle, Burgess simultaneously started swimming from the beach just so he could gauge how much that small change would impact the route toward England. As he suspected, he found the route much easier and more efficient. He had, in fact, lingered in the water and eventually been picked up by Sion's escort vessel when she finally made her way to his position. Later that day when Burgess returned to shore, he told Alec Rutherford that after more than twenty-five years of splashing around in the Channel he believed he had "solved the riddle of the tides." Trudy would test his theory.

  His plan was for her to swim to England following the familiar Z-shaped route. Ideally, four hours and twenty minutes before high tide in Dover, Trudy would enter the water at the beach and strike out due north for twenty minutes. Once she cleared Cape Gris-Nez she would encounter the westward-flowing rising tide, then change her heading to the northwest for two hours—more or less running with the tide while swimming farther out into the Channel, a course that would carry her some three or four miles west of Gris-Nez.

  Then it was time to change course again, steering north-northwest, quarter north for the next seven hours. Even though this seemed somewhat counterintuitive, by keeping that bearing she would gain ground toward England even as she was swept along. As the tide would turn and begin sweeping the Channel waters through the Strait of Dover and into the North Sea, Trudy would cut cross the current and swim closer to England even as she was being swept to the northeast.

  If all went well, at the end of seven hours the swimmer would be about three miles east of the South Goodwin lightship and in position to make for the coast on the last leg of the Z, first through slack water and then the next rising tide, landing on the coast somewhere between Dover and Folkestone. If she swam particularly well she might be even closer to the lightship, leaving even less distance to cover to make a successful landing and less of a chance of being overcome by fatigue, which could result in being caught too far offshore and then swept past Dover and even farther down the coast.

  According to Burgess's calculations, if Trudy swam to her ability she could make the English coast in about fourteen hours, a record time, but one Burgess thought was achievable, based on her strength as a swimmer. He distributed a map to the press that showed her route and his projection of her progress each hour. Of course, the wind and the weather could wreak havoc with any plan, but this was where Burgess's years of experience might prove critical—if something went wrong, he could make adjustments on the fly. His only real concern was if the weather changed and slowed her down, for if she was too far south of the Goodwin Sands when the tide began running, she would be pushed to the west, nearly parallel to the English coast. Not even Trudy, thought Burgess, was a strong enough swimmer to cut perpendicularly across such a strong tide.

  It was time to go. Trudy was already fifteen, almost twenty minutes late getting into the water, and as Burgess well knew, a few minutes could be the difference between making the shore and coming excruciatingly close, between success and failure, and potentially, life and death. There was no margin.

  Quickly, with little fanfare, he urged Trudy toward the sea, then gave her a quick peck on the cheek before she reached the water, taking care not to touch her once she began to wade in the surf, for if he did, even in waters only ankle deep, that would, according to tradition, be enough to void her effort. Trudy then walked confidently to the water's edge near the two rowboats waiting to ferry those lucky enough to have passage on board the Alsace.

  As Burgess and several others waded through the shallow water and cautiously climbed into the boats, each of which bore both an American and a French flag, Trudy turned to Meg, trailing behind and carrying her purse, and gave a little wave. Then she turned her back on France and waded into the surf.

  England was ahead of her, she knew that, but the day had already turned so hazy that only the barest outline of the cliffs on the opposite coast could be seen, appearing more as an apparition than a tangible landscape, the same tantalizing view that had called so many before her to cross the waters. Breathing deeply, gathering herself, Trudy plowed through the water, walking, feeling the sand beneath her feet, and then, as the water rose past her waist to her chest, she began to feel lighter. When a small wave tossed water up to her chin, she lifted her head to the sky, whispered, "Please, God, help me," then bent her head, reached out with her arms, and dove in beneath the waters.

  On board the Alsace and on the shore, the first wireless reports crackled out through the atmosphere, telling the world she had started to swim.

  Cape Gris-Nez., Aug 6. (By the Associated Press)—Gertrude Ederle, the American Swimmer, started at 7:09 o'clock this morning in an attempt to swim the English Channel. The weather conditions when she took her plunge were fine.

  "Please, God, help me." As her head left the air, Trudy tried to think of nothing else—nothing important, nothing that mattered, and nothing that didn't touch her at that instant. Nothing but the water and the air, the sea and the sky, her hands and arms reaching out, her legs kicking, her face turning toward the sky breathing in, then turning, under the water, breathing out.

  The start, she knew, was the hardest part. As she plunged into the water and began to swim, her body, swept over by the cold, was still in pieces—her arms felt stiff, each stroke still uncertain, wavering, irregular, and as she kicked her legs she went at first too fast, then too slow, then back and forth, holding them too stiffly, then too relaxed, as she tried to find the place where her arms and hands and legs and feet were all one piece, in harmony. She tried to find that special place atop the water and in her mind where she did not feel the cold or the spray or the difference between the air and the water, lightness and dark, day or night. A place where there was no time at all.

  In ... out ... in ... out ... this was the worst. In shorter swims—one hundred yards, two hundred yards, three hundred, she hardly ever thought of breathing, and never thought of anything but going fast, breathing fast, reaching out, and kicking and breathing. Then all she did was pull with her arms and feel the water slip away as she churned along for a minute or two or three, taking deep breaths and exhaling, one after the other, until she moved through the water like running downhill, so fast that it felt like it was over before she started, before she even felt tired, before she even had time to think.

  This was different, far different from the long swims she took during training, or back in the Highlands with Meg, where she didn't think about swimming at all but laughed and giggled and talked about a million things as she swam. It was hard not to swim as fast as she could, by herself for now, and even as it pained her to admit it, she knew that today, in order to go fast she somehow had to go slow. It was funny, but the farther she had to swim the slower she had to swim, and the slower she swam the harder it was for her to find that place, the place Julia Harpman called her "personal sphere." The writer had tried to talk to her about it, tried to ask her what she felt and what she thought of when she was in the water for hours, but Trudy had no words for what she thought or felt because when she reached that place there were no words for what she thought or what she felt, just the feeling of being lifted up and held from below, a soft hand car
rying her away, deeper and farther...

  She was not there yet, and as she stroked and kicked and breathed, she had not reached that place. She could still hear the gulls, and the splash and the slap of water had not faded the way the sound of the wind faded when it blew hard all night through an open window, or the way the sound of the rain on the rooftops slipped into a single soft surface, or the way the sound of the cars going past her home on Amsterdam Avenue ran together and made a kind of music.

  It was hard for her to hear things. She knew this, but she did not know what it was like to hear everything. She did not know that everything she heard was softer and rounder and muffled, that words ran together sometimes, and that music soared and lifted and sank, like the water, like the sea, a single sound like a river running past, or a stream, all rapids and falls and quiet corners. She knew it was hard, but sometimes she thought that by being partially deaf it was actually easier for her to hear, because even though she heard less she listened more. She heard enough to know when voices were talking over hers, not waiting for her ears to hear, and she knew there were sounds that stayed with her that others missed, low rumbles and hums and whispers and laughs, secrets she heard and kept to herself.

  Then it happened. For a few moments she had not thought of her arms or her legs or the water or air. For a moment she had been there, away in her place. She simply listened to the sea and spoke to it not with words but thoughts, and felt the water ride over the sea bottom and sensed the way the wind pushed the waves flat and pressed her flesh as she slipped between the sea and the air. It was like sliding into bed and finding that place, that comfortable spot between the sheet and the coverlet, her head on the pillow, and slipping into sleep.

  That's how it was, swimming like this—not thinking to sleep but starting to. For a second, a moment, she had been there but now she was not, her breath was now too deep, then too shallow, and her arms were out of sync—she reached too far, pulled too hard, and her internal metronome started to wobble as she sped up and slowed down, then sped up again. And there was a sound, a low rumble like gauze unwrapping around her head that pulled her back and took her away.

  It was the tug. Of course, it was the Alsace and Meg and Pop and Julia and Helmi and Burgess, the dark shape waiting offshore, growing larger now, her partner for—how long? Fourteen hours? Sixteen? More? She tried not to think, not of time, not of the past or of the future but here and now and what was there, just ahead, that hand ahead of hers, just out of reach, holding her, leading her, pulling her along.

  Phhhuh! Salt in her mouth and her lungs spasmed and shuddered, all salt and spit and she sputtered for a second, lifted her head a little more and spit out the water and spit out the salt, then breathed again, deeply. She cleared her nose and drifted for a second before starting again and tried trying to crawl back to that place, her head now felt as if it were full of sand.

  What was that taste? Could she tell? Was her stomach awake, cramping, pulling her back? No, no, not yet. But then, sh-ah! Yuk.

  A sharp, deep pain in her side and a sweet and sour taste in her mouth, as if her breakfast wanted to leave her. She clenched her teeth, tried to breathe deeply. Not again, she thought, not again. She did not want the sickness to grow and spread from her belly to her brain and back again. Not like last year, not again. Please, God, help me.

  And then she remembered. Meg was on the boat, and Pop and Julia. Not Wolffe, not him, not his sour beef tea or his sour puss. There had been something in the tea last year, something that made her sick. She knew it she knew it she knew it. But not today, no not today. Meg had prepared her food. Like the man had said, she had been prepared for a shark but not for a Wolffe. She almost laughed. It was silly, now really, silly that someone had cared so much to slip something in her drink, silly that someone had done that, had tried to stop her. Silly.

  But there was still the sweet and sour taste in her mouth and the pain in her side and the thoughts racing through her head. What was it? The peach! Of course it was the peach, the one Burgess told her not to eat but she had grabbed anyway, the sweetness that exploded inside her mouth, delicious, then dripped down her chin and onto her hands. And now she swallowed a bit of water and the peach grabbed her in the side and now it just wouldn't let go.

  But no one would know. She would tell no one this time, ever, no matter how bad her stomach felt, how bad it hurt or how long, she would never let on. This time she wasn't going to stop, not once, not ever. No one would touch her and take her away, not this time, not once she found her place.

  On the tug, they didn't know—they couldn't tell she was sick. She slowed her pace, breathed deeply, stretched from one side to another, and twisted as she approached the boat, slowing her pace from twenty-eight strokes a minute to twenty-six then twenty-four and, as she drew closer to the boat, to twenty-two slow strokes a minute, the metronome winding down.

  Burgess would like that, he was always, always asking her to slow down, and she never, ever did for long, but now she would, just until, just until...

  There! As she breathed out, the pain in her side began to slip away. There. She stretched and breathed, stretched and breathed, relaxed, and with each breath she pushed the pain away, out from her side and into the water, where she kicked it away, not looking back but pressing on...

  Ahead of her, the tug lifted slightly in the swells, its single smokestack spewing black smoke and the big engine almost on idle as Corthes held his position. A moment before, the rowboat bearing Burgess, Lillian Cannon, and Julia Harpman had pulled alongside, and they had all climbed on board. Now they all stood on the deck waving at Trudy and calling out to her as she swam slowly, and according to plan, drew along the port side of the Alsace at midships, keeping the boat off to her side, ten or fifteen, twenty feet away, close but not too close.

  Burgess and Trudy had made a decision. On this trip there would be no rowboat in the water next to her, and no chance that someone would reach out and grab her and pull her in the boat, or that the boat would crest a wave and then tumble toward her, or that she would veer off course and touch the boat accidentally, or that anyone could touch her if she didn't want them to. A year before, when Wolffe was in the boat, Trudy felt as if she had spent half her time worrying that it would come too close, causing her to sprint away, then slow down so Wolffe could catch back up after falling behind.

  This time there was only the tug. She would swim alongside it, in the lee of the ship according to the current, close enough so she could see and sense the vessel beside her, but not so close that they would touch, or she would struggle in its wake or in the wash of its propellers. When she needed nourishment or drink, Burgess or Meg or Pop would attach it to a line, lean over the rail, reach out, and lower it over the side, where Trudy would play fish to the bait. This time there would be no chance, no chance at all, that anyone would touch her. It was a bit more dangerous for Trudy—if she collapsed or became unconscious, unless someone was swimming next to her there was little chance that she'd be saved, but that had never happened, not once, since she had learned to swim. This time she was in control. It was her swim, all hers.

  What was that? On the side near the bow, beneath the rail where she could see Meg and her father and Helmi and Burgess? It looked like a scratch on the side of the boat, then like chalk, like words.

  It was! She read the words and laughed. That Meg, she was her champion, why if it wasn't for Meg, well, she'd have never done anything, never starting racing, never tried to swim the Channel—she knew that. She owed Meg everything. And the night before, or maybe early this morning, it looked as if Meg had taken some chalk, walked along the pier where the boat was tied up, on the bow of the port side, and drawn a big arrow pointing forward and the words "This Way, Ole Girl!" And now Trudy read it and laughed. This way, ole girl, this way...

  As Trudy drew alongside the vessel, Captain Corthes touched the throttle and the boat jumped to life, propeller churning in the water, and waves started to slap at the bow. As
the tug slowly churned to the northwest, Cape Gris-Nez loomed off the port, nose on the water, and then slowly started to grow smaller, as if watching. They could all tell Trudy was swimming strongly, and after a few minutes they all stopped watching and prepared themselves for the rest of the day, Harpman with her typewriter and table, her notebooks, and Meg with the gramophone, the records in a case, the speaker horn aimed over the water. Arthur Sorenson, the photographer, dashed to and fro along the rail, snapping pictures. Pop Ederle, a scarf around his neck, walked the deck, and Burgess was everywhere, back and forth, now on the rail, now in the steering house talking with Corthes, now back on deck talking with Pop Ederle. And every few minutes the old swimmer tilted his head back, scanned the horizon, and sniffed the air. The forecast said one thing—"light indefinite winds, visibility mainly good, warmer"—but that was in an office in Bracknall. This was the English Channel, which did not pay attention to words, and Burgess scanned the horizon and kept sniffing the air.

  He did not smile.

  As she swam along the tug, she could feel the sea now, and sense that she was not along the shore, fighting the surf in the shallows, but in the sea itself. The swells were deeper and longer and—now she could feel it! It was hard to explain but she knew the water and knew what it did and what it was going to do before anyone else ever did, her whole life, she said once much later, "too much water, swim, swim, swim." Hours in the water at the Highlands, the tide running in and out, gave her this sense. From somewhere deep inside she could feel the moon pull at the water, reaching all the way from space to draw the water from the North Sea to the North Atlantic, as the waters behind the cape gave way to the tidal current, every atom starting to race past.