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

by Glenn Stout

  She was the first woman, and sixth person, to swim the English Channel.

  By two full hours, she was faster than any man, faster than anyone, ever.

  First.

  BULLETIN

  Deal, England, Aug 6.—(By the Associated Press)—Gertrude Ederle landed here tonight, successfully swimming the English Channel from Cape Gris-Nez, France.

  24. Shore

  IT WAS DAZZLING. As flares continued to rain down upon the beach and the light from the bonfires and spotlights danced upon the water, Trudy stood for a moment, transfixed in the glow. Then she took a few tentative wobbly steps, almost as if after spending so much time in the water she no longer remembered how to walk in this new world. In a sense she had just stepped out of the darkened sea into the spotlight.

  As soon as her father put her robe over her shoulders, his hands were followed by a dozen others, and then two dozen, then three, and every hand reached for her and tried to touch her, asking her questions and shining lights in her face. She was being pulled, too fast, from the sea.

  It was too much, Trudy thought, too much, and suddenly the place she had spent the last fourteen hours and thirty-one minutes swimming for her life seemed preferable to this new world of strangers. In an instant she realized that the girl who stepped into the English Channel fourteen hours before was not the same woman who now stood on a beach in England. Yet she had not changed. It was strange, she felt the same as she always felt, a little more tired perhaps, but she didn't recognize anything. To be alone for so long with her thoughts and then to be thrust into this crowd was too much. The stunned young woman shrank back, withdrew, and pushed away, turning her back on the crowd as if to return to the sea, to the now familiar company of the Alsace.

  She wasn't the only one eager to get into the sea. As soon as she saw her sister onshore, Margaret jumped in and swam after her, and aboard La Morinie, which had lost its wireless capability in the final hour of Trudy's swim, reporter Sydney Williams, desperate for a scoop, leapt overboard and swam toward shore as well, eager to find a telephone and give the world the first lengthy report of her success. Like so many reporters aboard that vessel, he'd be forced to make up many of the details of his story, such as Trudy's first words upon landing, which Williams inventively concluded were "I am a proud woman." The myth-making surrounding her achievement was already in full swing.

  Trudy was bewildered. She was tired, as well, and now that she had stopped swimming she began to feel the cold—the instructions her brain gave to her arms and legs and lips came through in fits and starts. After asking her father about the roadster, and then telling him, "Mama will be so proud," she was speechless—happy, too—but overwhelmed. She stood teetering on the shore, and Burgess and her father steered her back away from the water. Her father held her close, and then Meg emerged from the water and ran up to her sister, covering her with hugs and kisses, drawing her back into the world with her smiles and soft talk and familiar touch.

  Now she saw the hands that reached for hers, and Trudy stuck out her hand and shook them all, automatically, as one man said, "Congrats, girl," and a boy asked, "Are you swimming back?" and a woman said, "Give the poor girl some room to breathe, will you?" All the voices turned into a single babbling sound, a crowd in the lobby at intermission, and Trudy, still blinking the salt water from her eyes, her tongue swollen and sore, mumbled a few thank-you's and suddenly self-conscious in her suit held the robe close. Mindful of her responsibilities to the Tribune-News syndicate, and to Julia Harpman, after only a few minutes onshore Trudy was ushered to the rowboat and rowed back to the Alsace.

  With each pull of the oars and slap of the bow against the water, Trudy began to come back. She had done it, she knew. It seemed unreal, but she had walked into the water in France and walked out of the water in England. Everyone was smiling at her. Her father was beaming, happier than anyone maybe, and so were Burgess and Meg.

  By the time she reached the Alsace, she had emerged from her stupor and could feel things again and think in words again. When the boat pulled alongside the tug, Trudy was even able to climb aboard unassisted. Julia Harpman waited to capture her first words, and asked Trudy how she felt.

  Trudy nodded. "I'm all right," she said slowly, speech made difficult by her swollen tongue, "but I can not realize what it's all about." It was so overwhelming all of a sudden, it was as if she had never given a thought to what would come next, to what she would do after swimming the Channel. Now that time was here, the future, in its own way, suddenly seemed as daunting and dangerous as the Channel itself, another enormous gulf filled with mysterious tides and currents already pulling her in all directions at once.

  "I guess everything's all right," she said, as if uncertain, "as long as I made it." Then, as if convincing herself that she really, truly had swum across the Channel she added, "I'm the first woman across, am I not?"

  When Julia and Meg and everyone else laughed and assured her that yes, she was the first, their confirmation seemed to brighten Trudy's mood, but she shivered in the cold and then smiled for the first time, saying, "I can freeze now."

  It was not an altogether idle thought. As the body temperature of a Channel swimmer cools during a swim, he or she is at some risk of cardiac arrest due to the stimulation of the vagus nerve, a phenomenon that continues even after a swimmer has left the water. As soon as the swimmer stops moving and the wet body is exposed to the air, body temperature can drop drastically, making the first few minutes out of the water the most dangerous.

  Although no one aboard the Alsace knew any of this, common sense led Meg and Julia to whisk Trudy away to the relative warmth of the pilothouse, where she removed her suit and lay wrapped in blankets and Bill Burgess's coat, eating more pineapple to soothe her tongue. Harpman gently asked her questions, then dashed off the first of several stories she would write that night, each a bit longer and more thorough, for transmission by wireless to the Daily News offices in New York. On deck, the crew and others still on board held an impromptu celebration—Pop Ederle was seen dancing a jig of joy on deck, ecstatic at both his daughter's victory and his reported haul of $175, 000 on his wager. In a matter of moments Captain Corthes turned the Alsace to Dover and began to steam away.

  Sitting in the pilothouse, the feeling soon began to return to Trudy's arms and legs as her body slowly warmed. Now the gentle rocking of the boat did what nearly fifteen hours swimming in the sea could not, and Trudy began to feel a little queasy. All the excitement was out on the deck.

  The world wasn't waiting for Trudy to start the celebration. It was still early in the afternoon in the Highlands, and there was already a party underway. Gertrude's sister Helen, staked out at the offices of the New York Daily News, had called her mother by telephone each time a bulletin came across the wires, now, only a few moments after Trudy reached England, she called again with word of her arrival. A moment later someone raced over from the offices of the Highland News with the same information.

  There were hundreds of people milling around the cottage—friends, neighbors, and perfect strangers on vacation caught up in the excitement, as well as representatives of the Daily News and other papers. Interviewed while sitting in a rocking chair on the porch, Trudy, said Mrs. Ederle, had made her "the proudest mother in the world." She described her daughter as "a plain home girl," who did not smoke or drink, and, she added, as if suddenly aware that her daughter was not just hers anymore, but the world's, "she does not go out with young men, except just once in a while. She has no sweetheart that I know of." Trudy's little brother Henry, age six, then proceeded to steal the show. Mrs. Ederle told the press that the day before, as Trudy was preparing for her swim, little Henry and a young playmate, a little girl, had been playing in a boat just offshore. It capsized, and Henry, who could already swim, kept the young girl afloat until Mrs. Ederle had waded in, fully dressed, and hauled both children to shallow water. Then Henry piped up that not only was he, too, going to swim the English Channel one day,
but he claimed he could "breathe underwater."

  At Ederle Brothers Meats on Amsterdam Avenue, the scene was no less festive. Trudy's uncles, John and Ernest, who managed the business for her father, closed the shop early and gave each of the nearly thirty employees the rest of the day off. Most, however, stayed behind and joined in the fun while John started giving away sausages and frankfurters as the sidewalk and the streets outside the store soon became choked with well-wishers.

  In pressrooms all across the country editors barked orders, front pages were scrapped, and headlines were recast as word of Ederle's triumph trumped the other news of the day. Even the hunt for the "Jersey leopard," which had escaped from its crate while being transported to a zoo and was terrorizing the New Jersey countryside—at least according to the papers—was pushed below the fold in New York's late afternoon and evening papers.

  As soon as the papers hit the street bearing news of Trudy's triumph, the younger generation had a new catch phrase, as "What for?" rapidly supplanted the impertinent "So's your old man." Reporters from every paper in the city spread out far and wide, tracking down Trudy's friends and teammates in the WSA, Louis Handley, Charlotte Epstein, and anyone else who cared to comment on the young woman's accomplishment.

  In England and France there was no less interest in Trudy, although the reportage was a bit more restrained, for not only had the Channel been conquered by an American, rather than a representative of either of the two nations that met at the Strait of Dover, but Trudy was of German extraction, still a source of some disquiet less than a decade after the end of World War I. The European newspapers also had the advantage of time, as it was too late to report the story that evening—their readers would have to wait until the following morning to find out the details of Trudy's triumph.

  Aboard the Alsace, Trudy stayed in the pilothouse as Burgess, Corthes, and Henry Ederle discussed their next move. Burgess had originally planned to return to Cape Gris-Nez immediately after the swim, and in his heart he probably expected to return many hours earlier with a very disappointed Channel swimmer. But Trudy's success, combined with the weather, which Burgess and Corthes knew might be problematic in mid-Channel, and the late hour, caused a change in plans. The three men decided that they would spend the night in England, and as the Alsace steamed back out from shore they decided to set a course for Dover.

  Trudy shed the blanket and coat, put on some dry, warm clothes, and spent the next few hours slowly getting warm and recovering from her ordeal. She sat with Meg and Julia Harpman, chatting a bit, but the two women realized that she was exhausted and didn't press her to talk—Harpman had enough for now, and there would be time to talk over the next few days. Now that Trudy had succeeded, her assignment lasted until the young woman returned to the United States.

  By the time the Alsace steamed into Dover harbor at 11:30 P.M., a large crowd had already gathered along the pier, guessing that she might put in there for the evening. But the tug couldn't dock until a large barge pulled away. Trudy, anxious to come ashore and still a bit queasy, left the pilothouse for the deck, breathing heavily as she tried to quash the touch of seasickness she now felt.

  At length, Corthes pulled the boat alongside the dock, and Trudy and everyone else on board gathered their meager possessions—none had thought to bring a change of clothes, except for those provided for Trudy to wear after the swim—and prepared to disembark.

  But they were not allowed to leave the boat. About the only people who were not impressed with Trudy's feat were British customs officials. Even as the crowd that had gathered to welcome the world's newest hero grew, minions of the customs office refused to allow the passengers to leave the Alsace because none of them—whose citizenship was divided among America, France, Egypt, and England—carried a passport.

  Burgess and Corthes pled their case, and at length an official with sufficient authority was roused from his slumber to address the situation. He was perhaps not only the only man in England who seemed completely unaware that Trudy Ederle had swum the Channel, but apparently had never even heard of her. The skeptical official boarded the boat and proceeded, while the crowd waiting on the pier booed and hissed, to interview each and every passenger as if he or she were a spy who had been caught laying mines across the Strait of Dover.

  The official interrogation of Trudy was particularly impudent. Standing before her, the customs man asked her age. Trudy, her swollen tongue struggling to form the words, said, "Nineteen," or at least tried to say that. The customs official jotted down the number "thirteen" in his notebook then looked Trudy up and down, evidently concluding she was older than that and had tried to deceive him for some nefarious purpose, leading to an ever more aggressive interrogation concerning her background.

  The questions came fast, one right after the other, and Trudy, exhausted and increasingly frustrated, struggled to hear and stammered out her answers in a near panic. She was just starting to come to terms with what had just happened—and now this. So far swimming the English Channel had been nothing but a huge bother, what with all the questions and people and strangers. She just wanted to go to bed.

  At length, but not until Trudy was subjected to a cursory search to make sure wasn't smuggling anything into the country—the official reluctantly agreed to allow everyone to come ashore but insisted that each person report to the customs office the following day for more grilling.

  The raucous crowd barely parted as Trudy's party left the pier, and Trudy, almost staggering with fatigue, grasped every hand again as she half walked, half stumbled, her father's arm around her shoulders and Meg beside her. It took nearly a half mile before the crowd thinned, and, finally, they found a car willing to take them to the hotel.

  Trudy made her way to her room in a fog, and Meg prepared a warm soda bath to soothe her muscles and erase the chill she still felt deep inside. As Trudy slipped beneath the water she felt warm for the first time since—well, for the first time since she had arrived in Cape Gris-Nez. Not only was there no hot water at the Hotel du Phare, but Burgess, afraid that warm water might make the Channel feel even colder to Trudy, had ordered Trudy to take cold baths exclusively, and she had followed his instructions religiously. Now as the warm water covered her entire body, save for her face, she thought she might never take another cold bath for the rest of her life.

  She was hungry, finally, her store of energy depleted from her swim, and ordered four ham sandwiches and some tomatoes from the kitchen, eating them one right after the other. Warmed by her bath and with her belly full of food, sometime between 1:00 and 2:00 A.M., after being awake for almost twenty-four hours, swimming for fourteen hours and thirty-one minutes, covering some twenty-one miles as the crow flies by swimming more than thirty miles along her jagged course, and making an estimated twenty-two thousand arm strokes, Trudy Ederle, at last, blessedly, pulled down the covers to her bed and lay down. Earlier in the summer she had bought a doll, which she dubbed "the Channel Sheik" and took with her everywhere. Now she held the doll close in her arms, closed her eyes, and tried to go to sleep.

  It was almost impossible. Deep inside, her body, although exhausted, still buzzed and vibrated as if not quite ready to turn off after so much sustained activity, and her muscles were on the edge of cramping. When she closed her eyes she still felt the lift and fall of the sea, and almost felt as if she were about to roll out of the bed. When her body did relax, her mind did not, as a thousand thoughts raced through her head as the swim played itself out again like a newsreel, only nothing was in the right order as she went from the sea to Gris-Nez to the boat and then the beach and back again. The images and the thoughts in her mind swirled back and forth like the Channel waters, taking her first one way and then the other, until, late at night, at last, she finally found the slack water of her dreams and drifted off, fitfully, afloat in an uncertain and somewhat frightening future. To Trudy, now that she was out of the sea, the question was now not "What for?" but "What next?"

  BULLETIN />
  Dover, England, Aug 7.—(By the Associated Press)—Gertrude Ederle bounced out of bed this morning declaring she was ready for another swim.

  She showed no traces of the terrible strain of Friday's ordeal...

  As Trudy slept, the world was waking to the realization of just how revolutionary her swim had been. Trudy hadn't just conquered the Channel, a remarkable achievement in itself for a woman, but she had beaten—make that shattered—the men's record, and by such an enormous margin that it caused a complete recasting of perceptions. Even those who had been indifferent to the whole notion of swimming the Channel and thought it was just another stunt akin to marathon ballroom dancing couldn't help but pay attention. This was different—hers was not just an individual success, or just another example of American superiority, but a triumph that recast the way women were viewed everywhere. The phrase "weaker sex" suddenly sounded old-fashioned.

  The Washington Post viewed her performance as a triumph both for her as an individual and for her gender. In an editorial the paper offered that "the English Channel ... is no longer the supreme test of feminine swimming endurance, while it remains the great test for males," but it also heralded Trudy with nationalistic fervor, concluding that "much benefit to American womanhood will result ... The American girl is alright!" In the New York Herald-Tribune the next day, sports editor W. O. "Bill" McGeehan was effusive in his praise of Ederle, writing, "Let the men athletes be good sportsmen and admit that the test of the Channel swim is the sternest of all tests of human endurance and strength. Gertrude Ederle has made the achievements of the five men swimmers look puny ... The daughters of the younger age are a different breed and, to my mind, a better breed. You cannot class Gertrude Ederle as a freak and an exception ... After this, the odds against women in any line of endeavor will shorten."