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

by Glenn Stout

  Trudy tried to stay out of public view and hardly left her grandmother's home and business, the Lambs' Inn, the center of the family's substantial farm holdings. Yet there was still no escape from her fans. An unending stream of telegrams, letters, bouquets of flowers, and other gifts piled up and spilled over. The local postman, the sole employee of the office, was reported to be near a nervous breakdown just trying to keep up.

  She gave few interviews, as Julia Harpman was still protective of her story and eager to keep other reporters away, but at the same time it was becoming ever clearer that while Trudy might have conquered the Channel, her nerves were proving to be an ever greater challenge. Everywhere she went there was always someone who wanted to ask something of her, and, increasingly, Trudy's first response was to recoil and back away.

  The European press viewed her reticence with suspicion—what was she hiding? Back in Cape Gris-Nez there were still newspaper reporters assigned to cover those swimmers waiting to swim the Channel, and those swimmers, particularly the females, were disappointed that Trudy had stolen their thunder and more than a little jealous. They resented not only her accomplishment, but all the attention that had subsequently been foisted upon her. Clarabelle Barrett, Lillian Cannon, Mercedes Gleitze, and Mille Gade Corson had all hoped to reap the financial windfall that being the first woman to swim the Channel promised—a windfall that now seemed certain to be Trudy's alone. Gade Corson had been absolutely blunt about that, telling the press she intended to swim the Channel "for the kiddies," to provide for the financial well-being of her two young children, and both Barrett and Cannon, like Trudy, had financial backers who hoped to see a return on their investment.

  Despite Trudy's achievement, all four women were still determined to duplicate Trudy's effort. If one of these other swimmers could better Trudy's time or if Trudy's accomplishment were somehow called into question, the next woman to swim the English Channel would still be famous and could still cash in. There was a long tradition of false claimants when it came to swimming the Channel, and while Trudy was in Germany, rumors that called her swim into question found their way into print.

  After the initial wash of good publicity, a backlash soon began to appear in newspapers on both sides of the Channel as reporters were denied access to Trudy. Will Rogers, America's leading humorist, took note of the jealousy and joked that "England is trying to get credit for it [Ederle's crossing]. They claim they furnished the land for her to land on, otherwise she never would have made it. France can't get any ad out of it at all, outside of being a good place to start somewhere from." While the European press certainly understood the nature of Trudy's agreement with the Tribune-News syndicate, they had to sell newspapers, too, and a controversy with Trudy at its center was the next best thing to Trudy herself. Her first lesson in the life of a celebrity was about to come.

  The newspaper Phare du Calais (Lighthouse of Calais) got right to the point and asked whether proper neutral witnesses had been present during Trudy's swim. Simply by asking the question the paper left the impression that they had not. Newspapers in Dover and Kent followed up and wondered aloud why so few details of her swim had been released, ignoring Harpman's stories entirely, but that wasn't the point. Their intention was to raise questions surrounding Trudy's swim, and in that they succeeded. The Westminster Gazette interviewed a Folkestone boat captain who believed the tugboats provided Trudy with unfair assistance and asked "whether a swim assisted by adventurous aid, such as the shelter of a boat, is comparable with the unaided effort of the other swimmers who have succeeded." The paper speculated that Trudy had somehow been able to take advantage of the "suction" of the tug plowing through the water and had, in effect, been towed across the Channel, drafting in the wake of the tug.

  Such questions gave new life to the efforts of swimmers like Cannon and Gade Corson. If Trudy were discredited, the next woman to swim the Channel might nab at least a share of the glory and notoriety that was now Trudy's alone.

  When these reports made their way to the Lambs' Inn, the reaction was instantaneous. Trudy, understandably, was upset. She knew what she had done, and to have that called into question hurt her deeply.

  It was a manufactured controversy—Trudy accurately called it a "made up story." Most of those who had tried to swim the Channel in recent years had been accompanied by a tug, and the presence of a second tug on Trudy's swim had been entirely out of her control and had hardly been of any help. "The wash was absolutely fearful," said Trudy in reference to the rough water created by the boat, which, since it is mixed with turbulent air, actually provides less buoyancy; "It almost took me down." But within twenty-four hours the charges that Trudy had somehow received unfair aid while swimming the Channel swept the globe.

  Julia Harpman stepped to the fore, protecting not only her story, but both her own reputation and Trudy's, not to mention the financial offers now piling up on Dudley Field Malone's desk in New York. Harpman gathered witnesses and drafted an affidavit that stated, "We, the undersigned witnesses of the Channel swim of Miss Gertrude Ederle, hereby certify in the presence of American Consul M. Gaston Smith, that on the morning of Friday Aug. 6, Miss Ederle walked into the water at Cape Gris Nez and swam to Kingsdown, England, where she arrived 14 and a half hours later and that she received no aid in her swimming and that she abided faithfully by all rules of Channel swimming and international sportsmanship." Of course there were no "official" rules or governing authority overseeing Channel swims, apart from the long-standing custom that swimmers could not be touched or receive direct assistance, but the affidavit served its purpose. It was then signed not only by Harpman and Trudy's father and sister, but by several others on board both the Alsace and La Morinie, including Arthur Sorenson, Minott Saunders, Alec Rutherford, and Frederick Abbot, the French correspondent of the International News Service, who expressly had been invited aboard the Alsace to serve as an impartial observer.

  The affidavit stopped the controversy in its tracks, but the attacks taught Trudy a lesson. Even as she set world records and won Olympic medals, she always had been able to remain "one of the girls." As if she needed any more evidence, swimming the Channel set her apart. She wasn't just herself anymore, but a symbol—and to some, a target. Her departure for America on August 21 aboard the Berengaria could not come soon enough.

  Aboard the boat Trudy finally, finally had some time to relax. Although the passenger list included the best-known socialites of the era, Trudy topped the list. She enjoyed a first-class suite as the captain and crew of the vessel did everything in their power to ensure that she had a pleasant and relaxing journey. Apart from giving a few swimming demonstrations in the ship's Pompeian-inspired pool, she was, by and large, segregated from the bulk of the ship's passengers by her status in first class. She enjoyed the privacy and found she enjoyed meeting people on a smaller scale in the restaurants and lounges dedicated to the ship's wealthier passengers. Some of the richest and most important people in the world were asking her, Trudy Ederle, for her autograph. She signed for everyone, using the same salutation she would for the remainder of her life, "Swimmingly Yours."

  Mostly, however, she had just slept and rested, not so much from her ordeal in the Channel, but from everything that had come after. In the last three weeks she'd hardly had any time to think. Then came New York.

  As Trudy stood on the promenade of the Berengaria as it steamed into New York Harbor in midmorning of August 27, she once again found herself completely taken aback. Since swimming the English Channel only three short weeks before, that was becoming something of a pattern.

  She'd never seen anything like it. No one on board the ship had ever seen anything like it. No one in New York had ever seen anything like it. As the Manhattan skyline came into focus and began to grow tall, the boat was greeted from all directions as vessels of every size and shape came out to meet it—fireboats spraying water high into the air, tugboats, cutters, motorboats, private launches, and yachts, all with their sire
ns tied down wide open, creating the loudest din anyone on the water ever recalled hearing before.

  At first Trudy didn't understand, but as the Berengaria drew closer and Trudy saw banners flying on the boats that said, "Welcome home Trudy," and "Queen of the Seas," she began to realize it was all for her, every bit of it. A few moments earlier, she'd been asked to go to the upper deck. Once she arrived two biplanes circling the ship dropped flowers overhead, their petals falling like rain all around her, the sky raining flowers.

  It was all for her.

  The greeting was organized by a man known as "Mr. New York," Grover Whalen, the city's official greeter, who liked to refer to himself as the "doorman to the western hemisphere." In 1919, when Whalen was put in charge of the city's reception for the Prince and Princess of Wales, he came up with the notion of the ticker-tape parade. Although the first few such parades were relatively modest, since then Whalen's efforts had become ever grander. They culminated in the reception afforded Trudy and, a year later, Charles Lindbergh. The scene Trudy was watching unfold in New York Harbor was just the beginning.

  New York came to a stop. Nothing else mattered. America's foremost film star, Rudolph Valentino, had died of peritonitis on August 23, and ever since his body had lain in state at Campbell's Funeral Parlor under twenty-four-hour guard by a phalanx of New York City police officers. But on the day of Trudy's arrival, the bulk of the guard was transferred to Trudy's home, and the crowd that had gathered around the funeral home for days suddenly disappeared. Trudy was bigger than any motion picture star.

  New York was gaga for Trudy, and in the days prior to her arrival Whalen and the New York press, particularly the Daily News, had whipped the city into a frenzy. Now that the day arrived, Whalen rounded up Trudy's entire family—forty-two strong including aunts, uncles, and cousins—and divvied them up aboard two tugs owned by the city, the Riverside and the official VIP vessel, the Macom. As the Berengaria approached, the Macom made its way alongside the gigantic vessel.

  From aboard the Macom, Mrs. Ederle spotted her daughters first, standing in an open window on the promenade deck, and began waving her arms back and forth, trying to get their attention. She did, and Trudy nearly jumped out of the window to reach her. "Mamma," she cried, "Mamma!" Even amid the din in the harbor, everyone aboard the Macom could hear Trudy's voice above the tumult.

  Trudy wouldn't have to wait for the big ship to dock. A few minutes later the Macom pulled alongside the Berengaria, and Trudy and her entourage came aboard the Macom to be ferried ashore, reunited, at last, with her mother. She left in such a rush that she left all her bags behind and nearly knocked her mother to the ground as they met and hugged, tears streaming down both of their faces, Trudy wearing a blue serge coat and a lavender felt hat, clutching her doll, her hair bronze from the summer sun, and her face tanned and healthy.

  After the Macom docked at Pier A in the Battery on the southern tip of Manhattan, the same place Trudy's swim for Sandy Hook had begun in virtual anonymity only a few months before, Trudy was hustled through a crowd numbering in the thousands, then into an open car for a procession to City Hall Plaza, but the crowds were so immense the car barely moved as everyone pressed forward to get a glimpse at Trudy. At City Hall Plaza the scene was even wilder, as ten thousand people crowded into the plaza and the surging crowd threatened to turn into a dangerous crush. Trudy and her family were pushed inside by a phalanx of police, and the big iron doors of the city hall closed and locked to prevent hundreds of onlookers from crashing the reception.

  Trudy, her family, and other VIPs were escorted to the mayor's reception room, where New York mayor Jimmy Walker paid tribute to Trudy. "When history records the greatest crossings, they will speak of Moses crossing the Red Sea, Caesar the Rubicon, and Washington the Delaware, and frankly, your crossing of the English Channel will take place alongside these."

  Trudy hardly had the time to take a breath before she was taken back outside onto the steps for a photo op. The flash of the cameras had barely gone off when the crowd surged, sending people tumbling up the steps, swamping over Trudy. A bulky policeman grabbed Trudy with both arms and lifted her in the air and carried her back inside the building as Mayor Walker called for reinforcements.

  At 2:30 P.M. with a gauntlet of police protecting her, Trudy, with Dudley Field Malone at her side, was put into another open car in the midst of a motorcade. As the entourage made the turn from Ninth Street to Fifth Avenue, torrents of paper fell from the sky as New York witnessed its first, gigantic, no-holds-barred ticker-tape parade. This was no modest celebration that lasted only a few blocks, like that which greeted the Prince of Wales. This celebration lasted all the way uptown, before crowds unlike any the city had ever seen, as hundred and hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers lined the streets. At times onlookers rushed the car, stopping it in its tracks, grabbed at Trudy and knocked her from her feet, backward into the seat of the car, desperate for souvenirs. The crowd even tore a bracelet from her wrist and grabbed at her coat and hat, before police, mounted and armed with billy clubs, managed to free her.

  Trudy stood in the car, her face tilted upward and spinning back and forth as if her eyes alone were not sufficient to see the entire scene, waving a flag, dizzy from the adulation, absolutely, totally, and completely overwhelmed. Trudy waved and laughed and cried and looked up in wonder, almost drowning in the attention, knowing that the crowds, later estimated as at least a quarter of a million strong, were cheering for her, but barely able to hear them herself.

  The motorcade finally made its way to its destination, Trudy's home on Amsterdam Avenue, where four thousand people crammed the single block that contained the Ederles' home and butcher shop. Trudy's family had decorated the tenement in bunting and American flags, and a huge banner that said WELCOME HOME TRUDY hung from the sills. In the front window of the shop was a sort of diorama, an imitation of the English Channel cut from green cardboard, complete with cutout waves powered by an electric motor that lifted and fell, and a cutout of Trudy, an automaton bobbing though the "water," her arms fixed in the crawl stroke, a smile frozen on her lips. Along the side was a copy of a poem that read, "Pop Ederle by cutting meat made for himself a name, / His daughter Trudy by cutting waves won victory and fame. / You see her now she fights the seas, and how she puts it over. / Hurrah for her, first of her sex to swim from France to Dover."

  Finally, at last, Trudy's car pulled up before the house, and the police cleared the crowd so she could get out, but before she did a young girl selected by the neighborhood stepped forward, climbed aboard the car, and tried to place a gold and white satin crown on Trudy's head. Trudy didn't want it, and pleaded, "I'm tired," but when the little girl looked heartbroken, she finally agreed, and, as the cameras of news photographers flashed over and over again, turning Trudy nearly blind as well as deaf, someone draped a blue sash over her shoulders that read "Queen Gertrude the First." Almost as quickly as the crown went on, Trudy took it off, as the crowd of friends and acquaintances of a lifetime chanted, "Trudy, Trudy, Trudy!" over and over and over, suddenly star struck at seeing the girl next door.

  Police made a corridor through the crowd, and Trudy was hustled inside, Dudley Field Malone pushing her from behind, then Trudy climbed upstairs to her family's apartment. There, the scene was only somewhat less frenetic, as dozens of people were crammed into an apartment that comfortably held only eight or ten, but now, for the first time in three months, at least she was finally surrounded by people she knew. When the crowd outside failed to disperse, the police asked her to stand before the window for a while and wave to see if that would satisfy them. For the next hour and a half she periodically pulled the curtains back and gave a short wave, but no one on the streets below budged.

  Almost lost in the frenzy was the red roadster, the promise of which had helped Trudy across the Channel. It had actually been waiting for her at the pier in the Battery, gleaming in the sun, but the crowds had been so large that Trudy had not seen it. It w
as a Buick, precisely the one she wanted, painted fire engine red, with a big comfortable rumble seat in back. In exchange for a testimonial from Trudy, Dudley Field Malone had asked the automaker not only for the car, but for fifty thousand dollars. Buick found the price too steep and offered Malone the car plus only one thousand dollars, which he turned down. For a time it appeared that the roadster would have to wait for Pop Ederle to open his own wallet, but at the last minute the Daily News stepped in and bought the car for Trudy.

  As the crowd finally began to thin out as New York's finest urged everyone to move along, the roadster seemed to magically appear, parked along the curb on Amsterdam Avenue in front of the Ederles' building. Dudley Field Malone had to remind Trudy it was there, asking her, "Do you really want that car?"

  The question startled Trudy—that's how crazy things were—she had nearly forgotten the only thing she had hoped for when she swam the Channel. "Yeah," she responded, sounding far more weary than excited. She went downstairs for a few moments, climbed in the car and sat back, spinning the steering wheel and fiddling with the dashboard, but there were still too many people on the street for her to take the car for a drive, and the crowd made her feel claustrophobic and she fled back upstairs.

  For Trudy, it was all running together—the crowds, the parades, the gifts, and the autographs and hand shaking, everything—but it still wasn't over. She was placed in another motorcade and ushered to a dinner sponsored by the mayor at the Roosevelt Hotel and made her first and only public statement of the day, speaking for all of twenty seconds. "My dear friends," she said, "after all that has been said I must be polite and thank the Mayor and Grover Whalen for the wonderful reception that has been given to me. It will be remembered during my whole life. All the kind things that have been done and said have shown such a delightful appreciation of my efforts to make the Channel crossing for the sake of my country's flag. I love you for it." After the crowd watched the British Pathe newsreel footage of her swim, Trudy was then whisked off to a show at the Globe Theater featuring the Ziegfeld Follies, and finally to the Club Lido where she danced with the mayor before more cameras. At every stop she had to run a gauntlet, as New York came to a standstill wherever she appeared.