Just who were these women who braved the often freezing Thames, who swam for hours, mile after mile, setting new records for speed and endurance, winning championships and representing their country abroad? History officer Michele Loose inserts a memory stick into a computer; she wants to show me some photos which have been recently donated. I stare at the screen as it lights up with a sepia image of eight beaming Surrey Ladies competing for the 1917 long-distance swim from Raven’s Ait.
The women stand in line on concrete blocks, apparently on the edge of the water, wearing one-piece costumes bearing the club badge. Second from the right is Ivy Hawke, her hands on her hips, also beaming. Another photo from the same date shows nine women in the process of jumping from a big barge, watched by uniformed soldiers. A big banner reads: THE SURREY LADIES SWIMMING CLUB ANNUAL SWIM. A third image shows Hawke being ‘helped’ out of the river after her swim, wearing a flowing white shift (as per modesty regulations), watched by people on a smaller Port of London boat. The day is cold; the male spectators are wearing coats, hats and scarves. Hawke was clearly an important member of the club; she’s in every picture, including a group shot in which the women are fully clothed, with young girls in the front row. She’s also seen posing on a boat with Hilda Coles; a caption on the back explains she was the ‘bath superintendent’.
I’m hoping that Alison Young, who donated the images, might be related to one of the swimmers, but it turns out she’s a collector who bought the photographs from a dealer at an antiques fair. She admits that, when it comes to swimming, ‘I’m frightened to death of floating and cannot swim at all.’
However Rebecca Rouillard was so inspired by one of these photos that she decided to dig deeper, and she quickly became fascinated by Ivy Hawke. A swimmer herself, Rebecca had never imagined ‘that women were swimming long-distance races in the Thames a hundred years ago’. She competed in her first open-water swim at the age of eleven, the Midmar Mile in South Africa, taking part every year for the next six years with her best time around twenty-four minutes. She stopped swimming competitively when she left school but a couple of years ago, and now living in England, she heard about the Human Race event from Hampton Court Bridge to Kingston Bridge. She joined the Kingston Royals Swimming Club and began to train. Then she realised her club had come into existence as the result of an amalgamation between the New Kingston men’s club and the Surrey Ladies in 1980. This meant that Rebecca had another strong link to Ivy Hawke, and she set about finding out more.
Ivy was born on 12 April 1903, and lived in Surbiton, where her mother ran the Spread Eagle Coffee Tavern. She was fourteen when she won the 1917 Thames race, an annual long-distance swim, usually starting from Raven’s Ait and in which the finish line varied, depending on who swam the furthest.
Members of the Surrey Ladies Swimming Club, the Thames’ first club for women. Ivy Hawke, nicknamed the ‘Smiling Swimmer’, is second from left in the middle row.
She won a number of races from Raven’s Ait to Kew Bridge, to Chiswick church and to Albert Bridge at Chelsea. The island was a popular place for other swimmers to begin as well; this was where, in 1888, Madame Darnley Mitchell, the ‘accomplished swimming mistress of Kingston baths’, had started her swim to Henley. It was also here, in July 1899, that Frederick Lane, amateur champion of Australia, made his first public appearance in England during a half-mile race against two Otter Club men. Lane ‘led from start to finish’. The following year he became the first Australian to represent his country in swimming at the Olympic Games, winning two gold medals at the 1900 Paris Games – although he was actually part of the British team. Raven’s Ait has changed over the years; it’s been home to the Kingston Rowing College, and the Navy League’s TS Neptune, the TS standing for training school. Today it’s an ‘exclusive island venue’ used for weddings, business meetings and conferences.
After Hawke’s swims from the Ait, she did what a lot of long-distance Thames swimmers did at the time: she set her sights on the Channel. The river was seen as an ideal place – perhaps the only place – to train for a swim between England and France that would cover at least twenty miles, and many earlier and future Channel champions started their careers in the Thames. Hawke failed on her first attempts, in 1922 and 1927, and then in 1928 she made it from France to Dover in nineteen hours and sixteen minutes, becoming the fifth woman and the third British woman ever to successfully swim the Channel. ‘Miss Ivy Hawke, 23 year-old London Girl . . . conquers Channel,’ reported Pathé News, which filmed the last leg of her triumph. She can be seen ploughing through the swell using a steady front crawl, the accompanying rowing boat lurching from side to side. At times the only part of her visible is her white hat, and at the end she’s surrounded by cheering supporters, clearly shattered but wearing her trademark smile. No wonder she was nicknamed the ‘Smiling Swimmer’, with the press applauding her dogged endurance and the ‘long, persistent, lonely fight’ against the shifting currents of the Channel. ‘I shall be all right tomorrow,’ she asserted the day after her swim, ‘and after that I shall continue to help my mother at home.’ In 1929 she tried to swim from England to France but had to give up three miles from the end. The following year she was demonstrating her stroke at the opening of Surbiton Lagoon.
‘Ivy has inspired me,’ says Rebecca Rouillard, ‘and made me grateful for my neoprene wetsuit and my fog-resistant swimming goggles.’ She donned both when she took part in the Hampton Court to Kingston race, the first time she’d ever swum in the Thames. She found the water ‘very clear and beautifully calm, it hardly seemed to be moving’ and completed the course in one hour and twelve minutes, quicker than she’d anticipated – her family were still having breakfast and missed her finish – and she will ‘definitely be back to do it again’. Rebecca came across Ivy Hawke quite by chance. But Ivy’s story spoke to her, and made her feel a connection with the past. When she competes now she’s motivated by the women who swam before her and the legacy they left behind. Now that Rebecca knows Ivy Hawke’s story, it won’t be forgotten after all and perhaps the Surrey and the Kingston Ladies can at last take their rightful place in the history of British swimming.
During the early 1920s, meanwhile, a new form of river bathing for the inhabitants of Kingston was introduced when local man Samuel Emms bought property ‘between High Street and the river’ for a bathing station. This was again a pontoon, moored ‘a few yards out in the stream’, with an impressive 250 dressing cubicles on the bank. The site was for both men and women – mixed bathing was now being introduced at a number of Thames spots – with chutes supplied with mains water and diving boards. However, just as with the location of the 1880 pontoon, there was opposition, this time from the Free Church Council, and ‘wordy battles’ were fought through the pages of the local press. Some mocked that Emms had bought a white elephant, so on the day the bathing station opened he organised a parade through town led by a band – and an elephant. There is an Emms Passage in Kingston, possibly named after him.
The new bathing place was known as Boats and Cars, explains June Sampson, ‘the idea being that it enabled people to arrive by car, park their vehicle then enjoy a boat trip or a swim in the Thames. It continued well into the 1930s.’ For Jack Taylor, Media Office Manager at Kingston Council, the place was a favourite spot for his grandmother, Phyllis Broom, and her siblings from Broom Farm in Long Ditton. ‘She wasn’t a particularly keen swimmer, it was just what they did for recreation, like kids would go to an indoor pool now.’ Jack has photographs of three of his grandmother’s four siblings, two men and one woman, wearing one-piece costumes and sitting on a diving board in 1924, with Kingston Bridge in the background. Another from the same year shows people enjoying a water slide, which appears to be moored in the middle of the Thames, probably at Town End Pier where Queen’s Promenade begins, ‘where there is a slight kink in the river’.
Phyllis Broom’s siblings sitting on a diving board at Kingston’s bathing place, known as Boats and Cars, in 19
24.
The late novelist Leslie Thomas also enjoyed swimming near Kingston. He was born in 1931 and, after being orphaned at twelve, spent his adolescence at a Barnardo’s home known as ‘Dickies’ in Kingston upon Thames. ‘The river was like a bale of silk unwinding,’ he later wrote, ‘thick and smooth and quickly it ran like it always does when the water is warm. We swam for an hour or more until the river was darker and mistier, and running more into the sky every moment.’ It’s a peaceful interlude in Thomas’ story of growing up in a children’s home during the Second World War, as he floats happily on his back among the stumpy green islands. He also swam near Hampton Court Bridge in the River Mole, a tributary of the Thames, ‘a deep and languid river, with fish in its olive cellars and with shadowy weeds running and folding like the long hair of girls’. Thomas and his friends fling themselves ‘into the sweetness of the river’ with not a care in the world, and laugh and play in the Thames, just as children have always done.
A water slide moored in the River Thames at Kingston in the 1920s, probably at Town End Pier.
10
Teddington
‘Miss Eileen Lee’s Remarkable Effort. All Thames’ Records Eclipsed’
Surrey Comet, August 1915
Teddington Lock, a couple of miles downstream from Kingston and the point at which the Thames enters the London Borough of Richmond, marks the beginning of the tidal river. It’s here that the Thames comes under the control of the Port of London Authority (PLA), as it has done since 1909. For swimmers a tidal river is an obvious challenge; swimming with the tide gives speed, swimming against it is incredibly difficult, and so timing is of the utmost importance. Sea levels rise and fall because of the gravitational forces of the moon, sun and the rotation of the earth, with tides highest around a full and new moon. The PLA provides tide tables, giving high and low water times, as well as water heights. But these are only forecasts, based on past measurements and the positions of the sun and moon in relation to the earth. What can’t necessarily be predicted is the weather and wind, atmospheric pressure, and heavy rain in the Thames Valley can all affect tide times and heights.
Arriving at the start of the tidal Thames has been eventful for several noted endurance swimmers. For Lewis Pugh, after days spent swimming in a heatwave in 2006 with virtually no flow at all, ‘I got to Teddington, the water cooled down, and heaven arrived. There are two high tides and two low tides every day, so every six hours the tide changes. If you’re swimming from Teddington to London, it is impossible to swim against an incoming tide. Even kayaking is tough work when the incoming tide is at its fastest. So when the tide was coming in, I would climb out and sleep on the riverbank for the six hours. Then one hour after high tide, when the water started flowing out to sea again, I would jump in, and literally fly with the outgoing tide. Myself and Nick flew past buildings, quays, moored boats and under bridges. It was quite magnificent!’ Likewise, when David Walliams arrived at Teddington, ‘I really sped up. I had to wait a while but the flow is quicker. You get a bit outside London as well, if the river is narrow and if there’s been rain, but it didn’t help that much. At Teddington Lock I did accelerate.’
In Victorian times the lock was the site of two significant swimming events. In September 1865 the London Swimming Club organised a race at Teddington which the press described as ‘who could swim the longest as well as furthest without touching anything and without taking any stimulant or refreshment’. This was for many years regarded as ‘the longest and most famous swim in England’ and the winner won the championship and a gold medal, valued at five pounds. Fifteen of the ‘leading swimmers’ of the day started from Teddington Lock; only two reached Barnes and the winner was a Mr Wood, who completed eight and a quarter miles with the tide in three hours sixteen minutes. The men ranged in age from fifteen into their forties and ‘probably even older’, all wearing ‘slight bathing drawers’. One competitor from Coventry did well up to Mortlake, ‘when the poor lad was handed in half dead’. Many ‘struggled on until they were dead beat’ and were hauled out of the water ‘in a very exhausted condition’. Similar races, commented the press, ‘are not likely to become popular’.
The following year three races were staged from Teddington Lock as part of Britain’s first National Olympian Games. The National Olympian Association (NOA), the world’s first national Olympian association, was formed in 1865. One of its founders was Ernst Ravenstein, president of the London Swimming Club and former president of the German Gymnastics Society. The idea was to have a national, multi-sport event of ‘manly exercises’, held over three days in three different locations, with medals (rather than money) as prizes. At 6 p.m. on 31 July 1866, the opening event of the National Olympian Games began on the River Thames, with one-mile, half-mile and quarter-mile races starting from a barge moored a mile above the lock, all for ‘gentlemen amateurs’. Heavy rain and wind meant some competitors dropped out; the three winners were all from London although there were entries from Southampton, Brighton and Liverpool. The NOA held another Olympian Games in Birmingham in 1867 and then a third in Shropshire in 1883, before winding up.
There appear to have been few major swims from Teddington in the following decades until, half a century later, Eileen Lee, whose father was the lock keeper, set a new world record. In July 1915, she had swum from Richmond to Tower Bridge, and then she repeated the course, only this time heading upstream. Then nineteen years old, she left Tower Bridge a little before 9 a.m. on 23 August and, using the ‘right arm over stroke’, swam until half past three, covering twenty-one and three-quarter miles in six hours and thirty-eight minutes. According to the Surrey Comet there were loud cheers from soldiers on Tower Wharf as she began her swim and cries of ‘good luck’. At Westminster she received an ovation from wounded convalescing soldiers at St Thomas’ Hospital, which she ‘acknowledged with a wave of her arm’. Just before reaching Fulham Railway Bridge she ‘took a few tablets of chocolate, laughingly inquiring if it was lunch time’. The paper described her ‘graceful motion in the water, which she only slightly disturbs in swimming’, adding that she had considerable power in her right arm, was an enthusiastic boxer and ‘an expert with the foils’, and intended to swim the Channel.
In August 1915, nineteen-year-old Eileen Lee (right) covered nearly twenty-two miles between Tower Bridge and Richmond and went on to set a world record in the Thames.
Eileen Lee’s plan was to swim to Richmond and then return with the tide to Putney, but at Richmond the tide was ‘still running’ so she switched to a slow breaststroke and continued upriver. She paused in the water ‘opposite the Pigeons’ for six minutes where she ‘partook of food’ before continuing to Hammerton’s Ferry at Marble Hill. There she waited for the tide to turn before beginning her return journey.
The Thames Valley Times reported that she was ‘frequently cheered by different groups on the riverside at Richmond’ but it was then announced she would finish at Kew Bridge. She had experienced ‘much discomfort from the bright sun at Chiswick’ and by Kew her eyes were so ‘inflamed by the sun’s rays’ that she was advised to ‘relinquish her object of going down river’. She also experienced a strong headwind and had to dodge bits of floating boxes. At Kew she was helped into a boat by her instructor, Walter Brickett, the coach and trainer for the British swimming team during the early 1900s, having ‘wound up with a good strong spurt’ and walking along the landing stage ‘without much sign of fatigue’.
Lee had only started swimming at the age of fifteen and the paper noted that, while many had completed long-distance swims, they had done so on tides, and ‘no swimming of any importance has been recorded as starting from the lower reaches of the river and finishing up stream’. The Sportsman added that Lee’s feat would ‘stand as a record for some time’.
The Daily Mirror printed photographs of Brickett feeding her during the swim, at one point spooning food into her mouth and later offering her a piece of chocolate. A Gaumont newsreel of September that ye
ar opens with Lee swimming a speedy front crawl followed by a boat laden with people, Walter Brickett standing up at the back dressed all in white, furiously waving his arms to urge her on. Moments later she can be seen swimming equally fast in the other direction, now doing breaststroke and between two rowing boats. Then she’s striding on to the dock, dressed and wrapped in a coat, arm in arm with Brickett and surrounded by beaming friends. The final shot shows her with a large towel wrapped round her head posing with Brickett, still talking animatedly, next to whom is her father, Teddington lock keeper Patrick Lee.
In June 1916, now described as the ‘women’s world record holder’, she ‘eclipsed all records made by men as to time’, swimming twenty-three and a half miles in seven hours from the Naval College at Greenwich. Then, on 19 August, she topped that by showing ‘wonderful endurance’ and swimming a staggering thirty-six and a quarter miles from Teddington in ten hours seventeen minutes, thus setting a new world record for women. She started at Teddington at seven in the morning, diving from the stern of a boat in which sat her mother, ‘in charge of the culinary department’, as well as several London journalists ready to attest to the authenticity of the swim. Lee caught the ebb tide, reached Wapping Pier after six hours, nine and a half minutes and returned ‘on the flood’ to Kew Bridge.
Conditions were said to be ideal, with the water between Putney and Mortlake so smooth it resembled a mirror on the downward part of the trip. For nearly three hours she maintained a ‘perfectly even twenty-six strokes per minute’. Described as ‘invariably cheerful’ and regarded by Brickett as ‘the most docile swimmer it would be possible to have charge of’, at twenty-five miles she confessed to feeling ‘a bit tired’ but announced her determination to ‘see it out’.
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