Some swimmers, meanwhile, attempted to swim upstream from Southend. Pathé News filmed a race to Gravesend, ‘up the mouth of the River Thames’ sometime between 1920 and 1929. Competitors, both women and men, can be seen swimming against the current, although the water looks eerily calm. In modern times there is only one person who has officially swum across the estuary and that is Peter Rae who, in 2003, swam from Southend to All Hallows in Kent and then back to Leigh. The idea started as a bet, just as many other Thames swims have done, whether Victorian races or the modern Chiswick swim. Peter was having a pint with friends one day on the Bembridge, the headquarters ship of the Essex Yacht Club, when someone proposed a challenge. Could he swim across the Thames Estuary and then return to the Essex shoreline within one tide? This meant he had about five hours before the water retreated and there would be a mile and a half of mudflats again.
Peter thought he could. An experienced open-water swimmer ‘with a fair few miles under my belt’, eighteen years earlier he’d crossed the Channel. While this swim would be much shorter, he could similarly expect cold water, jellyfish, strong currents and tide. The main hazard, however, would be crossing busy Sea Reach shipping lanes. While Peter swims competitively, and started Masters swimming in 1994, he says he prefers just doing it for enjoyment. ‘Open water I like the best, I just enjoy the freedom, it’s almost a form of meditation.’ However, he hadn’t swum much before in the estuary.
It took him five months to plan the trip, liaising with the PLA and raising around £3,000 in charitable pledges. ‘I assumed I would have to go to the PLA, and because of my sailing experience I knew the shipping channel. I produced a plan and explained how I would be accompanied, and what my abilities were. I had no problem at all with the PLA. I’d done a lot of homework.’
His correspondence bears this out. In July that year he wrote to the Harbour Master to seek ‘advice and support’ for a sponsored swim to raise funds to convert HMS Wilton, due to replace Bembridge as the headquarters of the Essex Yacht Club. Sponsorship would be based on the number of completed miles, with a further bonus for completing the swim within one tide. He was originally to start from Jocelyn’s Beach in Leigh ‘as soon as there is sufficient water’, and the swim would be abandoned ‘if wind strength exceeds Force 3 or visibility is below 4 miles’. Unlike Derham and Tammy before him, Peter would have a whole series of safety measures in place. He would be accompanied by a yacht, Uncle Ronnie, carrying a ladder, life belts, life jackets, flares, fixed and portable radios, and equipment for hauling a body both horizontally and vertically from the water. The skipper would be Stuart Silcock, a qualified Offshore Yachtmaster, and Peter would be supported on board by at least three crew, one of whom would be ‘dedicated to monitoring and supporting the swimmer’. Both the local Coast Guard (Shoebury) and RNLI (Southend Pier) would be fully informed before and during the swim and ‘while the traffic in the Sea Reach should be minimal on the planned date the Yacht/Swimmer will ensure that they do not present any hazard to shipping in the channel. If necessary the swimmer will exit the water well before a potentially hazardous situation arises.’
Peter Rae’s swim across the estuary in 2003 started as a bet; could he swim from Essex to Kent and back within one tide? Here he’s about to strike out from the beach in All Hallows for the return leg to Leigh on Sea.
Peter would wear a full-body neoprene Tri-suit and yellow swim cap for warmth and visibility, and be provided with isotonic drinks at regular intervals. Finally, he explained he was forty-nine years old, of excellent health and fitness, and had recently competed in the 2003 European Masters Swimming Championships where he took a bronze in the 400 metres freestyle and silver in the 5,200 metres open-water swim. Peter was then ranked first for his age group in Great Britain and, aside from his Channel swim in 1985 in just over eleven hours, he’d also made an eight-hour double crossing of Lake Geneva.
He got the go-ahead and at 12.20 p.m. on 14 September he started next to the Westcliff-on-Sea casino, the air temperature was 18 degrees, the sea a ‘positively balmy’ 16 degrees. He set off to cross the estuary ‘in two feet of water, but it was just enough to swim in’. After one hour and fifty minutes he was standing on the beach at All Hallows, having avoided a large tanker in the main shipping channel. ‘A dredger was coming down,’ he remembers, ‘ships had been warned there was a swim in progress, it was not a close shave but the dredger had to be contacted by phone. The PLA had given notice about my swim to shipping but maybe the dredger didn’t heed it. It wasn’t dangerous but there are a huge amount of ships and with the new container port there will be even more.’
Curious well-wishers came out to welcome him at All Hallows, where he had a chicken sandwich and a cup of tea, replaced his cap and goggles and struck out for the Essex coast. ‘No one was expecting me, people at the yacht club came out to say “hi”, but I was only there for five minutes.’ Things then turned tough and he had to fight increasing wind, waves and another hour of incoming tide, as he was pushed towards the Shell Haven oil refinery behind Canvey Island. But he recovered his energy and, using the strengthening outgoing tide, the Bembridge was now in sight. After four hours and twenty-five minutes, covering eleven miles and with 3 feet of tide still available, he landed on the east slipway of the Essex Yacht Club to a ‘rapturous champagne welcome’ from members supporting and sponsoring the swim.
His advice to others is that the Thames Estuary is ‘for someone who enjoys a challenge. It’s not a particularly tough swim, it was not too cold, and it’s not big seas, though it can get choppy, and I was going with the tide.’ But he says Derham’s crossing in the 1920s ‘would be a no-no now, you couldn’t take the course he took because of shipping’. Just as with Matthew Parris, who swam across the Thames in central London, Peter says, ‘Yes I would do the estuary again; living here and looking at it every day . . . I just need to pick a nice day.’
Another famed swimmer to arrive in Southend was Lewis Pugh, at the end of his swim along the length of the Thames in 2006. A crowd of ‘more than 250 people turned up to watch him finish,’ explained the press, and ‘as the polar explorer and endurance swimmer emerged from the water onto the slipway cheers and shouts of “well done” rang out’. Lewis’ main memory of his final leg of the Thames from the barrier to Southend, however, was ‘plenty of jellyfish’.
Charlie Wittmack, the American adventurer who swam the Thames in 2010 as part of his world triathlon, had a rather different experience near Southend where he discovered first hand just how dramatic tides in the Thames can be. First, like Lewis, he swam through lots of jelly fish: ‘it felt like I swam through them for an entire day, and got quite a few stings’, but then ‘across from Southend’ he got stuck in the mud. ‘It was unexpected; we calculated the tides wrong so the swim took a lot longer than we thought. The sun was setting, we were nowhere near where we needed to be, so we pulled up to the shore to make a phone call and take a look at the GPS. As we were standing there, over the course of just a few minutes, the tide really truly went out, and we realised we were essentially stuck in the mud. It was getting dark, we couldn’t see where we were, and the scariest thing was we really couldn’t work out where the water was going to end up being, it was just cutting back so dramatically from where we thought the shore was. So we got in touch with the rescue boat service and within an hour or so they had picked us up. They even gave us a place to stay, they were very encouraging, it was kind of a lot of fun.’
Meanwhile, although Peter Rae gained official permission for his estuary swim, at least one person has done it without. ‘I have always wanted to swim the Thames,’ says Wouter Van Staden. ‘I always had the idea that if you can see something then you can swim to it. I live in Basildon and, being in Essex, when you get to the coast you can see Kent, so I wanted to swim there.’ Wouter comes from Pretoria, South Africa, and knew ‘a bit about the Thames’ growing up, but it ‘wasn’t big on my radar’ until he came to England. In 2007 he settled in Reading, and ‘for
around six months I tried to find information if I could swim in the Thames, but I only heard stories about sickness. Then I read about a pensioner swimming near Maidenhead and I was convinced the Thames was swimmable.’
On 23 May 2010 he swam from Canvey Island to All Hallowson-Sea, covering just over two miles. ‘I read about rights and permissions and figured I needed to speak to the PLA but in the end I thought there was a chance they would say no, so I thought I would just risk it. I moved my kayak to Canvey Island the day before. I just knocked on someone’s door and said, “can I please leave my kayak in your garden?”’ The next morning he went back to get it with his wife, Anecke; ‘she was to be in the kayak and she was not entirely willing but everyone else I had asked couldn’t do it. We did it in the early morning to avoid the pleasure craft, so there would just be big ferries and tankers. There is a short dredged section of around 400 metres wide with big craft and so it was sort of safe and sort of not, because if they come across you they have nowhere else to go. After the central channel a ferry did pass and I believe it notified the coastguard that there was a swimmer in the estuary, although I had already passed the channel by then. They sent out a boat and I saw it roughly as I got to Kent; it was too shallow for the boat to come any closer but I noticed them and as I headed back I went straight for them. They asked what was going on and “are you fine?” They said they were obliged to stay with us until we reached land. They offered to quicken the process and so we put the kayak on their boat and they gave us a lift back. I wasn’t going to swim both ways anyway. I had missed my train and started late so it took longer than I thought.’
It took him around two hours. ‘The tide had moved too much to swim back to Canvey so I was kayaking anyway. They interviewed us and asked what safety precautions we had and took our names and numbers and address, which my wife was not happy about, but I didn’t break any rules or regulations.’ But he says since then he has always been in contact with the PLA, and he still does long swims, but along the shore and sometimes to the Mulberry Harbour. Here there is a ‘Phoenix’ caisson, lying on a sandbank off Thorpe Bay, part of a temporary harbour intended to be used in the Normandy landings following D-Day. But it sprang a leak and was brought into the Thames Estuary and allowed to sink. ‘It’s visible from the shore and so I wanted to swim to it,’ says Wouter, who has now done the route twice, along with others. ‘We notify the coastguard, saying when we are going and where and how many of us there are and we tell them once we’ve arrived back. I’d definitely like to swim the estuary again and I probably would, but I don’t have a lot of time.’ He works for a car rental company and with the new Southend airport is very busy. But he has more plans to swim the Thames, this time through London. His aim is to travel the length in sections, and he’s already done a three-day swim from Cricklade to Radcot Lock. ‘I’d like to swim to Southend. If you time it with the tide you can do large distances in one go.’ He would swim through central London doing ‘a twenty-kilometre stint at night and I could do it in three or four nights’, and this time he says he will approach the PLA first.
While the Southend area is clearly home to some experienced and ambitious swimmers, others can be reckless, as Richard Sanders, pier and foreshore supervisor, knows only too well. He meets me where the pier train begins and I follow him down to offices below. We walk along a corridor and stop at a conference room where Richard opens the door a little cautiously, saying he’s looking for the two ‘ship’s cats’ as they have a habit of opening doors. That’s when I realise it feels as if we’re on a boat; even his white uniform gives him the air of a sea captain. A long, thin table runs the length of the narrow room, like a ship’s mess, while in the corner is a big display board ‘Visit Southend – town, shore and so much more’.
Richard is from Southend but doesn’t swim in the Thames; his swimming memories are of his dad taking him to the indoor baths on Sundays. ‘There were bad news stories when I grew up,’ he says, ‘about sewage and tall tales about people contracting things.’ But he stresses that maritime law has changed a lot, and now passing passenger ships and tugs can pull up at the end of the pier and their sewage is pumped to the shore, not dumped into the sea. The method is described as ‘ship to shore’ but is otherwise known as ‘shit to shore’.
As evidence of its cleanliness the estuary is well populated with flat fish like sole, there is a nearby colony of seals, and in 2008 the Zoological Society of London found a breeding population of endangered seahorses. ‘Our waters have improved massively,’ says Richard, ‘the Thames is not the dirty urban waterway it used to be.’ He compares the estuary to places like the Maldives, ‘which is seen as paradise, but while one side is, on the other they dump their sewage’. As for the tradition of swimming, he points out of a row of small, partly frosted windows in the direction of the Westcliff-on-Sea casino: ‘there used to be swimming baths there, there was an inlet that was tidal-fed, and people have told me about swimming in the 1950s.’ There was also a sea-fed dolphin pool and boating lake east of the pier with two dolphins.
Southend has a long history of Thames bathing; in the 1920s people enjoyed open-air swimming baths complete with slides.
When it comes to swimming today, ‘there are incidents,’ he says carefully with what turns out to be great understatement; ‘people swim to the shore against the tide and they swear they are Olympic-standard swimmers and end up going backwards. The tide is six knots and most people can’t do that.’ The Hadleigh Ray, a body of water near the pier in the direction of the casino, can be particularly dangerous. ‘People walk to it, it has quite a gentle edge, but part of it falls into the estuary. At the shore there is soft mud, at the Ray it’s hard-packed sand, and one of its edges is a sheer eight-foot drop.’ In other words, someone could think they’re having a paddle, and drop straight in. It’s mainly ‘day trippers and people who don’t know about tidal estuaries,’ says Richard, who once rescued two ‘big lads in their twenties’ who fell in and the current took them out. You should, he says, always try and swim across the current, but ‘they tried to beat the tide’ – and nearly died.
There are other hazards, too: ‘a lot of time you’re standing on oyster shells’, then there’s boat wreckage, trawler wire which is used to hold the nets and ‘some just push it over the side, so we find coils of wire in the mud, as well as wartime debris, anti-aircraft shells, plane wrecks and once a pre-1900s cannonball. It’s not unknown for an angler to walk into the casino and say, “look! I found a mine”.’ Richard recently saw one ‘sitting on the mud the size of a smart car’ although a leak meant it was harmless. Those that still pose a threat are sometimes blown up on Ministry of Defence land at Shoebury.
Some people also attempt to jump off the pier and can be dragged under it by the current, where there are mussels, barnacles and shell-fish, in which case ‘you wouldn’t have much skin left,’ says Richard calmly, ‘and you will bleed because barnacles release an enzyme that stops blood from clotting’. Then there are sunbathers who ‘cook themselves’ all day in the sun, as well as having a few drinks, jump into cold water and suffer cardiac arrest. Traffic’s another danger; near the shore there is a speed limit for jet skis, but once they reach a quarter-mile out from the sea wall then it’s boat territory and ‘they go extremely fast’. There are also container ships, such as the one I saw earlier emerging from the North Sea, and boats doing thirty to forty knots ‘and no swimmer can outpace that’.
Richard is certainly putting me off having a swim around here, and recent reports from the Southend Lifeboat Station confirm the risks, with children found stranded on a sand dune with the flood tide coming in fast, and two people stuck in the mud underneath the pier head. Then there are the swimmers; a capsized catamaran had two people on board, ‘one of which had swum from Canvey Island to assist his buddy who he had just witnessed capsizing!’ There was ‘a possible person seen drifting west’ which turned out to be a white plastic container, a person suspected to be swimming from Canvey Islan
d to Kent, although no one was found, and a swimmer thought to be in trouble offshore of Canvey Island who in fact was ‘a very good swimmer who takes to the water every day’.
The best time for a sensible swim, says Richard, is slack water and he goes into some detail about low and high tide, measurements and depth, and the role of the moon. I ask him if he feels the water outside these windows is a river or the sea. ‘I know it as a river, I can see the opposite banks, but a lot of people think it’s the sea,’ he laughs. ‘People think it’s Calais opposite. Actually it’s Snodland on the Isle of Grain, you can see the chimney.’ Then I ask him where the Thames ends. He points behind me, in the direction of the North Sea. ‘The Thames ends where it ends, when it becomes the sea, it ends.’ And when does it become the sea? He gets up a little wearily and traces a finger along a map on the wall. ‘I’ve been all round the coast and I feel you’re really at the end of the Thames there, once you’re around Wallasea. It feels like Clacton and Margate are still on the Thames, although they are not. Clacton to me is the absolute limit of the Thames.’
Richard is, of course, happy to negotiate with sensible swimmers, such as the organisers of the Great Pier Swim which began in 2008. But when he heard they wanted to swim from the pier head, his horrified reaction was, ‘ah no! You can’t swim the shipping channel, it’s one of the busiest in the world.’ Then when a local swimmer, Iain Keenan, got in touch, interested in setting up a swimming club in nearby Chalkwell, with a designated area and starting point for events, Richard thought, ‘right, OK, we’ve got a swim club, that’s better than a walking on the mud club’.
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