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

by Glenn Stout

  Just as Matthew Webb's entourage tried to keep him alert by singing, Wolffe used a similar approach, one that had the added benefit of proving of interest to the press. On his pilot boat Wolffe often employed a bagpiper to play traditional Scottish songs, giving Wolffe something else to focus on as well as helping him keep up his desired pace of around twenty-six strokes per minute.

  Like Frederick Cavill, Wolffe did everything but succeed. In 1908, leaving from England, Wolffe made his way to what was variously reported as between a quarter mile and two hundred meters off the French coast, tantalizingly close, near enough to hear those onshore urging him on, their French accents serving as a siren's call. But after fifteen hours in the water, Wolffe, who was blessed with extraordinary stamina, was not strong enough a swimmer to overcome the tide and could not break its binds.

  But he was not deterred and tried again and again and again. But each time, if it was not the tide that turned, pulling him away from land at a rate faster than he could swim, it was something else that stopped him short of his goal—the weather, a sudden storm, or his own body breaking down. On one swim he pulled tendons in his leg while kicking, and on another he was injured when he slammed into a timber floating just beneath the surface. Three times he made it to within one mile of success only to fail, sometimes after spending more than twenty hours in the water. Much to the swimmer's consternation and embarrassment, "Wolffe Fails in Attempt to Swim Channel" became something of a running headline—and an increasingly comic one—in English newspapers. In France they joked that watching Wolffe floundering offshore of Cape Gris-Nez was becoming a favorite summer pastime.

  For a time Burgess, despite his advantages, was no more successful than Wolffe. Yet his efforts, based on the French shore, were given little notice in the British press, which favored Wolffe. Many Englishmen sniffed that despite his English birth, Burgess's marriage to a Frenchwoman and residency in Paris made him more the French poodle than the British bulldog. Even today, his accomplishments are little known in the country of his birth.

  Yet like Wolffe, Burgess was determined, fixated on his goal, spending most of the year saving money and drumming up support so he could spend a month or two at the end of the summer watching the tides and the weather for an opportunity to try again.

  The two men were acquainted, held a grudging, public respect for the efforts of the other, and were polite to each other on their rare encounters, but they were not friends. Wolffe thought Burgess's fetish for tidal charts and weather reports a waste of time and a way for the swimmer to have a ready-made excuse each time he failed, while Burgess thought Wolffe was foolish to ignore such information and couldn't understand why Wolffe entered the water on so many occasions when the tides and weather conditions made a crossing virtually impossible.

  Although both swimmers used both the sidestroke and the breaststroke, even their training methods were at odds. Burgess rarely trained for more than a few hours at a time in Channel waters before making an attempt, believing that extended training swims were of little help and did little more than exhaust a swimmer. Wolffe, on the other hand, spent as much time as possible in the water. He thought nothing of spending eight or ten hours in the Channel only a few days before making a serious attempt.

  For nearly a decade the two competitors swam to a standoff, Wolffe making more attempts and, on a few occasions, nearly making it across. Burgess made fewer attempts, and while he never made it quite as close as Wolffe, he was somewhat more consistent. Thus far, the wisdom of their approaches and training methods had been a draw.

  On September 5, 1911, the end of the "mystic season," Burgess entered Channel waters for the sixteenth time, wading into the surf at 11:15 A.M. at South Foreland, Dover. In calm seas and under a slate gray sky, conditions were nearly ideal, for there was little difference between the air temperature and the temperature of the water, and Burgess didn't have to worry about the blazing sun burning his fair skin. Using the sidestroke, Burgess had indulged in very little special training beforehand, later saying he had spent only "eighteen hours swimming in preparation," with his longest swim only six miles. His earlier efforts in the Channel had taught him that it was more important to feel fresh and not be worn down, either physically or mentally, by training. He would soon need every ounce of energy he had.

  With the possible exception of Wolffe, to this point Burgess had probably spent more time in the waters of the Channel than any man on the face of the earth. Good thing, because as soon as he entered the sea the Channel threw nearly everything it had in his direction, making certain he would be tested in every way possible.

  First came the fog, which settled in during the first hour and hung over the water for the remainder of the day. For the rest of the day Burgess spent much of his swim in the disorienting soup with only his pilot boat for accompaniment.

  Then came the tides. A stronger than expected flood tide swept him up and pushed him directly toward the Goodwin Sands. He was forced to make a near Herculean effort, sprinting for more than an hour to avoid the hazard and find safe water farther out. As soon as he did, as if on cue, the wind rose up, not a full-blown storm, but stiff enough to cause the spray and wash from his motorized pilot boat—forced to stay close in the fog—to shower down upon Burgess's face, causing him to swallow water, making it almost impossible for him to breathe. He was nearly ready to give up before his crew, in an act of pure dedication, launched a rowboat, cut the engine on the pilot boat, tied it fast, and, with a crew of three, rowed alongside Burgess for the duration of his swim, towing the motorboat and the remaining eight crew members, never stopping, a physical feat nearly as impressive as that of the swimmer himself.

  Still, Burgess continued to struggle. The seawater soured his stomach and the swells made him seasick. In desperation, for a time he abandoned the sidestroke and flipped over on his back. After a while he felt better, only to get nauseous once again as soon as he resumed his usual stroke. Fortunately, a second period of time on his back settled his stomach, and he was finally able to continue.

  But his struggles were not over. In mid-Channel another tidal change swept him up, and for a time he was driven back toward England; but after night fell the seas calmed, and although a layer of fog hung close to the water's surface, the moon shone through, providing him with a companion through the night. Burgess swam strongly through the darkness, bothered—or perhaps made more alert—by what he later referred to as "thousands" of stings from jellyfish.

  In the early morning hours Burgess drew to within five miles of the French shoreline, entering what Channel swimmers euphemistically referred to as the "swimmer's mile," the last leg of the journey, and the part of the swim that is usually most difficult, for in those last few miles success or failure depends almost entirely upon the swimmer himself—his or her will and talent.

  At 4:30 A.M., however, when first light began to show on the horizon, Burgess began to break. Exhausted after spending nearly fifteen hours in the water, Burgess was barely conscious and began to hallucinate. But his crew, invigorated by the sight of the French coast only three miles in the distance and the specter that their work was soon done, began singing, trying to keep Burgess alert for the final push.

  Now, after thousands of arm stokes, a muscle in his chest began to spasm and cramp, causing him to slow down. When the cramp finally passed, Burgess began vomiting again, unable to keep down his provisions of so-called patent food (canned goods), chicken, chocolate, and tea, occasionally spiced by a cautious measure of twenty drops of champagne, for Burgess was at the time a teetotaler who in any other circumstance would not drink at all.

  At 7:00, each time the swells lifted him up, Burgess could see Cape Gris-Nez looming before him, looking for all the world like a gray nose poised over the horizon. Burgess had planned to land at Calais, but at 8:00, his energy waning, Burgess took a chance, changing course and aiming straight for the nearer shores of Gris-Nez.

  The tide had another idea. While each stroke pull
ed him closer to his goal, he miscalculated the current, which pushed him sideways a quarter mile past the cape. Desperate to finish, Burgess turned back toward shore and, using the cape itself to shield him from rough water, headed to shore in a small bay just to the east of Cape Gris-Nez.

  Bathers on the shore spotted him swimming, and by the time his feet touched ground at 9:50 A.M., more than twenty-two hours after he started his swim, a sizable crowd had assembled on the beach. As he reached the shallows and stood, stumbling and crying uncontrollably, the crowd came to his aid, hoisting him to their shoulders while, to the disgust of the British press, they sang the French anthem, "La Marseillaise." The so-called swimmer's mile had taken Webb seven and half excruciating hours to complete. But thirty-six years after Matthew Webb's successful crossing, a swimmer had once again conquered the English Channel.

  After he recovered from his ordeal Burgess was understandably ecstatic, terming the swim "the hardest fight I have ever had all the way through." That was an understatement. He estimated that in his twenty-two hours in the water, during which he fought his way through three tidal sets, he had traveled a circuitous course of some sixty miles, likely an exaggeration, but not dramatically so, and still indicative of the impact the tides played on a swimmer.

  While Burgess reached a certain measure of fame, due to his split citizenship he was denied the full acclaim that had been delivered to Matthew Webb. Still, Burgess's notoriety was still sufficient that before long the blacksmith became the owner of a Parisian garage and then purchased a small cottage atop Cape Gris-Nez, where he was able to look down upon the scene of his triumph.

  And from that peak, for much of the next decade—apart from the war years—he may well have scanned the horizon for Jabez Wolffe. For Burgess's accomplishment did not deter Wolffe. He continued his quixotic quest unabated, even as he slipped toward middle age and his chances of success became smaller with each passing year.

  But the name of Jabez Wolffe was not meant to appear on the roster of those who have successfully swum the Channel, but atop another list, one that measured futility. After his success Burgess chose not to test the Channel waters again, but Wolffe, as if offended by Burgess's success, kept trying over and over and over. He tried and failed at least twenty-two times and perhaps as many as forty, both figures far more than any other swimmer. By the time of his final attempt in 1921, however, the waters of the Channel were beginning to get crowded as a new generation of athletes made plans to take to the water. Wisely, most of these aspirants would seek advice and counsel from both Bill Burgess and Jabez Wolffe.

  The competition between the two men would turn vicarious, and soon begin anew.

  11. Goals

  THE DAY AFTER Trudy's victory in the Day Cup, columnist Marguerite Mooers Marshall of the New York Evening Herald, one of the leading female journalists of the day, interviewed her at the Ederle home in the Highlands, where, as usual, Trudy was spending the waning days of summer. Accompanied by a photograph, Marshall's profile would introduce Trudy Ederle to the world.

  The interview had all the earmarks of being set up through Charlotte Epstein and the WSA, and Epstein was likely in attendance—she rarely left the girls unchaperoned, much less let them meet with the press alone. Besides, all of a sudden Trudy Ederle was the new face of the WSA, and it was Epstein's responsibility to ensure that both Ederle and the WSA were put in the best possible light.

  She needn't have worried. When Marshall arrived at the Ederle bungalow, Trudy was dressed in a worn and slightly faded tank suit, the same one that she wore often during training, and a sweater to ward off the morning chill. She was in the middle of her daily chores, ironing clothes in the kitchen while she looked after her little brother Henry, who was not yet three. Her parents were still away in Germany, leaving all the Ederle children in the care of relatives, but the girls, as usual, kept close watch over their younger siblings.

  At age fifteen, Trudy Ederle was on the cusp of womanhood. Marshall, who penned an influential column entitled "The Women of It," was thoroughly enthralled by the young swimmer and tagged Trudy as "that almost extinct person—if we may believe the cynics—the normal, healthy, pretty, sport-loving, fun-loving, home-and-family-loving American girl. She is everything that is the converse of the flighty flapper."

  Now standing five foot six and weighing perhaps 140 pounds, Trudy was no movie star, but she was unquestionably pretty and, only one day after swimming three and a half miles, displayed absolutely no fatigue. Marshall described her as a "glowingly tanned, brown-eyed, yellow-haired youngster"—her auburn hair, recently cut into a modern bob, was bleached by a summer in the sun—"tall with square sturdy shoulders and symmetrical limbs; a beauty by right, utterly unpretentious ... [with] frank, beautiful eyes, brown, with a glint in them, like brook water on which the sun shines."

  In short, the scene was pure Americana. Her education had recently ended with her graduation from grammar school at Public School 69, and now Trudy was, as Marshall described her, "an old-fashioned domestic daughter" who "stays at home and helps mother." Trudy Ederle came off as a poster child for wholesomeness, even telling Marshall that she personally didn't believe women should wear one-piece suits, similar to the suits she herself wore in competition, at public beaches. "I like the other suits better," she said, speaking of the less-revealing swimming dresses nominally still in vogue, but then, as if telling a secret, added, "although I don't wear stockings." Then, with a giggle she admitted that she usually removed the bathing skirt when she was ready to enter the water, making her appear both traditionally modest and modern at the same time.

  With a day to reflect on her achievement, Trudy was absolutely effervescent, full of nervous chatter, answering each question, and then asking and answering another one or two or three more questions herself before Marshall could get another word in. For Trudy, that was something of a habit. She was already compensating for her partial deafness in subtle ways, and one strategy was to anticipate questions before they were asked to save her from the embarrassment of asking the speaker to repeat the question. On this day, giddy with excitement, the words poured out of Trudy in a flood of giggles and unintentional, genuine charm. After all, she had never been interviewed for a newspaper before and had rarely been the center of attention, even within her own family. As the third of what would eventually be seven children, she was sometimes lost in the family drama as her parents understandably paid more personal attention to her older sisters, both of whom were dating and embarking on a social life of their own, and her younger brothers, who still needed plenty of supervision. It was not intentional or reflective of anything but the dynamics of a large and growing family, but the self-reliant Trudy was often a bit overlooked.

  She had been in a similar position within the WSA, where to this point she was viewed as simply a good swimmer of some promise but was not held in anything close to the same regard as Aileen Riggin or Helen Wainwright or any of the girls who had competed in the 1920 Olympics, or even her sister Margaret. But now, finally, it was Trudy's turn to talk and she loved it.

  "I don't train," she offered as she ironed and folded and ironed some more, "if you mean eating special food or anything like that. And I don't practice much. The girls in the swimming association simply can't get me to practice. For a day or two before a race—yes—but not every day. Down here at the beach I am in the water an hour or two daily, because I love it and it's such fun. But the swimming association has an indoor pool for winter work, and do I go every day? I should say not!"

  That was another reason why Trudy's victory had been such a surprise. Compared to the other top swimmers in the WSA, like Wainwright, Trudy was something of a slacker who did not appear to take swimming seriously, at least in her training sessions at the pool. In fact, though, once summer started and she was on her own in the Highlands, she was, in fact, swimming more than most of the other girls because she swam every day, for fun, rather than confining her efforts to a concentrated period of t
raining. In that way she was lucky, for few of the other girls had as much unfettered access to the water as Trudy.

  That was the key to her success, for Trudy's training "method" was, in fact, just as revolutionary as Louis de Breda Handley's improvements to the Australian crawl. She was in and out of the water all day long at the Highlands, reinforcing Handley's teachings and building her stamina. Purely by accident, as she went through puberty, her daily routine had allowed her skills to keep pace with her changing body. By swimming virtually every day, she had not only grown markedly stronger, but had retained and even enhanced her coordination at an age in which many adolescents become awkward and gawky. And by rowing and canoeing, she had also been cross-training, adding to her strength and fitness level. She had energy to spare, as she also told Marshall, "I love to row a boat or paddle around in a canoe. I love basketball and all the things you do in a gymnasium. I love—LOVE—dancing. But swimming is the best of all.

  "I think it's the most splendid sport in the world. It develops you all over, not just one or two sets of muscles. It improves your general health—I never was really ill," she said, perhaps alluding to her bout with measles, and then thinking better of it, for as yet her hearing trouble was known only to her family and close friends, "but I've been ever so much better since I took up swimming. It strengthens your lungs and tones up your nerves. And it's such a clean sport!"

  Then Marshall, obviously smitten, asked Ederle, "What is your secret? What made you swim away so easily from those other world beaters?"

  Trudy grinned broadly before answering, "I just did the best I could, and I never thought of winning. I guess I swim as easily as I breathe or walk. And I truly think it ought to be just as natural for everybody. The scientists say we were all water animals to begin with, then why shouldn't we go back, now and then, to our first home—the ocean?"