SWIMMER CONQUERS COOK STRAIT

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29985, 21 November 1962, Page 16

SWIMMER CONQUERS COOK STRAIT

Devenport Cheered On South Island Rocks

(New Zealand Press Association)

BLENHEIM, November 20.

Cook Strait has been conquered. Today Barrie Devenport, a 27-year-old oil company representative, became the first man to swim the 16-mile, cold, rip-torn strait. Showing tremendous grit and determination, Devenport achieved success where so many other great-hearted swimmers have failed.

For Devenport, a member of the Worser Bay Surf Club, it was a triumph. Nine months ago he came within 1200 yards of success. On that occasion he was forced to give up when victory was in sight.

Today, after 11 hours and 12 minutes of determined and unflagging effort, he climbed on to rocks at Wellington Head, on Arapawa Island, just north of Tory channel, at 6.48 p.m. after having entered the strait near Ohau point, on the Wellington coast, at 7.36 a.m.

His performance will rank among the greatest of sporting achievements, a famous first.

It was Devenport’s second attempt on the strait within nine months. Earlier this year he was defeated within sight of his goal by the swirling tides and rips—most of them completely unpredictable except to men with long experience of them—which plagued the coasts of both islands bordering the strait, and which make the strait itself perhaps the most difficult and demanding of all distance swims.

Devenport’s first major obstacle was the notorious Terawhiti rip, a few miles from the Wellington coast. Today it was on its best behaviour and all day the usually stormy strait was comparatively calm. Devenport took the rip by storm with an opening burst of 60 strokes to the minute, a rate which he did not drop to 55 a minute until he was six miles or so from the coast, and well through the treacherous rip. The crossing of the strait

after that went smoothly enough, with the water and temperatures helpful. But Devenport’s final mile must have been the toughest swim he would ever wish for. With an easterly building up to 15 knots and more in gusts, and a swell running up to more than six feet—sufficient to make the small fleet of launches roll at alarming angles—plus a chop, he almost swam to a standstill as he reached the swiftrunning rip and tide out of the Tory Channel entrance a mile or so to the south. It was a gallant climax to a gallant swim. When only 50 yards or so from his objective, Devenport rolled on to his back and looked around him. He was moved to life by the yells of his companions in the sea beside him and in the boats around him to “get crack-

ing.” He did “get cracking.” The last 50 yards could have been a sprint down a swimming

pool. He reached the South Island at 6.48 p.m., climbed up a few feet, lay back and was cheered. A spanner was passed up to him, and he chipped off a piece of the South Island to prove his crossing and as a souvenir. Watching proudly a few yards away on board the Wellington launch Rangimarie was his wife, Mrs Margaret Devenport, and a number of friends who had followed the crossing along with the trawler Christina, which carried a supply of swimmers and a radio unit. Devenport, after claiming his rock, climbed wearily into one of the two dinghies accompanying him and then on to the Christina. In a matter of minutes a small fleet was on its way back to Wellington. As they left three aircraft

droned overhead making a final inspection. Many had been about the swimmers for most of the day.