Anyone for a swim?

Press, 30 November 1982, Page 18

Anyone for a swim?

On August 6, 1926, the exhausted figure of a young American staggered out of the sea near Dover in England.

Her name was Gertrude Ederle and she had just become the first woman to swim the English Channel. Fourteen hours and 31 minutes before she had plunged into the water at Cape Gris Nez in France and begun swimming towards the English coast more than 50 kilometres away.

Her swim broke the record by one hour and 59 minutes.

The English Channel was first swum in 1875 by a Merchant Navy captain called Matthew Webb. Captain Webb had taken almost 22 hours to swim the distance, with an unusual onearmed stroke. He is credited with the first crossing although an American, Paul Boynton, had three months earlier swum from Cape Gris Nez wearing a life-saving suit. Some

doubts exist whether either Captain Webb or Mr Boynton actually managed to swim the distance first. The Guinness Book of Records says a French soldier, Jean-Marie Saletti, who escaped from an English prison ship near Dover by swimming to France in 1818, beat them both. Since then thousands of people have swum the English Channel, one of the more recent a Christchurch schoolgirl, Elizabeth Horner. She swam the channel in September. -

The. channel has. a reputation for being rough and is often busy with ships from different parts of the world. It is rather shallow and swimmers say very few sharks appear to bother them.

There are many records listed to do with the English Channel. They include ones for the oldest swimmer, the youngest, the fastest, the slowest and the quickest crossing there and back.