CHANNEL SWIMMER.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20640, 12 August 1930, Page 9

CHANNEL SWIMMER.

MISS GLEITZE MARRIED. WILL ATTEMPT THE HELLESPONT. LOXDON, August 10. Miss Mercedes Gleitze, well known in swimming circles, has married Mr. Patrick Carey, an engineer, of Dubliu. Mrs. Carey intends immediately to go to the Continent, cn route to Constantinople, whero she proposes to attempt to swim the Hellespont.

The Hellespont, or Dardanelles, the strait between Europe and Asiatic Turkey, is from one to four miles wide. Leander swam the strait to visit Hero, and Byron swam across. Mrs. Carey, formerly Miss Gleitze, then a London typiste, swam tho English Channel from Franco to South Foreland on October 7-8, 1927. She was in the water 15h. 15m. Slio had made seven previous unsuccessful attempts to perform that feat. Subsequently she failed again in an effort to retrieve the honour of English women swimmers after the hoax perpetrated by Dr. Dorothy Logan. Six times Miss Gleit/.e tried to swim across the Strait of Gibraltar. She succeeded at the sixth attempt. She also made an unsuccessful attempt to swim tho Irish Sea.

Mrs Carey was born at Brighton, in the south of England, and learned to swim there before she was 10 years old. She was educated at the East Hoe Higher Grade School and went to London 10 years ago. She has never been keen to attempt swimming speed records, her interest being in lons-distance events. She swam across the Wash, and covered 30 miles in 13 hours, in June last year. She was for a short time engaged to a soldier who was stationed in India- but in January last year she stated that she had decided not to marrv, ns she did not consider herself fit to b 0 any man's wife, on account of her passionate lovo of the sea.