FAMILY OF SWIMMERS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22400, 22 April 1936, Page 19

FAMILY OF SWIMMERS

AUSTRALIAN CHAMPIONS The traditions of the Cavills, Australia's greatest family of swimmers, are being maintained by the youngest daughter of Dick Cavill, Miss Rhoda Cavill, who recently won the one mile ladies' championship of Now South Wales. Her time was 27m 2s. The youngest of the six sons of Professor F. Cavill, who was long-distance champion of England, Dick Cavill was the most famous of nil, winning between 1900 and 1904 18 Australian, 22 Now South Wales, two English and one New Zealand championships. He was the first man in Australia to swim the crawl in a championship, and once held the world's record of 58s for 100 yds. Besides, he was the first to better the minute for 100 yds., and sprinted 40yds. in 18s, a time claimed to be still unbeaten. Percy and Sid Cavill also won Australian championships, the former and Ernest, like Dielc, won English championships, and Sid won American titles. Arthur Cavill was frozen to death in endeavouring to swim Seattle Harbour in 1911. Another brother, Charles, who was said to bo the first to swim the Golden Gate at San Francisco, accomplishing the feat in spite of heavy seas and strong tides, lost his life at Stockton, California, when giving an exhibition of remaining under water in a diving bell. He was overcome by fumes that rose into the bell from a natural oil well beneath the Stockton baths. A nephew of the Cavill brothers was Dick Eve, who won the plain highdiving championship for Australia at the Olympic Games in Paris in 1924.