Young Woman and the Sea: How Trudy Ederle Conquered the English Channel and Inspired the World (41 page)

News traveled quickly. After two months of waiting, word that Trudy was now in the water had traveled the globe and was being reported everywhere. On both coasts, in England and France, ferryboats and transports pulled away from the piers, and binoculars scanned the horizon as the curious tried to spot the tug and the young woman in the sea, swimming. When they did, they changed course, swung past, tooted their horn, and watched for moment, crew and passengers waving as their wake crashed against the side of the tug and washed over Trudy. Then the vessels pulled away, leaving Trudy and the tug alone again in the ocean.

Just after 9:00
A.M.
a smudge of smoke on the horizon started steaming closer, and at 9:40 it drew alongside Trudy, pacing her, opposite the
Alsace.

It was
La Morinie,
and the deck was almost black with people as desperate photographers snapped pictures and the newsreel cameramen cranked their cameras and trained them on Trudy, while the reporters handed out brief dispatches to the wireless operator who sent their bulletins crackling through the air.

As the boat pulled alongside her, Trudy was distracted, and looked first over one shoulder and then the other as she tried to keep both boats in sight and those aboard both vessels could see the annoyance on her face. Although the captain of
La Morinie
tried to stay away from Trudy and remain slightly behind the
Alsace,
keeping her twenty or thirty yards away, he was being paid to bring his passengers close, and now that the sea was starting to run and the swells were starting to grow, it was difficult to maintain a safe distance. Every so often the boat nearly drew abreast of the swimmer, and in the slow waters the wake of the two boats sometimes combined and lifted her up and then dropped her down suddenly. Even worse, the sound of a second engine in the water was distracting and made the music hard to hear. For Trudy, it was as if she were the jam in a sandwich being squeezed out, and it made swimming seem more like walking down a crowded sidewalk in New York, dodging pedestrians. She found herself distracted, making sure she stayed in the middle and didn't drift into either vessel.

Every so often a motorboat roared in, pulled close to the
Alsace,
and Arthur Sorenson passed a package over the side. Then the boat sped off again, ferrying the cargo to shore—photographs of her journey to be transmitted to American newspapers for the next edition. But one boat delivered a passenger, a young man and Channel aspirant, a swimmer from Boston named Louis Timson.

Oh no, thought Trudy, not Louis, not
him.
He was a grand swimmer and a nice fellow, but he had a crush on her. She was so embarrassed about that. He was too old for her, and almost bald! Why, she didn't even have a sweetheart. Not yet. Swim, swim, swim. Maybe that was why she liked the song so much. It would be nice, one day, to call somebody sweetheart, but when she thought of it for too long it also made her sad. A doctor who examined her ears had told her once, "It's a shame, Miss Ederle, a shame. When your sweetheart says to you 'I love you,' you won't hear him. It's a shame."

She swam on. Meg changed the record. "Let Me Call You Sweetheart."

Of course.

Cape Gris-Nez., Aug 6.—(By the United Press)—10:35
A.M.—
Gertrude's position was five and one-half miles off the French coast. Agitation of the sea seemed to annoy the swimmer. There was a southwest wind.

Burgess was not looking at the horizon and wondering anymore. The weather had turned. Now the wind was from the southwest and rising. At 10:45
A.M.
the high tide reached its apex in Dover, and the neap tide was beginning to run, helping Trudy speed into midChannel, but the sea swells were growing and pushed by the winds; so, too, were the waves.

Following signals from the tug, when the boat slowed a bit, Trudy cut in front, crossing the boat's path, then Corthes slowly increased his speed as Trudy moved to the starboard side of the vessel, more in the lee of the running sea, but hardly protected.
La Morinie
followed suit, dropping behind and cutting across the wake of the
Alsace,
then pulling closer again, jockeying for position as photographers on board pleaded with the boat's captain to bring them closer, and the crew aboard the
Alsace
tried to shoo them away. Julia Harpman was not pleased that the second boat had arrived, robbing her of a scoop, but there was little she could do. Besides, no one on
La Morinie
really knew what was happening aboard the
Alsace,
or how Trudy was doing. All they saw was the young woman swimming. Whether she succeeded or failed, Trudy's story would be told by Julia, and no one else.

Trudy tried to monitor all this, tried to stay out of harm's way, tried not to think. Please, God, she whispered, help me. Let me, she breathed, call you, she breathed, sweetheart.

That wasn't all there was for her to worry about. In mid-Channel one never knew what one would encounter in the water. Trudy didn't worry about sharks, not really, but there were jellyfish—large floating masses of pink, almost red jellyfish and their stinging arms—and trash, the detritus of the continent, whatever had fallen into the Channel and still remained afloat. Boat captains familiar with the Channel even spoke of the odd mine from the Great War still bobbing around, still armed and able to blow any boat out of the water.

But it was comical sometimes, what she saw float past, debris from shipwrecks and cargo washed off decks or washed down rivers and then into the sea—carrots and cabbage from an overturned farmer's cart, tree limbs blown down during storms, dolls' heads and seaweed and suitcases, broken buoys, fishing nets, floats, hats, and even shoes, all the flotsam sometimes drawn together in one big, heaving, enormous mass between channels in the current. Joe Corthes, in the steering house, peered ahead and tried to avoid most of these debris fields, but he couldn't see everything, and that was not the only worry. Somewhere just under the surface, waterlogged, perhaps there was a tree, its sharp limbs ready to scratch and stab, or maybe a timber pulled loose from some poor dock a week or a month or five years ago, now covered in barnacles and rusty bolts and nails, floating back and forth, sagging just below the water, barely seen, ready to snag and cut and gash a bare hand, a leg, or an arm thrashing though the water, just out of sight.

Cape Gris-Nez., Aug 6.—(By the United Press)—11:15
A.M
.—Gertrude was swimming six and one half miles off the French coast at two miles an hour. The current was pushing her northward.

The sea was getting rougher, that much was obvious. Even though Trudy was running with the tide now, the sea continued to rise, and her pace dropped to only twenty-two strokes per minute as she fought the swells that washed her back and forth between the two boats and blew the smoke from their engines over her head.

Trudy was cold but not overly so. As long as she kept swimming, the engine of her own body kept her warm, and although the conditions had deteriorated, she remained in reasonably good humor, occasionally bantering back and forth with those on board the boat, sometimes singing aloud, at one point yelling out, "Tell me when it's noon so I can eat—twelve to two, out for lunch."

Thus far, she neither eaten nor had anything to drink, another recommendation from Burgess. He called it his "starvation" plan. Over the years he had seen swimmer after swimmer stop and eat and then become ill. It had even happened to him a few times. Although he knew Trudy would have to eat a bit of food and take some warm drinks, Burgess wanted to keep her diet as bland and Spartan as possible.

As noon approached, Trudy's stomach began to tell her it was time to eat—she had been in the water nearly five hours, and even Burgess knew she had to eat sometime. She could have lunch, but over the rest of the day he would allow her only snacks—chocolate, sugar, pineapple, and broth—food for energy and for warmth.

Trudy took a break. The tug slowed almost to a stop and Trudy drifted alongside as Burgess attached a curved glass baby bottle full of lukewarm chicken broth to the line, then leaned over the rail as far as he could and dangled it over the water. As a swell lifted her up Trudy snatched it from the air then rolled over, floating face up, and sucked on the bottle while trying not to swallow any seawater. The warmth felt good inside but the bland broth had little flavor. She wrinkled her nose and asked for something more substantial. Burgess gave her a chicken leg which she ate rapidly, doing the dog paddle with one hand to stay afloat, holding the chicken leg with the other.

Neither agreed with her. As she trod water she began to stiffen from the cold and feel the sea in her stomach again. "That was not so good," she shouted in reference to her lunch, before turning over and resuming her swim. As she did, Meg emerged from the pilothouse. She had put on her WSA swimsuit. She climbed carefully over the rail of the boat and then dove in behind her sister and swam after her until she drew alongside, joining her sister in the water as the tug and the young woman resumed their course. With Meg at her side and—even if it fully did not agree with her—some food in her belly, Trudy swam with renewed vigor.

Aboard the
Alsace,
however, Burgess was worried. The wind was still rising, and it looked like it was about to rain.

He'd seen this before, too many times—a fast start under good conditions and then the Channel, as if offended by a swimmer moving easily in her waters, slapped back. Corthes was getting reports from other ships farther up the Channel and from the coast. Steamers on each shore were choosing to stay in port. The weather wasn't going to get any better.

A thought began to form in Burgess's mind, one he tried to push away but one that kept returning with each wave and was soon all he thought about.

He did not think Trudy would make it.

He thought now of the packet he had stashed in the pilothouse, the papers he had drawn up. Burgess had been afraid that the weather would turn and that he might have to stop the swim and take Trudy out of the water, but all he had heard for the last two months, from Trudy and Meg and Henry Ederle, was that once Trudy started to swim, she would not stop, and no one, absolutely no one, was to touch her and take her from the water, no matter what, unless she called for help herself.

Burgess did not think that was wise. He knew from his own experience that in the midst of a Channel swim, the swimmer is often the least capable person in assessing his or her own condition, that a combination of the cold and fatigue made the mind move like molasses and could strip a swimmer of common sense. Even Burgess had been pulled from the water over his own protestations, and later, particularly after he had successfully crossed the Channel, he was glad for it. Better to live and try again than die trying. The Channel was not going anywhere. There would always be the opportunity to take it on again.

That was why he had spoken with an attorney and had the paper drawn up. If he was not allowed to make the final decision about whether it was safe for Trudy to be in the water, he wanted proof. He had seen what had happened to Wolffe, and if something happened he wanted the world to know it was not his fault. The attorney had written a release for Henry Ederle to sign, a paper that absolved Burgess of responsibility. Yet Burgess did not plan on using the release yet. He hoped to nudge Henry Ederle to conclude on his own that it was time to stop.

Gingerly, sounding him out, Burgess approached Henry Ederle, who was still wrapped in his scarf, standing at the rail, his eyes trained on his daughter. Burgess wanted him to talk, to have a conversation, to plant the seed that it might be best to call the swim off and get Trudy out of the water before she became exhausted. There were still several more days of reasonably favorable tides, and if Trudy stopped now, she might even be able to make another try in two or three days—today had been a good test, a trial run, good for training—but the longer they stayed in the Channel, Burgess could tell that there was no way she could finish, not the way the weather was. Gesturing to the sea, Burgess spoke. He started talking about the weather, how the sea was rising, how there was now rain on the horizon, how the wind was starting to blow, how he himself had been forced from the water in conditions far better, and how he had pulled other swimmers from such waters who were half dead with exhaustion.

Then, almost wistfully, he added, "It would be a pity," he said, "to give up now." He hoped that Henry Ederle would weigh in, perhaps agree, or at least begin the discussion that would lead to stopping and turning back.

Henry Ederle remembered what his daughter told him. He said nothing.

Cape Gris-Nez., Aug 6.—(By the United Press)—12:50
P.M.—
Gertrude was ten and one half miles from the French coast and still benefiting from the tide. She had been in the water five hours and forty one minutes during which she swam thirteen miles, the extra mileage being necessitated by channel currents which prevent swimming in a straight line.

After nearly an hour in the water with her sister, just before 1:00
P.M.,
Meg climbed back aboard the tug as Trudy stopped to eat again. When Trudy began swimming again, Helmi joined her in the water, but after little more than an hour he began to feel seasick and returned to the tug.

From the tug, Cape Gris-Nez was fading out of sight even as the dim outline of the cliffs of Dover began to appear on the far horizon. Trudy was halfway across, or nearly so.