Young Woman and the Sea: How Trudy Ederle Conquered the English Channel and Inspired the World (44 page)

Sunset came, officially, at 9:34 according to the French Summer Time the press used throughout her journey to track her progress, but in the gloom and heavy cloud cover, twilight was premature, and it was nearly dark almost an hour earlier. Swimming in the dark was nothing new to Trudy—she had done so before—but never when she was so tired and cold.

Then, for the first time since she stepped into the water at Cape Gris-Nez, Trudy got a break. After hours of wind and rain and more wind, the storm in the Channel was exhausted and spent. The sea finally started to calm, lifting and falling more slowly. And the rain, too, slowed and stopped, and now the Channel itself hurried Trudy to its shores. For the first time in hours, Trudy, who had plugged along in the heavy seas using four beats—four leg kicks to each stroke—was able to increase her pace to six beats.

There was elation aboard the
Alsace.
Everyone on the tug was staying on the rail, urging her on. Pop Ederle kept reminding her of her roadster, now telling her, "If you get over I'll let you take that roadster to bed with you!" Meg stayed busy, and when Trudy complained of her sore mouth, she lowered pieces of pineapple to soothe her and give her strength, while Burgess leaned over the rail exhorting "Gertie," as he called her, to the finish. Arthur Sorenson, the photographer, ran back and forth, always keeping Trudy in sight, sometimes manning the blackboard and delivering more encouraging words from Trudy's mother, received over the wireless.

Deal, England, Aug 6.—(By the United Press)
—
9
:30
P.M.—
Tonight Gertrude Ederle's tug, the
Alsace,
was only a few hundred yards offshore, blowing the whistle, and blue and red flares were burning on the beach.

Deal, England, Aug 6.—(By the Associated Press)
—Gertrude Ederle was within a mile of Kingsdown near Deal on a flood tide at 9:30 tonight on her swim across the English Channel. Kingsdown is about five miles north of Dover.

Now, even she could hear them. As light danced across the calming waters, Trudy viewed it all through her amber-colored goggles, and she began to hear, faintly at first, the honking horns of automobiles, and the blasts of the big tugs. From nearby Kingsdown Beach a mighty searchlight from the lifeboat station suddenly cast its beam over the waters and swept it back and forth as if looking for a man overboard. Then the beam of light landed on the
Alsace,
and then upon Trudy, not a man, but a woman not in danger of drowning but about to change everything, and now the crowds on the headlands could see her doggedly putting one arm over the other in the water and gaining another precious foot or two with each stroke. It was soon joined by a similar light from
La Morinie,
putting Trudy firmly in the spotlight.

Some four hundred yards offshore, Trudy slowed and swam closer to the
Alsace,
now a shadow that loomed over the water beneath the bright lights of the pilothouse. Onboard, Burgess prepared the rowboat for landing. He, Pop Ederle, and a crewman planned to row ahead of Trudy to shore, not just to see her finish, but to ensure that she would do so safely. Hundreds of people had guessed correctly and had gathered on Kingsdown Beach to greet her, and they needed to make sure that no overzealous spectator rushed out and touched Trudy before she actually walked out of the water and took a step without a splash—if she was touched, even as she waded in water below her knees, her journey would be for naught, its veracity called into question, and neither Burgess nor Ederle wanted that to happen.

But now Trudy was not swimming toward shore but toward the
Alsace
and looking up imploringly to the rail. Burgess rushed over. "What's the matter, Gertie?" he called out over the cacophony, sudden concern etched on his face. "What's the matter, girl?

"Gee, Mr. Burgess," she answered, suddenly concerned. "I can't see. It's so dark." Burgess looked at her for a moment, concerned, and then started to laugh. She had forgotten. After fourteen hours in the water the girl had forgotten she was wearing goggles and as the sky darkened the girl who already found it hard to hear was now worrying that perhaps she was going blind as well.

Burgess called out to her to remove her goggles and for the first time in more than fourteen hours Trudy raised them from her face. Her world, which over the course of fourteen hours had gone from gray to gold and brown and now to nearly black, burst with color as flares and flames and searchlights on the beach all sought her out as if she were the center-ring attraction at some watery circus. The waters danced with color, and a jolt of energy shot through Trudy's body as she stared in wonder at the shore. For a moment she completely forgot where she was and what she was doing but was mesmerized by the scene, which somehow reminded her of some fairy story from her childhood, all magic and light and music.

"How are we doing?" bellowed Burgess.

Trudy thought for a moment, as if surprised by the question and then burst out in a laugh herself. "How are we doing?" she asked of the world, pondering the question. "How are we doing?"

Burgess spoke again and pulled her from her reverie. "Well, for God's sake, Gertie," he said to her, "swim!" He then underscored the fact, pointed the way, with a command—"Swim four hundred yards."

Now she remembered. It all rushed back, every moment of those fourteen hours in the water, all the wind and all the rain. And she was so close now, to her red roadster and some rest. So close. This way, ole girl.

"I'm not going to go this far and let four hundred yards beat me," she yelled back, "if I have a breath in my body." Then she rolled over in the water and started swimming, sprinting.

Four hundred yards? She was the fastest in the world at four hundred yards. She could swim four hundred yards in her sleep. She had swum four hundred yards a million times. Sixteen times back and forth in the old WSA pool, or a few trips around the pier in the Highlands. Four hundred yards was nothing, nothing. She had never, never ever, tried to swim four hundred yards before and failed. Funny, how a swim of more than fourteen hours, more than twenty miles, could end in a swim of four hundred yards.

Trudy was making her final push. The beach was lit almost to daylight by the bonfires and flares and was crowded with so many people it almost resembled Coney Island on a hot summer's day. While the
Alsace
dropped anchor and Trudy swam off, Burgess lowered the rowboat into the water and struck out for shore.

Trudy swam with renewed vigor. This was not the stunned girl who had been touched and taken from the water a year before, but a young woman who with each stroke was reaching for her goal. Now she swam, not with the long, slow strokes that had marked the previous fourteen hours, or with the wild, panicked thrashing she had used when she first learned to swim, but with the quick, sure stroke she had been taught by Louis Handley. It was as if he were somehow standing there beside her, standing along the edge of the pool, pushing her along—"Use your legs, Miss Ederle. Do not forget to use your legs." And she did, upping her pace from six beats to eight, the same rate she used in any race of four hundred yards, kicking stronger now than at any time since she first stepped into the waters at Cape Gris-Nez, churning through the water, creating her own wake. Meg noticed first. In all the time she had watched her sister swim, in meet after meet after meet, never before had she seen her use her legs so well. It was beautiful, the way she carved through the black water.

Burgess and Pop Ederle raced to shore ahead of her as the oarsman rowed with all his might to beat her to land, and as the boat made the beach a crowd of men and boys reached out and grabbed the prow and pulled it up on the sand. Burgess and Henry Ederle scrambled out and looked back toward the
Alsace.
There was Trudy, spotlighted in the water, still offshore but getting closer with each stroke.

Her head stayed out of the water now, taking in the scene, and Burgess, half frantic with excitement, admonished the crowd to stay back. Trudy was almost giddy, but now she was thinking, too, and she remembered that she must not let anyone touch her.

The waves were breaking at the surf line far offshore, and when Trudy reached them, suddenly she was gone, underwater. For a heartbeat the crowd gasped, but then the waves broke and spread out on the beach and there was Trudy, on all fours for a second, sand and pebbles beneath her knees and clutching it with her hands. And then, for the first time since leaving France, she stood, sea legs wobbly, and took a short uncertain step as a wave crashed against her backside, nearly knocking her off her feet.

Henry Ederle, carrying her robe, started racing toward his daughter, but the young woman was taking no chances. She held up her hand and called out, "Stay back, Pop! Stay back!"

Her father stopped and watched as Trudy kept striding out of the water, her heavy legs feeling lighter and more sure with each step, the water shallower, step after step after step, until it swirled around her ankles. Then she took a final stride, and the surf reached out and this time it did not erase her footstep, and it did not splash around her ankles. She was out of the water, on English soil, across the Channel at last.

The crowd roared, clapping and whistling, and now it raced toward her, calling out her name. Pop Ederle reached out for his daughter, gathered her in her robe and gave her a bear hug. "Hey, Pop," said Trudy, "Do I get that red roadster?"

"Do you get the roadster?" he bellowed back in affirmation, a teary smile forming on his face.

Trudy was done. It was 9:40
P.M.
and she was the first woman to swim the English Channel. Fourteen hours and thirty-one minutes after she stepped into the water in France, she stepped out of the water in England, more than two hours faster than anyone had ever done so before.

She was the first woman, and sixth person, to swim the English Channel.

By two full hours, she was faster than any man, faster than anyone, ever.

First.

BULLETIN
Deal, England, Aug 6.—(By the Associated Press)
—Gertrude Ederle landed here tonight, successfully swimming the English Channel from Cape Gris-Nez, France.

I
T WAS DAZZLING
. As flares continued to rain down upon the beach and the light from the bonfires and spotlights danced upon the water, Trudy stood for a moment, transfixed in the glow. Then she took a few tentative wobbly steps, almost as if after spending so much time in the water she no longer remembered how to walk in this new world. In a sense she had just stepped out of the darkened sea into the spotlight.

As soon as her father put her robe over her shoulders, his hands were followed by a dozen others, and then two dozen, then three, and every hand reached for her and tried to touch her, asking her questions and shining lights in her face. She was being pulled, too fast, from the sea.

It was too much, Trudy thought, too much, and suddenly the place she had spent the last fourteen hours and thirty-one minutes swimming for her life seemed preferable to this new world of strangers. In an instant she realized that the girl who stepped into the English Channel fourteen hours before was not the same woman who now stood on a beach in England. Yet she had not changed. It was strange, she felt the same as she always felt, a little more tired perhaps, but she didn't recognize anything. To be alone for so long with her thoughts and then to be thrust into this crowd was too much. The stunned young woman shrank back, withdrew, and pushed away, turning her back on the crowd as if to return to the sea, to the now familiar company of the
Alsace.

She wasn't the only one eager to get into the sea. As soon as she saw her sister onshore, Margaret jumped in and swam after her, and aboard
La Morinie,
which had lost its wireless capability in the final hour of Trudy's swim, reporter Sydney Williams, desperate for a scoop, leapt overboard and swam toward shore as well, eager to find a telephone and give the world the first lengthy report of her success. Like so many reporters aboard that vessel, he'd be forced to make up many of the details of his story, such as Trudy's first words upon landing, which Williams inventively concluded were "I am a proud woman." The myth-making surrounding her achievement was already in full swing.

Trudy was bewildered. She was tired, as well, and now that she had stopped swimming she began to feel the cold—the instructions her brain gave to her arms and legs and lips came through in fits and starts. After asking her father about the roadster, and then telling him, "Mama will be so proud," she was speechless—happy, too—but overwhelmed. She stood teetering on the shore, and Burgess and her father steered her back away from the water. Her father held her close, and then Meg emerged from the water and ran up to her sister, covering her with hugs and kisses, drawing her back into the world with her smiles and soft talk and familiar touch.

Now she saw the hands that reached for hers, and Trudy stuck out her hand and shook them all, automatically, as one man said, "Congrats, girl," and a boy asked, "Are you swimming back?" and a woman said, "Give the poor girl some room to breathe, will you?" All the voices turned into a single babbling sound, a crowd in the lobby at intermission, and Trudy, still blinking the salt water from her eyes, her tongue swollen and sore, mumbled a few thank-you's and suddenly self-conscious in her suit held the robe close. Mindful of her responsibilities to the
Tribune-News
syndicate, and to Julia Harpman, after only a few minutes onshore Trudy was ushered to the rowboat and rowed back to the
Alsace.