Young Woman and the Sea: How Trudy Ederle Conquered the English Channel and Inspired the World (52 page)

4. The Painter

George Catlin's
Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Conditions of North American Indians,
Vol. I and II (Willis P. Hazard, Philadelphia, 1857), first published in London in 1844, was invaluable, as was the online biography of Catlin maintained by the National Gallery of Art that appears at
www.ibiblio.org/nga/catlin.html
. Profiles of John Trudgen and other swimming pioneers can be found on the Web site of the International Swimming Hall of Fame.

5. The Women's Swimming Association

The pioneering role of the WSA in women's athletics is unquestioned and well documented. Of particular use was "The Cradle of American Champions, Women Champions ... Swim Champions: Charlotte Epstein, Gender, and Jewish Identity and the Physical Emancipation of Women in Aquatic Sports" by Linda Borish (
International Journal of the History of Sport
21, no. 2, March 2004, 197–235), and
The Women's Swimming Association of New York: The Golden Years 1920–1940
by Harold Lerch and Paula Welch, Educational Resources Informational Center, ERIC #: ED174591.

Oral histories of several swimmers (see chapter 16) and profiles from Dawson's
Mermaids on Parade
were also of great help in charting the course of the WSA and the role of Charlotte Epstein, as was Handley's
Swimming for Women.
See also "An Olympian's Oral History: Aileen Riggin," an interview by Dr. Margaret Costa (Los Angeles: Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles, 2000), and Kari Lydeson's "An Olympic Life" from
Swimming World and Junior Swimmer
(April 2000).

6. The Crossing

Kathy Watson's
The Crossing
is the most thorough published account of Matthew Webb's life.

7. The Teacher

For background on Handley, see Cecil Colwin's article "The Gentleman Jim of Swimming," which appeared in
Swim Canada
22, no. 7, (1995): 16–19. Handley's own work provides the best description of the development of the American crawl and his teaching methods, as do a number of interviews with Ederle and Aileen Riggin.

8. The Channel

Sanjeev Gupta and Jenny Collier at the Imperial College, London, were the first to prove definitively that the Channel was created by two megafloods; their work appears in
Nature
448, (2007): 342. See also
New Scientist
195.2613, (July 21, 2007): 11. John McPhee's article "Season on the Chalk" in
The New Yorker
(March 12, 2007) includes a description of the creation of the chalk beds that underlie the Channel. The best information available on the impact of the tides on a Channel swimmer can be found at
www.channelswimmingassociation
.com.

9. The Best Girl

The description of the Day Cup swim is based on newspaper reports from the
New York Times, Herald-Tribune,
and others. Trudy's achievement was carried by the Associated Press and widely reported all over the country, the first time she came to the attention of the general public. For the next four years she was easily the most famous woman in America.

10. The Next Man

Somewhat surprisingly, the stories of Jabez Wolffe and Bill Burgess have only been told in pieces. Newspaper accounts were most valuable, in particular "The Forgotten Man of the Channel" from the
Sheffield Star
(1961), "Man Has Flown the English Channel, But Can He Swim It?" which appeared in the
Chicago Tribune
(September 5, 1909), and "Other Channel Swimmers," from the
New York Times
(August 15, 1926). The number of times each man attempted to swim the Channel varies widely according to the source. Suffice to say that each man likely made more attempts than any other swimmer before succeeding, and Wolffe surely holds the record for the most attempts without success.

11. Goals

Marguerite Mooers Marshall's profile of Trudy Ederle not only appeared in the
New York World Telegram
and
Herald-Tribune
but was widely reprinted all over the country in late August and September 1922.

12. Rivals

Accounts of aspiring Channel swimmers and their attempts appeared regularly in American and European newspapers in years after World War I. See also Wennerberg's
Wind, Waves, and Sunburn
and Johnson's
History of Open Water Marathon Swimming.

13. Records

Hardly a week passed from the fall of 1922 through 1923 without an account appearing in a newspaper somewhere of Trudy Ederle swimming, and often setting a new record.

14. Girl in the Water

Annette Kellerman's life and career is well documented, most notably in Emily Gibson and Barbara Firths's
The Original Million Dollar Mermaid
(East Melbourne, New South Wales, Australia: Allen and Unwin, 2006) and Annette Kellerman's own unpublished biography,
My Story,
portions of which appear on
www.annette
kellerman.com.

15. Trials

Primarily newspaper accounts, as previously cited above. See also Weissmuller's own book,
Swimming the American Crawl
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1930), in which he discusses Ederle.

16. Agony

Trudy Ederle expressed her reaction to her performance in the Olympics in Dawson's
Mermaids on Parade
and also spoke of her problem with cramps due to transportation issues. Her larger Olympic experience and the experience of the women's swim team were derived primarily from the following sources:

American Olympic Committee.
Report on the VII Olympic Games, Paris, France, 1924.
New York: American Olympic Committee, 1924.
Louis de Breda Handley's report on the women's swimming team was particularly useful.
"American Youth Vindicated at Colombe,"
Literary Digest
(August 9, 1924).
Costa, Margaret, interviewer. "An Olympian's Oral History: Aileen Riggin." Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles, 2000. Available at
www.la84foundation.org.

DeFrantz, Anita, interviewer. "An Olympian's Oral History: Claritta Hunsberger He-her."
Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles,
July 1987. Available at
www.la
84foundation.org.

Dyreson, Mark L. "Scripting the American Olympic Story-Telling Formula: The 1924 Paris Olympics and the American Media."
Olympika
5 (1996): 45–80.

Hodak, George A., interviewer. "An Olympian's Oral History: Doris O'Mara Murphy."
Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles,
July 1987. Available at www .la84foundation.org.

——. "An Olympian's Oral History: Samuel Clarence Hauser."
Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles,
1988. Available at
www.la84foundation.org.

——. "An Olympian's Oral History: William Neufeld."
Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles,
1988. Available at
www.la84foundation.org
.

Mitchell, Sheila. "Women's Participation in the Olympic Games 1900–1926."
Journal of Sport History
4.2 (1977): 208–228.
Strayer, Martha. "Warsaw Woman Was 1924 Olympics Star." Available at
www.yester
year.clunette.com/olympic.html.

17. Comeback

Ederle mentions in many, many different accounts the role her sister Margaret played in her Sandy Hook swim, in her decision to swim the Channel, and in her swimming career, but the most complete retelling of the scene that led her to swim the Channel appears in Dawson's
Mermaids on Parade.

18. Wolffe

Unlike for her 1926 attempt, Trudy Ederle was not ghostwriting accounts of her swim for a syndicate in 1925. However, due to her notoriety as a swimming champion, her summer at the Channel received more press coverage than that of any previous Channel aspirant. The Associated Press provided regular accounts as did the British swimming expert Alec Rutherford in the
New York Times.
Many of these accounts focused on the problems between Ederle and Jabez Wolffe.

19. Touched

My account of Trudy's first attempt to swim the Channel is gleaned primarily from a wide variety of newspaper reports and newsreel films that document portions of her preparation and the swim itself, as well as still photographs from the same day. Trudy's story remained consistent throughout her adult life—she felt that if she had not been touched she could have continued her swim and possibly succeeded.

20. Poison

In an interview with the student newspaper of Harvard University, the
Harvard Crimson,
on October 24, 1926, Trudy Ederle told a reporter:

I am sure that Harvard will just trample on Princeton and the other football teams after beating Dartmouth ... You know I won a bet from Helen Wainwright on the Dartmouth game. I felt that Harvard was bound to win, just because it wasn't the newspaper favorite.

The members of the team must have felt the same way I did when I was going to swim the channel. No one thought I had a chance of getting across. The newspapers were all sympathetic, but skeptical just the same. It made me awfully determined to succeed.

The first attempt I made, I nearly went to sleep in the water. Some one had put drugs in the beef tea I drank before starting. My trainer proved this beyond any doubt. Well, before my second attempt, all my food was prepared by my sister. I was more confident than ever of making the swim, though no one else thought I would.

The story appeared the next day and was then picked up by the Associated Press and reprinted in newspapers throughout the country.

Although Ederle had never publicly mentioned the poisoning incident before or after, intimations that something was amiss during the swim—by Trudy, Elsie Viets, and Charlotte Epstein—give credence to the notion, as does the WSA's attempt to muzzle Trudy on her return. By 1926, when she did speak of it, the focus was not on her failure of the year before but her recent success. The story quickly disappeared, and in subsequent years no interviewer knew enough to ask Ederle to provide more details concerning her suspicions. The "trainer" she refers to is probably Burgess.

21. Cape Gris-Nez

The presence of both Julia Harpman and her husband, Westbrook Pegler, on the trip across the Atlantic and during Trudy's time training in Cape Gris-Nez was extremely helpful. Harpman was a precise reporter, and Pegler's observations are acute, particularly in regard to the hotel and the cast of characters assembled there. Harpman's work, both under Trudy's byline and her own, appeared in both the
Chicago Tribune
and the
New York Daily News.
Pegler's work appeared only in the
Tribune.
The Meteorological Office daily weather report for southeast England on August 6, 1926, was provided by the Meteorological Office, National Meteorological Archive, the British Weather Service.

22. What For?

The specific story of Trudy's crossing is created from her own statements both at the time and in later interviews, the stories of Julia Harpman, and accounts by other observers, including Alec Rutherford, Minott Saunders, Sydney Williams, and other wire service reporters. In some instances these reports are conflicting—only Harpman was aboard Trudy's vessel and had access to her—and I have tended to give her reports a bit more credence, all the while keeping in mind that they were ghostwritten and designed to present Trudy Ederle in the best possible light. Plotting her specific route across the Channel proved to be a particular challenge, as various bulletins and reports do not always coincide with one another, various observers were themselves not always well versed in the language of the sea, and many were seasick at the time.

Contemporary reports time Trudy's crossing as fourteen hours and thirty-one minutes. Subsequently, and for no reason I could determine, heir "official" time as maintained by the Channel Swimming Association has since been adjusted to fourteen hours thirty-nine minutes. I have chosen to use the earlier figure throughout.

23. Kingsdown

Although newsreel footage and photographs exist that purport to show Trudy reaching the beach at Kingsdown, no such documentations exists—most assuredly, Trudy Ederle reached shore at night.

24. Shore

Julia Harpman's reporting about the events of the first few days following Trudy's success and her return to American aboard the
Berengaria
were invaluable. The impromptu press conference at the hotel the morning after Trudy reached Kingsdown exists in the film
Girl Conquers the Channel,
as does her return to the water later that afternoon.

25. Swept Away

Whelan's biography,
Mr. New York,
cited above, provides a detailed, inside account of her reception in New York, supplementing the already detailed coverage that appeared in New York newspapers at the time.

Although Trudy shied away from the spotlight in her later years, she still gave the occasional interview or was the subject of a feature profile. The most valuable of these, as well as other notable articles that were particularly useful, are listed below:

Anderson, Kelli. "Young Woman and the Sea."
Sports Illustrated,
November 29, 1999.