Gertrude Ederle Gertrude Ederle You are here: Home » Gertrude Ederle Go Gertrude Ederle completes the first successful crossing from England to France. A choppy, calculated Channel adventure in "The Great Swim" By Ginny Merdes Special to The Seattle Times "THE GREAT SWIM" Gertrude Ederle, the first woman to complete an English Channel swim, greased her body to stay warm. "The Great Swim" by Gavin Mortimer. Walker & Co., 336 pp., $24.95 Twenty-one miles of cold choppy water. The channel separating England and France has historically challenged the elite distance swimmer. Until 1926, no female swimmer had successfully crossed the English Channel, though some made brave attempts, including 18-year-old Gertrude Ederle, who made her first try in 1925. The following year, Ederle, three other American women, British citizen Mercedes Gleitze and others set their sights on being the first woman to cross the English Channel. In "The Great Swim," Gavin Mortimer re-creates the race and the times.

What he does best is show how a handful of U.S. newspapers and their journalists created a public frenzy surrounding the event. The American press proved that photos of women in swimsuits did sell newspapers. Using archival press reports and interviews, Mortimer recalls the America of the 1920s and the place of American women of that era. Flappers who bobbed their hair and shortened their skirts were looked down on. Women were considered the weaker sex. Still, the lure of competition and the lust for the distinction of an American achieving a "first" captivated readers. Mortimer provides background for each U.S. competitor. A New Yorker whose father owned a butcher shop, Ederle brought to the channel her experience as a serious swimmer and the bravado of youth: "I want to be the first woman to swim from France to England." She was hired to write an exclusive column during her training for the Chicago Tribune-Daily News syndicate. Clarabelle Barrett, another New Yorker, was interested in money, not fame. She needed to pay for singing lessons to achieve her dream of becoming a professional singer. Barrett was part of a national movement to get American female swimmers into the Olympic Games.

Lillian Cannon, of Baltimore, used an 11-hour swim in Chesapeake Bay to train for the channel crossing. She wrote a chatty column for the Baltimore Sun, helping newspapers fuel a rivalry between her and Ederle. Mille Gade grew up in Denmark, moved to New York and quickly became head swimming instructor at the Harlem YMCA. In the channel frenzy, Gade promoted herself as the swimming mother of two. All the channel swimmers had separate trainers, support staff and calculators of the best tide and weather conditions. Each picked a time to attempt a crossing based on advice from trainers. Cannon was the first American to attempt the crossing that summer of 1926. She failed, but turned out to cheer on Ederle when she made her attempt days later. The book's cover photograph of Ederle wearing a swim cap and a smile announces the winner to all readers. And although Mortimer's overuse of partial quotes and clips makes his story choppy, in his re-creation of Ederle's crossing you can't help but feel cold, wet and exhausted.

Ederle overcame bad weather and an unexpected tide change to win, prompting her trainer William Burgess to exclaim, "No man or woman ever made such a swim. It is past human understanding." In fact, Ederle's time — 14 hours and 39 minutes — beat the male record by a full two hours. Her triumph was as an athlete, no asterisk for gender. Mortimer quotes writer Heywood Broun on Ederle's crossing: "When Gertrude Ederle struck out from France she left behind her a world which has believed for a great many centuries that woman is the weaker vessel ...

And when her toes touched the sands of England, she stepped out of the water and into a brand-new world." Copyright © 2008 The Seattle Times Company Excerpts From Histories Written About Gertrude Ederly: Swimmer Gertrude Ederle/Determination Helped Her Make A Record-Breaking English Channel Swim -- By Susan Vanghn, Investor's Business Daily, May 24, 2000 Gertrude Ederle sobbed bitterly as her swimming coach, Jabez Wolffe, pulled her out of the freezing waters of the English Channel on August 18, 1925. Had the 19-year-old Ederle, a New York resident, been able to make just seven more miles, she'd have become the first woman to have completed the gruelling 21-mile swim from France to England. But Wolffe, who had tried more than 20 times to conquer the Channel himself, believed Ederle was too nauseated to continue. His grabbing her disqualified her instantly. Ederle 's long-held dream was lost. The sponsorship money raised by the New York Women's Swimming Association had been spent in vain.

And the callous international press, which had boisterously asserted that no female could swim the Channel, gloated saucily. Hundreds had attempted the arduous Channel swim before Ederle. Only five men had made it all the way. What Mount Everest was to climbers, the English Channel was to long-distance swimmers. Its cold waters were subject to powerful currents, wind and fog. It brimmed with jellyfish and Portuguese men-of-war and occasionally was visited by sharks. If this weren't enough, the Channel was the world's busiest shipping lane, so swimmers had to watch out for giant freighters that might suddenly overtake them. After Ederle's aborted Channel swim, she returned to America shaken but not defeated. She spent the next few months plotting a new attempt. How could she raise enough money when sponsors would be reluctant to support a second attempt? Most important, what, if anything, could she do differently to turn her failure into success? 1. Ederle hired Thomas Burgess as her new swimming coach. He was one of the five men who'd made it across the Channel, although it took him 14 tries.

She realized that Burgess's victory gave him an understanding that only four other swimmers in the world possessed. 2. Yet even with Burgess' expert guidance, Ederle knew she'd have to build mental toughness for her rematch against the sea. She needed to eliminate defeating memories of her last swim and muster as much encouragement as she could from family, friends and supporters. The young swimmer also planned a bold departure from tradition -- one that startled and amused sports writers. Although all five men who'd successfully swum the channel employed the breaststroke, Ederle had decided to try a new stroke called the crawl. Lastly, there was the question of money. The Chicago Tribune syndicate offered to finance Ederle's second attempt in return for an exclusive story. But if Ederle (who'd won three medals in the 1924 Olympics) accepted the paper's offer, she'd lose her amateur status and not be able to compete in the Olympics -- or any other amateur competition -- again. 3. Ederle decided to go for it.

On August 6, 1926, she put on an outfit designed for her by her most faithful supporter -- her older sister, Margaret -- consisting of a red bathing cap, two-piece bathing suit and goggles. Slathering herself with lanolin, petrolatum, olive oil and lard to protect against jellyfish and cold, Ederle encountered the 61-degree water at Cap GrisNez, France, at about 7 a.m. London bookies had set a 5-1 odds against her. On the tug Alsace were Ederle's father and sister, her new coach and a gaggle of supporters. Photographers and journalist followed on a second boat. To keep her spirits up and stay focused on her goal -- which could take hours to achieve -- Ederle used humour. When she found herself anxious or stroking too fast, she sang "Let Me Call You Sweetheart" and set her strokes to the song's waltzing beat. When the weather turned fierce and 20-foot swells began to batter her, she combated her fears by listening to reporters' off-key renditions of "Yes We Have No Bananas" and "East Side, West Side." 4.

Hours into the swim, Ederle's left leg grew numb, and she had trouble kicking. The sea swells and currents had become so powerful that, for every yard she progressed, she was pushed back two. Both her father and coach leaned over the boat and pleaded with her: "You must come out." But this time, Ederle remained in control. "No, no," she shouted back." "What for?" And she kept swimming. She decided she would finish the swim or drown. At 9:40 p.m., after more than 14 hours, Ederle reached the shores of Kingsdown, England, where hundreds of people holding flares had gathered to cheer her. Ederle had beaten the men's record by more than two hours. Her record would stand for 24 years. Later, experts estimated that, because of the rough waters, Ederle had swum 35 miles to cross the Channel's 21-mile width, notes David Adler in "America's Champion Swimmer: Gertrude Ederle." Her victory had momentous repercussions.

Citing her as their inspiration, more than 60,000 women earned American Red Cross swimming certificates during the 1920s. Ederle developed her "don't quit" philosophy as a child after a near-fatal drowning accident. While visiting her grandmother in Germany, 8-year-old Ederle tumbled into a pond and had to be rescued. The mishap frightened her terribly, but also motivated her to learn to swim. Her father tethered Ederle to a rope, and shouted encouragement as she awkwardly attempted to dog paddle in a river near the family's New Jersey summer cottage. With her father's encouragement, Ederle soon mastered swimming. She practiced diligently, and in a few months could outswim her peers. Once, after she'd joined the Women's Swimming Association in New York, a competing swimmer mocked the way Ederle was practicing a new stroke. Ederle refused to change her technique or feel the criticism's sting. She just practiced harder -- and used the new stroke to beat the girl. Her strategy helped her set 29 U.S. and world swimming records.

"When somebody tells me I cannot do something, that's when I do it," the 93-year-old Ederle recently told a New Jersey newspaper reporter at her nursing home in Wyckoff, N.J. where swimming certificates and old photos line the walls of her room. "Oh, it was a good life," Ederle said. "I was very happy when I was swimming. I could have gone on and on." A Mighty Big Splash By Denise Grady/The New York Times Book Review In August 1926, fighting rain, high winds and 20-foot waves, Gertrude Ederle became the first woman to swim the English Channel, Ederle, just 19, already held three Olympic medals and had set 29 American and world records. Her time for the channel, 14 hours 31 minutes, beat the men's record by nearly two hours and remained the women's record for 35 years. David A.

Adler's America's Champion Swimmer: Gertrude Ederle(Gulliver Books/Harcourt, $16; ages 5 to 9), illustrated with richly coloured acrylic paintings by Terry Widener, captures the highlights of Ederle's life in evocative images and telling details that will appeal to children. Widener's stylized, muscular figures, reminiscent of the American Scene art of Ederle's era, gain charm with each reading even though he paints Ederle with thunder thighs and dainty shoulders that are surely the reverse of a swimmer's proportions. In a method not described in any Red Cross manual, Ederle's father taught her to swim when she was 7 or 8 by tossing her into a river with a rope about her waist and ordering her to paddle. Within a few years she was winning medals. At the finish of her storm-tossed channel swim, thousands of people gathered on the coast in Kingsdown, England, to guide her ashore with flares and bonfires. What power Ederle had; what a joy it must have been to see her in the water. This book, though engaging, does not quite bring her to life.

The prose falls flat, or veers off into the language of a juvenile feminist tract. Ederle's own voice is missing. Adler looks at her from a distance, as if she was a historic figure, even though she is still alive, and in January, at 93, was well enough to be interviewed by a reporter. Older children will appreciate the details included in the author's notes at the end of the book: Ederle might have crossed the channel four hours faster had the weather been clear, and she lost much of her hearing after her swim. Her determination served her well seven years later when she fell, injuring her spine, and was not expected to walk again. She recovered after spending more than four years in a cast, and went on to become a dress designer and a swimming teacher for deaf children. Excerpts from: History of Open-Water Marathon Swimming A swim that hasn’t been seen in nearly a century had an interesting beginning around 1910. The swim is from the Battery to Sandy Hook, NJ, a distance of 22 miles. Charles Durborow from Philadelphia had made 3 attempts, trying both directions and even coming as close as ½ mile from finishing once.

Life Saving Commodore Alfred Brown began experimenting with the swim in 1913. His first attempt on August 4th wound up in failure when pollution consisting of tar, oil, other rubbish and driftwood from Bayonne prevented him from continuing the swim. This is the first known time that pollution was sited as a reason to cancel a swim. He eventually was successful, completing the swim on August 28, 1913 in a time of 13:38. He was accompanied in a launch by Paul Frommlach, Charles Kaufman, James Kennedy, and John Reuschett. This was his fourth attempt in less than a month. His persistence paid off with his becoming the first to successfully complete the course. His dance on top of the marathon-swimming world, which the press bestowed upon him, was short lived. Two weeks later, Samuel Richards from Boston came to New York with a seven-man support crew from the L Street Swimming Club. They took a rowboat and scouted the swim out plotting their attack.

On September 14, 1913, he dove off Battery pier at 6:40 AM and finished in 8:12, taking more than 5 hours off Alfred Brown’s time. This was considered a spectacular swim but what had confounded all the previous swimmers, the tides and opposing currents were second nature to Richards who did his training in Boston among the Harbor Islands. Charles Durborow felt insulted by the success of his contemporaries and issued a challenge to race Richards but his one condition was that it couldn’t be in Boston Harbor. So many challenges arose over this course that the next phase of the swim was a natural. The American Life Saving Society proposed a marathon-swimming contest from the Battery to Sandy Hook, which wound up being sponsored annually by a New York newspaper, the New York Herald Tribune. One reason the paper sponsored the race was because the publisher was Odgen Reid, a NYAC member who while at Yale University was captain of their swimming and water polo teams. The first race was held July 19, 1914 from the Battery, NY, to Sandy Hook, NJ, a distance of twenty-two miles.

The race was promoted by the newspaper and claimed it to be the greatest contest of its kind ever held in the country. The race was won by George R. Meehan, age 23, of Boston in a time of 7:18. He was followed by two other finishers: Samuel Richards in 8:19 and Walter Dunn in 8:39 both, also, from Boston. The only other finisher of 31 starters was Charles Durborow of Philadelphia in last place; this swim settled the issue of who was the better distance swimmer. George F. Esselborn of New York led in the early stages of the race until the Narrows when Meehan challenged for the lead. Meehan was using the sidestroke when he overtook Esselborn who was using the trudgeon stoke. The start was from Pier A of the Battery at 4:55am into a weak flood tide that didn’t end until 9am. In the same swim season, Nell Kenney, age 27, of Sydney, Australia, successfully swam the distance in 9:35 on September 21, 1914.

She swam solo but had witnesses to authenticate the swim as she had arrived in the United States too late to participate in the first swimming race over this course. In 1916, a young man named Robert Dowling placed 6th in that year’s marathon swim. This young man had already made his mark on the marathon-swimming world the previous year. On June 14th, 1925, Gertrude Ederle set a world record for the 150-yard freestyle in the Olympic Pool in Long Beach, Long Island. In a time of 1 minute 42.6 seconds, she took a full second off the record, which she had set in February. The next day, in a tune up for her English Channel attempt, she set the course record for the Battery to Sandy Hook swim of 7:11 on June 15, 1925. The next day she left for England for her 1st English Channel attempt. She started the swim at 4:42 am at the Battery. The course took her down Buttermilk Channel on the east side of Governors Island.

The current wasn’t finished flooding at this point and she had a slug of it. She would occasionally switch over from the eight-beat crawl to using the sidestroke or breaststroke to talk with the crew during the swim. Conrad Hahn of Jersey City and Walter Wendt of Hoboken were the oarsmen on a rowboat accompanying her. She took no food or drinks during the swim and was slightly bothered by the salt water in her eyes. As of the close of the 2005 marathon season, Gertrude Ederle still holds the course record for the Battery to Sandy Hook swim. This is akin to finding out Babe Ruth still holds a record in baseball. What is this swim like? You leave the Battery at the beginning of an ebb current, striking out for a safe passage down through Lower New York Harbor. You pass just off shore of Governor’s Island. Then you pass among the ships at anchor just off the main channel by Brooklyn. By this time the current has picked up speed and you are going so fast it looks like you are going to crash into Staten Island. At some point, you’ve crossed over the main channel and are now cruising past Staten Island.

You go under the Verrazano Bridge high above your head and before you is the Atlantic Ocean getting wider every minute. You stay in the current and pull away from New York, on your right you see the Highlands and below them is the Hook. About this time, as you’ve drawn near to Sandy Hook, the tide turns and you’ve a two mile slug to shore. It’s carrying you into Raritan Bay and you swim with everything left. You can’t take a break here as the current will sweep you pass the Hook. The hours have ticked by and now the precious minutes wind down to the 7th hour and the 11th minute that a seventeen-year old girl in 1925, holder of 29 national and world records, took to complete this swim. It’s been 80 years since anyone has swum this course. Except for Gertrude Ederle, interest in the swim waned when the New York Tribune stop publishing in 1924.

Gertrude Ederle becomes first woman to swim English Channel - Aug 06, 1926 - HISTORY.com Gertrude Ederle becomes first woman to swim English Channel Share this: Gertrude Ederle becomes first woman to swim English Channel Author Gertrude Ederle becomes first woman to swim English Channel URL Publisher A+E Networks On this day in 1926, on her second attempt, 19-year-old Gertrude Ederle becomes the first woman to swim the 21 miles from Dover, England, to Cape Griz-Nez across the English Channel, which separates Great Britain from the northwestern tip of France. Ederle was born to German immigrants on October 23, 1906, in New York City. She did not learn to swim until she was nine years old, and it was not until she was 15 that she learned proper form in the water. Just two years later, at the 1924 Paris Olympics, Ederle won a gold medal in the 4 x 100 meter relay and a bronze in the 100- and 400-meter freestyle races.

In June 1925, Ederle became the first woman to swim the length of New York Bay, breaking the previous men’s record by swimming from the New York Battery to Sandy Hook, New Jersey, in 7 hours 11 minutes. That same summer, Ederle made her first attempt at crossing the notoriously cold and choppy English Channel, but after eight hours and 46 minutes, her coach, Jabez Wolff, forced her to stop, out of concern that she was swallowing too much saltwater. Ederle disagreed and fired Wolff, replacing him with T.W. Burgess, a skilled Channel swimmer. On August 6, 1926, Ederle entered the water at Cape Gris-Nez in France at 7:08 a.m. to make her second attempt at the Channel. The water was predictably cold as she started out that morning, but unusually calm. Twice that day, however–at noon and 6 p.m.–Ederle encountered squalls along her route and Burgess urged her to end the swim.

Ederle’s father and sister, though, who were riding in the boat along with Burgess, agreed with Ederle that she should stay the course. Ederle’s father had promised her a new roadster at the conclusion of the swim, and for added motivation he called out to her in the water to remind her that the roadster was only hers if she finished. Ederle persevered through storms and heavy swells, and, finally, at 9:04 p.m. after 14 hours and 31 minutes in the water, she reached the English coast, becoming the sixth person and first woman to swim the Channel successfully. Furthermore, she had bettered the previous record by two hours. Afterward, Ederle told Alec Rutherford of The New York Times, “I knew it could be done, it had to be done, and I did it.” Ederle’s feat was celebrated by a ticker-tape parade in New York City, and she received congratulations from fans ranging from the mayor of New York City to Henry Sullivan, the first American man ever to swim the Channel.

Ederle damaged her hearing during the Channel swim, and went on to spend much of her adult life teaching deaf children in New York City to swim. She died in 2003 at the age of 98. Related Videos Dover Solo - Gertrude Ederle Gertrude Ederle Swimmer Gertrude Ederle/Determination Helped Her Make A Record-Breaking English Channel Swim By Susan Vanghn, Investor's Business Daily, May 24, 2000 Gertrude Ederle sobbed bitterly as her swimming coach, Jabez Wolffe, pulled her out of the freezing waters of the English Channel on August 18, 1925. Had the 19-year-old Ederle, a New York resident, been able to make just seven more miles, she'd have become the first woman to have completed the grueling 21-mile swim from France to England. But Wolffe, who had tried more than 20 times to conquer the Channel himself, believed Ederle was too nauseated to continue. His grabbing her disqualified her instantly. Ederle 's long-held dream was lost.

The sponsorship money raised by the New York Women's Swimming Association had been spent in vain. And the callous international press, which had boisterously asserted that no female could swim the Channel, gloated saucily. Hundreds had attempted the arduous Channel swim before Ederle. Only five men had made it all the way. What Mount Everest was to climbers, the English Channel was to long-distance swimmers. Its cold waters were subject to powerful currents, wind and fog. It brimmed with jellyfish and Portuguese men-of-war and occasionally was visited by sharks. If this weren't enough, the Channel was the world's busiest shipping land, so swimmers had to watch out for giant freighters that might suddenly overtake them. After Ederle's aborted Channel swim, she returned to America shaken but not defeated. She spent the next few months plotting a new attempt. How could she raise enough money when sponsors would be reluctant to support a second attempt? Most important, what, if anything, could she do differently to turn her failure into success? 1. Ederle hired Thomas Burgess as her new swimming coach. He was one of the five men who'd made it across the Channel, although it took him 14 tries.

She realized that Burgess''victory gave him an understanding that only four other swimmers in the world possessed. (Should be: Burgess's victory) 2. Yet even with Burgess'expert guidance, Ederle knew she'd have to build mental toughness for her rematch against the sea. She needed to eliminate defeating memories of her last swim and muster as much encouragement as she could from family, friends and supporters. (Space needed) The young swimmer also planned a bold departure from tradition -- one that startled and amused sports writers. Although all five men who'd successfully swum the channel employed the breaststroke, Ederle had decided to try a new stroke called the crawl. Lastly, there was the question of money. The Chicago Tribune syndicate offered to finance Ederle's second attempt to return for an exclusive story. But if Ederle (who'd won three medals in the 1924 Olympics) accepted the paper's offer, she'd lose her amateur status and not be able to compete in the Olympics -- or any other amateur competition -- again. 3. Ederle decided to go for it.

On August 6, 1926, she put on an outfit designed for her by her most faithful supporter -- her older sister, Margaret -- consisting of a red bathing cap, two-piece bathing suit and goggles. Slathering herself with lanolin, petrolatum, olive oil and lard to protect against jellyfish and cold, Ederle encountered the 61-degree water at Cape GrisNez, France, at about 7 a.m. London bookies had set a 5-1 odds against her. (Space needed) On the tug Alsace were Ederle's father and sister, her new coach and a gaggle of supporters. Photographers and journalist followed on a second boat. To keep her spirits up and stay focused on her goal -- which could take hours to achieve -- Ederle used humor. When she found herself anxious or stroking too fast, she sang "Let Me Call You Sweetheart" and set her strokes to the song's waltzing beat. When the weather turned fierce and 20-foot swells began to batter her, she combated her fears by listening to reporters' off-key renditions of "Yes We Have No Bananas" and "East Side, West Side." 4.

Hours into the swim, Ederle's left leg grew numb, an she had trouble kicking. The sea swells and currents had become so powerful that, for every yard she progressed, she was pushed back two. Both her father and coach leaned over the boat and pleaded with her: "You must come out." (Should be: and) But this time, Ederle remained in control. "No, no," she shouted back." "What for?" And she kept swimming. She decided she would finish the swim or drown. At 9:40 p.m., after more than 14 hours, Ederle reached the shores of Kingsdown, England, where hundreds of people holding flares had gathered to cheer her. Ederle had beaten the men's record by more than two hours. Her record would stand for 24 years. Later, experts estimated that, because of the rough waters, Ederle had swum 35 miles to cross the Channel's 21-mile width, notes David Adler in "America's Champion Swimmer: Gertrude Ederle." Her victory had momentous repercussions.

Citing her as their inspiration, more than 60,000 women earned American Red Cross swimming certificates during the 1920s. Ederle developed her "don't quit" philosophy as a child after a near-fatal drowning accident. While visiting her grandmother in Germany, 8-year-old Ederle tumbled into a pond and had to be rescued. The mishap frightened her terribly, but also motivated her to learn to swim. Her father tethered Ederle to a rope, and shouted encouragement as she awkwardly attempted to dog paddle in a river near the family's New Jersey summer cottage. With her father's encouragement, Ederle soon mastered swimming. She practiced diligently, and in a few months could outswim her peers. Once, after she'd joined the Women's Swimming Association in New York, a competing swimmer mocked the way Ederle was practicing a new stroke. Ederle refused to change her technique or feel the criticism's sting. She just practiced harder -- and used the new stroke to beat the girl. Her strategy helped her set 29 U.S. and world swimming records.

"When somebody tells me I cannot do something, that's when I do it," the 93-year-old Ederle recently told a New Jersey newspaper reporter at her nursing home in Wyckoff, N.J. where swimming certificates and old photos line the walls of her room. "Oh, it was a good life," Ederle said. "I was very happy when I was swimming. I could have gone on and on." A Mighty Big Splash By Denise Grady/The New York Times Book Review In August 1926, fighting rain, high winds and 20-foot waves, Gertrude Ederle became the first woman to swim the English Channel, Ederle, just 19, already held three Olympic medals and had set 29 American and world records. Her time for the channel, 14 hours 31 minutes, beat the men's record by nearly two hours and remained the women's record for 35 years. David A.

Adler's America's Champion Swimmer: Gertrude Ederle (Gulliver Books/Harcourt, $16; ages 5 to 9), illustrated with richly colored acrylic paintings by Terry Widener, captures the highlights of Ederle's life in evocative images and telling details that will appeal to children. Widener's stylized, muscular figures, reminiscent of the American Scene art of Ederle's era, gain charm with each reading even though he paints Ederle with thunder thighs and dainty shoulders that are surely the reverse of a swimmer's proportions. In a method not described in any Red Cross manual, Ederle's father taught her to swim when she was 7 or 8 by tossing her into a river with a rope about her waist and ordering her to paddle. Within a few years she was winning medals. At the finish of her storm-tossed channel swim, thousands of people gathered on the coast in Kingsdown, England, to guide her ashore with flares and bonfires. What power Ederle had; what a joy it must have been to see her in the water. This book, though engaging, does not quite bring her to life.

The prose falls flat, or veers off into the language of a juvenile feminist tract. Ederle's own voice is missing. Adler looks at her from a distance, as if she were a historic figure, even though she is still alive, and in January, at 93, was well enough to be interviewed by a reporter. Older children will appreciate the details included in the author's notes at the end of the book: Ederle might have crossed the channel four hours faster had the weather been clear, and she lost much of her hearing after her swim. Her determination served her well seven years later when she fell, injuring her spine, and was not expected to walk again. She recovered after spending more than four years in a cast, and went on to become a dress designer and a swimming teacher for deaf children. ©Copyright 1999-2000, Marcia Cleveland and DevPlan, Inc.

All Rights Reserved Gertrude Ederle, the First Woman to Swim Across the English Channel, Dies at 98 - The New York Times The New York Times Sports |Gertrude Ederle, the First Woman to Swim Across the English Channel, Dies at 98 Search Gertrude Ederle, the First Woman to Swim Across the English Channel, Dies at 98 By RICHARD SEVERO Continue reading the main story Gertrude Ederle, who was called ''America's best girl'' by President Calvin Coolidge in 1926 after she became the first woman to swim across the English Channel, died yesterday at a nursing home in Wyckoff, N.J. She was 98. Ederle was a symbol of the Roaring 20's, a decade given as much to heroics as to materialism. For a time, her accomplishment put her in the public's affection at the level of Babe Ruth, Jack Dempsey, Bill Tilden and Red Grange. Ederle did not sustain the lofty place in history of another hero of the 1920's, Charles A.

Lindbergh, who crossed the Atlantic a year after her historic swim, or of the golden athletes who appeared regularly before the public and kept their fame alive. But her feat, which she did only once and under horrendous conditions, made a memorable contribution in an age when many found it difficult to take female athletes seriously. They had to take Ederle seriously, because she beat the records of the five men who had previously made the swim from 1875 to 1923. Continue reading the main story Years later, after other men and women had successfully swum the Channel, Grover A. Whalen, New York City's official greeter, said that of all the celebrities he had welcomed to town, he could not recall one that made the impact of Ederle at her homecoming. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Ederele was born Oct. 23, 1905, in New York City, one of four daughters and two sons of Henry Ederle, a butcher and provisioner, and his wife, Anna. Her father owned a summer cottage in Highlands, N.J., and she learned to swim on the Jersey Shore.

She called herself a ''water baby'' and said that over the years, she was ''happiest between the waves.'' But she developed a hearing problem when she was 5, after a bout with the measles. ''The doctors told me my hearing would get worse if I continued swimming, but I loved the water so much, I just couldn't stop,'' she said. In the early 1920's, as a competitive swimmer, she set women's world freestyle records and American freestyle records for various distances from 100 to 800 meters. In a single afternoon in 1922, she broke seven such records at Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. Between 1921 and 1925, she held 29 amateur national and world records. In what might have been an anticipation of her Channel swim, she swam more than 16 miles through tricky currents between the Battery and Sandy Hook, N.J. In 1924, she was a member of the United States team that competed in the Olympics in Paris.

She won a gold medal as part of the 400-meter freestyle relay, and she won the bronze medal in the 100 and 400 individual freestyle events. It was no small accomplishment. She was swimming with an injured knee and, together with the other female athletes from the United States, she had an added handicap of fatigue. They were put up in hotels far away from the center of Paris because United States officials did not want them contaminated with what they saw as the city's bohemian morality. Ederle and her teammates had to travel five to six hours each day to practice in the Olympic pool. After Paris, she began to focus on the English Channel. The first person to swim it was Matthew Webb of England, who in 1875 made it in 21 hours 45 minutes. Of the four other men who succeeded before Ederle, none were faster than 16 hours 33 minutes. One swimmer, Henry Sullivan of the United States, required 26 hours 50 minutes. Ederle first tried to swim the Channel in 1925. The Women's Swimming Association provided the financial backing.

But after she swam 23 miles in 8 hours 43 minutes, the people in a boat who were supposed to look after her thought she might be unconscious in the water. Somebody yelled, ''She's drowning!'' and they touched her, which immediately disqualified her. A perturbed Ederle insisted that she had not been drowning at all, only resting, and that she could have easily continued. ''All I could wonder was, 'What will they think of me back in the States?' '' she said. She vowed to try it again and told her father and everyone else involved that no matter how she looked in the water, she did not want to be touched. Advertisement Continue reading the main story She decided not to ask the Women's Swimming Association to back her a second time and raised the needed $9,000 herself. With the help of her sister Margaret, she designed a two-piece bathing suit that would not drag in the water, yet would be ''decent in case I failed and they had to drag me out,'' she said. Shortly after 7 a.m. on Aug.

6, 1926, Ederle, smeared with sheep grease, waded into the English Channel at Cape Gris-Nez, France. She could see a red ball on the French shore, a warning to small craft to avoid a sea that promised to be very choppy. ''Please, God, help me,'' she said. Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up Privacy Policy For a while, she said she sang ''Let Me Call You Sweetheart'' to the rhythm of her stroke. In the boat that moved with her, the crew occasionally held up signs, which said things like ''one wheel,'' ''two wheels,'' enumerating parts of a car, because she had been promised a red roadster if she was successful. Fourteen hours 31 minutes later, a world record, Ederle reached Kingsdown on the English coast. If she had been able to swim in a straight line, it would have been a 21-mile trip. But the sea was so rough, she swam no less than 35 miles.

Ederle always held that her record was never broken, even though in 1950, another American, Florence Chadwick, swam the Channel in 13 hours 20 minutes. That was in a relatively calm sea, Ederle said, so it was not a fair comparison. She was not prepared for the ticker-tape parade that New York gave her through its financial district on Aug. 27, 1926, in which an estimated two million people turned out and chanted, ''Trudy! Trudy!'' even though her family had always called her ''Gertie.'' She had to be rushed into Mayor Jimmy Walker's office in City Hall when exuberant crowds stormed the doors. She was also not prepared for the adulation she received in the weeks to come, when somebody wrote a song titled, ''Tell Me, Trudy, Who Is Going to Be the Lucky One?'' Men were proposing to her by mail almost every week.

Coolidge invited her to the White House, called her ''America's best girl,'' and said to her, ''I am amazed that a woman of your small stature should be able to swim the English Channel.'' It was a curious observation; Ederle weighed 142 pounds and soon became an adviser to a manufacturer of dresses for large women. She was invited to join a touring vaudeville act, and there were reports that she earned $2,000 or $3,000 a week. She went to Hollywood and made a 10-minute movie about herself, for which she was paid $8,000. Various groups wanted her to speak, and the marriage proposals kept coming. ''I finally got the shakes,'' she told an interviewer years later. ''I was just a bundle of nerves. I had to quit the tour and I was stone deaf.'' The hearing problem she had since childhood was made much worse by the Channel swim. Ederle had what was later described as a nervous breakdown. Her encroaching deafness made her shy away from people.

In 1929, she was ''practically engaged'' to one man, and suggested to him that it might be difficult being married to a woman who could not hear well. He agreed and vanished. After he left her, she said: ''There never was anyone else. I just didn't want to get hurt again.'' Advertisement Continue reading the main story As the years passed, the public made fewer demands on her. The proposals stopped. In 1933, she slipped on broken tiles in the stairwell of the apartment building in which she lived, injured her back and was in a cast for four years. Doctors told her she would neither walk nor swim again, but in 1939 she appeared in Billy Rose's Aquacade at the New York World's Fair. Over the years, it sometimes seemed that journalists alone remembered her, and they wrote articles commemorating the 5th, 10th, 15th, 20th and 25th anniversaries of her Channel swim. She always obliged with an interview but detested the articles that tried to make her pitiable.

''Don't weep for me, don't write any sob stories,'' she told The New York Times in 1956. When World War II began, Ederle took a job working for an airline at La Guardia Airport. She checked flight instruments used by airplanes and loved the work, she said. She quit after the war, when told she could keep the job if she moved to Tulsa, Okla. For many years, she taught swimming to children at the Lexington School for the Deaf in New York. She did not know sign language but was able to demonstrate to them in the water what they should know about swimming. Her own deafness continued to worsen. Although she claimed she had saved and invested well, she never made the huge amounts of money that came to celebrities in later generations. She earned some money in the 1950's lending her name to a bacteria-free swimming pool, but her income over the years was modest. Ederle lived for many years in Flushing, Queens, with two female companions. She is survived by 10 nephews and nieces. ''I have no complaints,'' Ederle told one interviewer. ''I am comfortable and satisfied.

I am not a person who reaches for the moon as long as I have the stars.''

Question: Gertrude Ederle in August 1926 was the first woman to do what?
Answer: Swim the Channel