GERTRUDE EDERLE
Name: Gertrude Ederle
Born: 23 October 1905
Died: 30 November 2003
Gertrude Caroline Ederle (October 23, 1905 – November 30, 2003) was an American
competitive swimmer. In 1926, she became the first woman to swim across the
English Channel.
Gertrude was the daughter of a German immigrant who ran a delicatessen on
Amsterdam Avenue in Manhattan. She was known as Trudy as a youth; her father
gave her permission to bob her hair if she expressed an interest in swimming.
She trained at the Men's Swimming Association which produced such competitors as
Eleanor Holm and Esther Williams. She joined the club when she was only thirteen.
From this time Gertrude began to break and establish more amateur records than
any other woman in the world.
At the 1924 Summer Olympics, she won a gold medal as a part of the US 400-meter
freestyle relay team and bronze medals for finishing third in the 100-meter and
400-meter freestyle races.
In 1925, Ederle swam a 21-mile crossing across Lower New York Bay, from
Manhattan to Sandy Hook, taking over seven hours. Later that year, she made her
first attempt at swimming the Channel, but she was disqualified when a trainer
grabbed her after she began coughing.
Her famous cross-channel swim began at Cap Gris-Nez in France at 07:05 on the
morning of August 6, 1926. Fourteen hours and 30 minutes later, she came ashore
at Kingsdown, England. Her record stood until Florence Chadwick swam the channel
in 1950 in 13 hours and 20 minutes.
Gertrude possessed a contract from both the New York Daily News and Chicago
Tribune when she attempted the Channel swim a second time. The money she
received paid her expenses and provided her with a modest salary. It also gave
her a bonus in exchange for exclusive rights to her personal story. The Journal
News and the Chicago Tribune got the jump on every other newspaper in America.
Another American swimmer in France in 1926 to try and swim the Channel was
Lillian Cannon from Baltimore. She was sponsored by the Baltimore Post and this
led to much rivalry between her and Ederle in the weeks spent training off the
French coast. In addition to Cannon, two other American women - Clarabelle
Barrett and Mille Gade - were training in England with the goal of becoming the
first woman to swim the Channel. Barrett and Cannon were unsuccessful but three
weeks after Ederle's feat, Gade crossed in a time that was 50 minutes slower.
The people alongside Ederle aboard the tug on August 6, 1926 included her father
and one of her sisters, Margaret, and Julie Harpman, a writer for the New York
Daily News, the paper that sponsored Ederle's swim. Harpman refused to allow any
other reporters on the tug - in order to protect her 'scoop' - and as a result a
second tug was hired by the disgruntled reporters. On several occasions during
the swim this tug deliberately came in close to Ederle in the hope she would
touch it and thereby be disqualified. Fortunately, Ederle didn't, but the
incident caused much bitterness subsequently. It also led to accusations in the
British press, that the two tugs had in fact sheltered Ederle from the bad
weather and thus made her swim 'easier'.
During her twelfth hour at sea, Gertrude had become so bothered by unfavorable
winds that her trainer, Thomas Burgess, called to her Gertie, you must come out!
The exhausted swimmer lifted her head from the choppy waters and replied, What
for?
Only five men had been able to swim the English Channel before Ederle. The best
time had been 16 hours, 33 minutes by an Italian-born Argentine, Enrique
Tiraboschi. Ederle walked up the beach at Dover, England after 14 hours and 31
minutes. The first person to greet her was a British immigration officer who
requested a passport from "the bleary-eyed, waterlogged teenager."
Parade for Ederle, coming up Broadway
When Ederle returned home, she was greeted with a ticker-tape parade in New York
City. She went on to play herself in a movie (Swim Girl, Swim) and tour the
vaudeville circuit, including Billy Rose's Aquacade. She met President Coolidge
and had a song and a dance step named for her. Unfortunately, her manager,
through a combination of incompetence and duplicity, mishandled her showbiz
career and Ederle failed to reap the rewards she deserved.
She was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame in 1965.
Ederle had poor hearing since childhood due to measles, and by the 1940s she was
completely deaf. She spent the rest of her life teaching swimming to deaf
children. She died on November 30, 2003 in her hometown of Wyckoff, New Jersey,
at the age of 98 and was interred in the Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New
York.
Name: Gertrude Ederle
Born: 23 October 1905
Died: 30 November 2003
Gertrude Caroline Ederle (October 23, 1905 – November 30, 2003) was an American
competitive swimmer. In 1926, she became the first woman to swim across the
English Channel.
Gertrude was the daughter of a German immigrant who ran a delicatessen on
Amsterdam Avenue in Manhattan. She was known as Trudy as a youth; her father
gave her permission to bob her hair if she expressed an interest in swimming.
She trained at the Men's Swimming Association which produced such competitors as
Eleanor Holm and Esther Williams. She joined the club when she was only thirteen.
From this time Gertrude began to break and establish more amateur records than
any other woman in the world.
At the 1924 Summer Olympics, she won a gold medal as a part of the US 400-meter
freestyle relay team and bronze medals for finishing third in the 100-meter and
400-meter freestyle races.
In 1925, Ederle swam a 21-mile crossing across Lower New York Bay, from
Manhattan to Sandy Hook, taking over seven hours. Later that year, she made her
first attempt at swimming the Channel, but she was disqualified when a trainer
grabbed her after she began coughing.
Her famous cross-channel swim began at Cap Gris-Nez in France at 07:05 on the
morning of August 6, 1926. Fourteen hours and 30 minutes later, she came ashore
at Kingsdown, England. Her record stood until Florence Chadwick swam the channel
in 1950 in 13 hours and 20 minutes.
Gertrude possessed a contract from both the New York Daily News and Chicago
Tribune when she attempted the Channel swim a second time. The money she
received paid her expenses and provided her with a modest salary. It also gave
her a bonus in exchange for exclusive rights to her personal story. The Journal
News and the Chicago Tribune got the jump on every other newspaper in America.
Another American swimmer in France in 1926 to try and swim the Channel was
Lillian Cannon from Baltimore. She was sponsored by the Baltimore Post and this
led to much rivalry between her and Ederle in the weeks spent training off the
French coast. In addition to Cannon, two other American women - Clarabelle
Barrett and Mille Gade - were training in England with the goal of becoming the
first woman to swim the Channel. Barrett and Cannon were unsuccessful but three
weeks after Ederle's feat, Gade crossed in a time that was 50 minutes slower.
The people alongside Ederle aboard the tug on August 6, 1926 included her father
and one of her sisters, Margaret, and Julie Harpman, a writer for the New York
Daily News, the paper that sponsored Ederle's swim. Harpman refused to allow any
other reporters on the tug - in order to protect her 'scoop' - and as a result a
second tug was hired by the disgruntled reporters. On several occasions during
the swim this tug deliberately came in close to Ederle in the hope she would
touch it and thereby be disqualified. Fortunately, Ederle didn't, but the
incident caused much bitterness subsequently. It also led to accusations in the
British press, that the two tugs had in fact sheltered Ederle from the bad
weather and thus made her swim 'easier'.
During her twelfth hour at sea, Gertrude had become so bothered by unfavorable
winds that her trainer, Thomas Burgess, called to her Gertie, you must come out!
The exhausted swimmer lifted her head from the choppy waters and replied, What
for?
Only five men had been able to swim the English Channel before Ederle. The best
time had been 16 hours, 33 minutes by an Italian-born Argentine, Enrique
Tiraboschi. Ederle walked up the beach at Dover, England after 14 hours and 31
minutes. The first person to greet her was a British immigration officer who
requested a passport from "the bleary-eyed, waterlogged teenager."
Parade for Ederle, coming up Broadway
When Ederle returned home, she was greeted with a ticker-tape parade in New York
City. She went on to play herself in a movie (Swim Girl, Swim) and tour the
vaudeville circuit, including Billy Rose's Aquacade. She met President Coolidge
and had a song and a dance step named for her. Unfortunately, her manager,
through a combination of incompetence and duplicity, mishandled her showbiz
career and Ederle failed to reap the rewards she deserved.
She was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame in 1965.
Ederle had poor hearing since childhood due to measles, and by the 1940s she was
completely deaf. She spent the rest of her life teaching swimming to deaf
children. She died on November 30, 2003 in her hometown of Wyckoff, New Jersey,
at the age of 98 and was interred in the Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New
York.