Read Online Young Woman and the Sea: How Trudy Ederle Conquered the English Channel and Inspired the World by Glenn Stout - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Glenn Stout
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Cavill and his sons pioneered the sport in Australia and were among the first swimming instructors both to teach the trudgen stroke and begin to improve upon it.
At first Kellerman found swimming impossible, later writing, "My brothers and sisters had learned to swim in four or five lessons, but eighteen were required for me. Only a cripple can understand the intense joy that I experienced when little by little I found that my legs were growing stronger, and taking on the normal shape and normal powers with which legs of other youngsters were endowed." She advanced quickly, and by age of seventeen, in 1902, Kellerman was the 100-meter champion of New South Wales. The pretty young woman, with the support of her father, parlayed her local fame into a vaudeville routine, performing a mermaid show in a glass tank, swimming with fish. She then began making more public swims, such as one down Melbourne's Yarra River, and in 1904, at age eighteen, she traveled with her father to England, where they hoped she would find a larger audience for her mermaid show.
Yet once Kellerman arrived in England no one knew who she was. While the stodgy English public was titillated by her act, they also found it morally offensive and—publicly anyway—ignored her. To generate publicity Kellerman began making long-distance swims in the Thames and other bodies of water. That was more agreeable. A newspaper, the
Daily Mirror,
became intrigued and in 1905 sponsored Kellerman in an attempt to swim the English Channel, a publicity stunt that had little chance of success. To date, the Channel had been swum successfully only once before, by the Englishman Matthew Webb in 1875. Few men, and no women, had since come close to repeating Webb's feat.
Kellerman didn't have a chance but that really didn't matter. All during the summer of 1905 stories about Kellerman's training regimen appeared in the newspaper, many of them commenting on her beauty and accompanied by illustrations, making her a public figure. She made several attempts to swim the Channel, failing each time, although during one attempt she managed to stay in the water for an impressive six hours before being forced to quit due not only to seasickness, but chafing under her arms and on her thighs as a result of the rough surface of her woolen swim dress.
The attempts made her famous but also caused her to rebel. Men who tried to swim the Channel knew full well about the dangers of chafing and avoided it altogether by swimming in the nude. Kellerman decided that simply wasn't fair.
She didn't swim nude—not yet. But she did toss out her swimming dress with its long sleeves and skirt and bought a boys' one-piece suit, similar to a leotard. To this she sewed a pair of black silk stockings to the legs that covered her bare skin and nominally adhered to prevailing standards of modesty. She called her outfit the "one piece all over black diving suit." The public didn't care what it was called but couldn't take their eyes off her when she was wearing it, for the garment revealed as much as it concealed, accentuating and even enhancing every curve on Kellerman's already curvaceous body. In an instant Kellerman became the world's first sex symbol.
The impact on her career was instantaneous. She became a sensation and soon took her act to the United States, where she attracted a huge following. Her vaudeville show was an ingenious mixture of sex and sport. Kellerman revealed herself slowly. She first threw the diablo (a form of juggling), then put on an exhibition of swimming and diving in a glass tank before "dancing" behind a backlit curtain that etched her silhouette—and more—into the mind of every man who saw her performance. For publicity reasons Kellerman also continued to make long-distance open-water swims. At Revere Beach, just north of Boston, she created a huge scandal when, in an act of defiance that guaranteed her the front page, she removed the stockings from her suit, exposing her
At first Kellerman found swimming impossible, later writing, "My brothers and sisters had learned to swim in four or five lessons, but eighteen were required for me. Only a cripple can understand the intense joy that I experienced when little by little I found that my legs were growing stronger, and taking on the normal shape and normal powers with which legs of other youngsters were endowed." She advanced quickly, and by age of seventeen, in 1902, Kellerman was the 100-meter champion of New South Wales. The pretty young woman, with the support of her father, parlayed her local fame into a vaudeville routine, performing a mermaid show in a glass tank, swimming with fish. She then began making more public swims, such as one down Melbourne's Yarra River, and in 1904, at age eighteen, she traveled with her father to England, where they hoped she would find a larger audience for her mermaid show.
Yet once Kellerman arrived in England no one knew who she was. While the stodgy English public was titillated by her act, they also found it morally offensive and—publicly anyway—ignored her. To generate publicity Kellerman began making long-distance swims in the Thames and other bodies of water. That was more agreeable. A newspaper, the
Daily Mirror,
became intrigued and in 1905 sponsored Kellerman in an attempt to swim the English Channel, a publicity stunt that had little chance of success. To date, the Channel had been swum successfully only once before, by the Englishman Matthew Webb in 1875. Few men, and no women, had since come close to repeating Webb's feat.
Kellerman didn't have a chance but that really didn't matter. All during the summer of 1905 stories about Kellerman's training regimen appeared in the newspaper, many of them commenting on her beauty and accompanied by illustrations, making her a public figure. She made several attempts to swim the Channel, failing each time, although during one attempt she managed to stay in the water for an impressive six hours before being forced to quit due not only to seasickness, but chafing under her arms and on her thighs as a result of the rough surface of her woolen swim dress.
The attempts made her famous but also caused her to rebel. Men who tried to swim the Channel knew full well about the dangers of chafing and avoided it altogether by swimming in the nude. Kellerman decided that simply wasn't fair.
She didn't swim nude—not yet. But she did toss out her swimming dress with its long sleeves and skirt and bought a boys' one-piece suit, similar to a leotard. To this she sewed a pair of black silk stockings to the legs that covered her bare skin and nominally adhered to prevailing standards of modesty. She called her outfit the "one piece all over black diving suit." The public didn't care what it was called but couldn't take their eyes off her when she was wearing it, for the garment revealed as much as it concealed, accentuating and even enhancing every curve on Kellerman's already curvaceous body. In an instant Kellerman became the world's first sex symbol.
The impact on her career was instantaneous. She became a sensation and soon took her act to the United States, where she attracted a huge following. Her vaudeville show was an ingenious mixture of sex and sport. Kellerman revealed herself slowly. She first threw the diablo (a form of juggling), then put on an exhibition of swimming and diving in a glass tank before "dancing" behind a backlit curtain that etched her silhouette—and more—into the mind of every man who saw her performance. For publicity reasons Kellerman also continued to make long-distance open-water swims. At Revere Beach, just north of Boston, she created a huge scandal when, in an act of defiance that guaranteed her the front page, she removed the stockings from her suit, exposing her
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