Young Woman and the Sea: How Trudy Ederle Conquered the English Channel and Inspired the World (43 page)

Ederle read the paper, snorted, and then scratched his name along the bottom, the ink already beginning to smear in the rain. Burgess took the paper away.

But he did not stay away for long. A year before, despite everything, he had agreed with Wolffe and thought Trudy was done, and he thought so again, right now. And even though he had the piece of paper, he still did not want to lose the swimmer. He and Henry Ederle continued to argue, and as they did the argument grew louder, with those on the deck and elsewhere on the boat weighing in and choosing sides. Burgess tried pleading with Meg and with Julia, but Meg sided with her father and Julia was just a reporter, neutral, but rooting for her story. Almost everyone else, though, already wet and sick and cold and tired, thought Trudy was done and finished and that someone should touch her and pull her from the water.

Then someone broke away, someone ran over to the rail. Someone—no one ever said precisely who, perhaps Corthes or a member of his crew, worried about saving the boat—someone had enough. In the confusion one voice broke away and spoke out above all others, one voice from someone leaning over the rail, one voice that yelled out, over the sound of the wind and the rain and the engines and the argument, as Julia Harpman wrote later that day, "Someone, losing his head, shouted from the
Alsace.
"

Come on out, girl! Come on out!

She was fine. She was swimming, singing, and dancing. Fine and happy.
Fine.

Despite the wind and the rain, she was in that place, not thinking, swimming but not trying to swim, everything in rhythm. Please, God, help me. Let me call ... you sweetheart ... Yes, we have no... bananas.

There were bubbles before her face. All this time and her goggles had not leaked, not a drop, and the amber glass had turned the world gold. Sometimes as she swam she was lost in it, a world and sea and sky of amber and gold. She was numb, but not cold. She was fine.

She turned to breathe, and as her ear left the water she heard muffled new words from afar. The music in her mind faded.

"Come out, girl, come out of the water!"

She was back in an instant, rushing into her body, scratching the record off, adrenalin surging through her limbs. What!? Come out? Of what? She remembers. Oh yes, she remembers. She is in the water, swimming. In the English Channel. Swimming for her roadster, swimming for Mum, for Meg, and for Pop. She is fine, she tells herself, checking each part, arms and legs and lungs. She is fine, she is fine.

She turned on her back, to look at the boat and saw all the commotion on the deck—bodies scrambling over one another, pulling at one another, everyone leaning over the rail, and she heard the loud voices of the arguments and the anger and she saw hands reach out for her and beckon her and plead with her to leave the sea.

Then she rolled over, looked across over the golden sea and fixed her gaze through her goggles. She laughed to herself and floated for a moment, turning her head to look back at the boat.

Then Trudy smiled. It is too funny, really, all that commotion. Come out? Now, when she is having so much fun and is so happy? Come out? She said the first thing that popped into her head.

"What for?" she called out, her voice clear and strong and pure, a bell cutting through fog. "What for?"

Everyone stopped. They saw her smile and heard her voice and no one had an answer to her question. In the midst of such confusion, Trudy was all calm. The figures on the deck looked at one another. Pop and Meg smiled. Burgess looked incredulous, his face flushed. The boat lifted and fell. The girl in the water was in better condition than anyone on the boat.

Trudy Ederle turned back on her belly, raised an arm, and reached out. She laughed, took a deep breath, and looked ahead toward England.

She put her face back in the water, lifted an arm, kicked, and drew away. "What for?" she asked of the ocean. "What for?"

Soon, she was singing to herself again.

"Yes, we have no bananas, we have no bananas today."

Even in the dim light, through the mist and waves, she could see the far shore.

T
HAT WAS HER STORY
, Julia Harpman knew it. Trudy's wind-driven words hung in the air, two words no other reporter had heard, two words that said everything that needed to be said about Trudy, about this swim, and about whether women should compete in athletics.

"What for?" She wrote the words down in her notebook.

Why stop? What
for?
No one was going to tell Trudy to stop swimming—no one was going to tell any woman to stop swimming anymore. This time, Trudy was no puppet controlled by Jabez Wolffe or anyone else, not even her father. It was her decision, and her vote—earned by days and months and years in the water—and now, for maybe the first time ever, her vote was the only one that counted.

In an instant the unconquerable Channel was subdued, and the weather, while still atrocious, didn't matter anymore. With each stroke of her arms and kick of her legs Trudy was taming the Channel. There wasn't any question about it, not any more. Trudy wasn't coming out of the water, and if she didn't come out of the water, she was not going to fail.

With each stroke, that realization took hold among those on board the ship. No other swimmer who had ever taken on the Channel could have done it in these conditions, but no other swimmer had Trudy's strength and talent, or her mastery of the American crawl. Anyone else would have failed—anyone, woman or man.

For the next hour, gaining mere inches with each stroke, Trudy did a slow pivot around the South Goodwin lightship as the landmark moved from the stern to the starboard side of the
Alsace
and Corthes fought to keep his tug alongside the young woman. He couldn't protect her from the waves anymore, and even when he tried to do so, it had not helped that much in seas as rough as these. And now, as they crawled along, the waves seemed to be coming from everywhere at once. Corthes just tried to keep the tug nearby.

What for? In a matter of minutes Burgess went from exasperation and anger to anxiety, and, finally, as Trudy began pushing past the lightship, anchored only a hundred yards or away, to excitement and exhilaration. By God, she could make it! She
would
make it.

Trudy could barely hear, but he began shouting to her from the rail, screaming the words in the face of the wind as if he couldn't quite believe it himself, "You've got it now, Gertie, you've got it now!"

Pop Ederle joined in. "Don't forget," he bellowed into the teeth of the gale, "You don't get that roadster unless you get over!"

And then, that voice again, sure and strong.

"Pop! I will have that roadster."

Deal, England, Aug. 6.—(By the Associated Press)
—Caretakers aboard the light ship off Goodwin Sands about six miles from the English coast reported this evening that Gertrude Ederle was swimming strongly as she passed the ship in her channel swim.

They state the tide was in favor of success for the young American swimmer.

Dover, England, Aug 6—(By the United Press)
—Ederle five and a half miles from Dover and swimming strong at 7:10
P.M.

Still, there were hours and miles yet to go, and anyone who had ever swum the Channel or studied the Channel knew that the final two miles, the final mile, the last five hundred yards could be the worst, that dozens of swimmers before had made it
that
close and then been tossed back out, returning to shore exhausted, eyes downcast, failures.

Trudy just kept singing, not thinking, not worrying. She sang the words and talked to God and the sea as she swam, and imagined herself not in the Channel but sitting in the seat of that red roadster. She could see the sun gleaming off the hood of the car, and feel the way the gears shifted easily in her hands as the car skimmed down Broadway, Meg alongside her as she waved to everyone as she drove by, going fast.

Then she stopped. Trudy was back in the sea. Even though her arms and legs and face were numb and the cold was beginning to settle in as the last thin layers of grease that helped her retain some heat began to melt and wear and drift away, she could feel it again, the drift and pull of the moon.

The tide was changing—she could tell, and she tried to understand, because she knew that this was not the right time. It was still light and the tide should not be changing so soon, but it was. Instead of pushing her down the coast so she could swim with it, toward Dover, like a sailboat tacking before the breeze, the tide was turning back.

In a moment, Corthes and Burgess could tell too, as the tug began to be pushed back up the Channel. It was rare, but not unknown, a measure of the rough weather. The wind had blown so long and so strong that it held the waters at bay and kept the flood tide short. Now the ebb tide was beginning to run again, some two hours early.

It was that final tidal change, the one that had stopped so many swimmers so close to the end, closing off the shore like the a door slamming shut, sweeping them away from the coast at the last second and keeping their names off the list of Channel champions, sending them to the much longer ledger of those who had failed. That list read like the names of the dead after a great battle—Freyburg, Sion, Helmi, Barrett, Harrison, Kellerman, name after name after name, and none on that list more often than Wolffe and Burgess, each of whom tried and failed more than any other swimmers in history.

Until that moment, Burgess and Corthes had been taking aim at Saint Margaret's Bay, a small indentation in the coastline four miles to the east of Dover. Not only the nearest reasonable landing, it also offered some protection—if Trudy missed the mark and ran past the landing spot, there was still a fair chance she'd make land by Dover, or, in the worst-case scenario, by Folkestone, another peninsula jutting into the sea six miles to the west.

The premature tide, however, made that impossible. Trudy now needed to strike out for land almost immediately, across the current, before she was pushed past Deal and into the water of the North Sea. If she did not, her chances of making it to land—anywhere—were slim.

What she faced now was the absolute worst, the swimming equivalent of finishing the last few miles of a marathon in a full-blown sprint, lungs ready to burst and leg muscles on fire, and for anyone not named Trudy Ederle, just as unfeasible. But for the young woman who was in the sea, one more completely unattainable act, another hour or two of suffering, hardly seemed like too much to ask. Burgess leaned over the rail and tried to explain, but after sensing the change in the tide, Trudy was not surprised when he told her they were changing course.

All those hours and hours she had spent in the water for more than a decade, hours that kept her away from boys and dances, that caused her hearing to deteriorate even further, that took her from school, now she needed every minute and every second, all the strength and confidence she had built from a life spent half in the water. She needed it all.

It was not
that
unfamiliar. At nearly every distance she ever swam, when others tired, Trudy did not, and when others slowed down, Trudy did not. During the Day Cup swim, only four short years before, at the end, when Helen Wainwright and Hilda James and the others were weak, Trudy had been strong; when she swam to Sandy Hook, and Meg had yelled at her toward the end, she had sprinted and finished strong and broken the old record. And how many times had she been swimming in the Highlands with Meg and her friends, farther out than almost anyone, and when the time had come to return, Trudy had put her head down and aimed toward shore, like a motorboat, and passed everyone and beaten them to the beach, where she collapsed on the sand, out of breath and happy?

She had done this before, but now, just as the coast was coming into view and she drew closer, there was still one last obstacle. It was nearly dark—the lighthouse atop Saint Margaret's Bay flashed out across the water, and lights onshore began to twinkle on in the twilight.

All day long, wireless dispatches from both the
Alsace
and
La Morinie
had kept the world apprised of Trudy's progress, and now, with success at hand, the sailors aboard the South Goodwin lightship also sent word to shore that Ederle was nearing her goal. From Dover to Deal, residents of the south coast of England streamed to the shore to witness history, collecting in pockets atop the cliffs and on the narrow beaches. They scanned the seas for a sign of the tug, gathered driftwood in huge piles, and lit bonfires to ward off the chill. To the Ederles the red and blue and green flares out over the sea made it look like it was the Fourth of July at Highlands. Everyone hoped to spot the swimmer in the water and light the way to shore.

With each new report of her position the crowds picked up and moved farther up or down the coast, trying to anticipate her landing, hopscotching from Dover toward Deal, an entourage of cars and taxis full of families wearing slickers and carrying umbrellas. Local fishermen who had stayed in port all day due to the foul weather now launched their boats and likewise searched for the swimmer in the water. Even those who didn't come to the shore but stayed at home gathered around the radio or went to nearby pubs and raised a glass to her victory even before it was achieved. In Cape Gris-Nez, there was excitement as well. There, too, people received reports of her progress, and now, in the distance, it was sometimes possible, through a break in the clouds, to see the blazes onshore and impossible to think that it was anything else but Trudy making her final approach.