Gertrude Ederle

Summary

Podcast Summary: The History Chicks – Gertrude Ederle

Episode Overview In this engaging episode of The History Chicks: A Women's History Podcast, hosts Susan and Beckett delve into the remarkable life of Gertrude Ederle, the first woman to swim across the English Channel. Released on September 27, 2024, the episode chronicles Ederle's journey from her early life in New York City to her groundbreaking athletic achievements and lasting legacy.

---

1. Early Life and Family Background

Gertrude Caroline Ederle, affectionately known as Trudy, was born on October 23, 1905, in New York City. She was the third of six children born to Jacob Heinrich Ederle (known as Henry) and Gertrude Anna Havertruth Ederle (known as Anna). Henry had immigrated to the United States from Germany as a 16-year-old, seeking better opportunities. By securing a steady job at a butcher’s shop on Amsterdam Avenue, the family established a stable and prosperous home life.

Quote:
Beckett [01:48]: “Trudy was the first woman to ever accomplish this feat and her time wouldn't be beaten for another 24 years.”

---

2. Overcoming a Fear of Water

Trudy's journey with swimming began under challenging circumstances. At five years old, she contracted measles, which resulted in permanent hearing loss. This health setback led to Trudy developing a fear of water. Her sister, Meg, often acted as her ears, helping her navigate conversations and interactions. To help Trudy overcome her fear, Henry took her to Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey, where he personally taught her to swim using a harness he fashioned from a rope.

Quote:
Beckett [17:22]: “Trudy's hearing was almost completely gone in her right ear. Her left was significantly impacted, but still somewhat functional.”

---

3. Rise in Women's Swimming

The early 20th century was a pivotal time for women's swimming, marked by societal changes and increasing participation in public life. Influenced by pioneers like Annette Kellerman and inspired by the success of American women in the 1920 Olympics, Trudy joined the Women's Swimming Association (WSA) in 1918. Under the guidance of Coach Lou Hanley, Trudy honed her skills, adopting the innovative American Crawl stroke, which revolutionized competitive swimming.

Quote:
Beckett [33:10]: “Lou was onto something. He really was an amazing trailblazer in the sport.”

---

4. Olympic Trials and the 1924 Paris Games

Trudy's prowess in the pool led her to the 1924 Paris Olympics. However, the journey was fraught with difficulties. Training aboard a ship with limited facilities, the American women's swim team faced logistical challenges and inadequate support. Tensions with her coach, Jabez Wolf, who openly doubted her abilities, further complicated her preparation.

Despite these obstacles, Trudy showcased her extraordinary talent during the trials, setting multiple records. However, during the Olympic swim, unforeseen issues, including a rocky start due to her hearing loss, led to her disqualification. The aftermath was devastating, leaving Trudy grappling with disappointment and self-doubt.

Quote:
Susan [58:00]: “The Olympics were her greatest disappointment of her entire life.”

---

5. The English Channel Challenge

Refusing to be defeated, Trudy set her sights on an even more formidable goal: swimming across the English Channel. With renewed determination and a supportive team, including her sister Meg and new coach Bill Burgess, Trudy embarked on her second attempt in August 1926. Innovations in her training, such as a custom-designed two-piece swimsuit and improved goggles, played a crucial role in her preparation.

The swim was arduous, lasting over 14 hours and battling treacherous conditions. Despite facing rough seas, jellyfish stings, and exhaustion, Trudy persevered, ultimately becoming the first woman to successfully cross the English Channel. Her record-breaking time of 14 hours and 39 minutes stood unmatched for 24 years.

Quote:
Beckett [102:43]: “On August 6, 1926, Trudy made history by becoming the first woman to swim the English Channel.”

---

6. Triumph and Aftermath

Trudy's monumental achievement was celebrated with a massive ticker tape parade through Manhattan, attended by over 2 million people. President Calvin Coolidge honored her at the White House, dubbing her "America's best girl." However, the sudden surge of fame took a toll on Trudy. The pressures of being a national hero, coupled with ongoing struggles with her hearing loss and increased public attention, led her to seek a balance between her personal life and public persona.

Quote:
Beckett [107:43]: “She was widely called Queen of the Waves.”

---

7. Later Life and Legacy

Following her athletic career, Trudy pursued various endeavors, including acting, teaching swimming to deaf children, and working for an airline during World War II. Despite facing personal challenges, including a serious injury in 1933, Trudy remained resilient. Her contributions to swimming were recognized with her induction into the Swimming Hall of Fame in 1965 and the National Women's Hall of Fame in 2003.

Gertrude Ederle passed away on November 30, 2003, at the age of 98, leaving behind a legacy of determination, innovation, and trailblazing achievements that continue to inspire generations of women in sports.

Quote:
Susan [127:53]: “Trudy said in an interview, I have no complaints. I'm comfortable and satisfied. I'm not a person who reaches for the moon as long as I have the stars.”

---

8. Impact on Women's Sports and Swimming

Gertrude Ederle's successful swim across the English Channel not only broke gender barriers but also redefined women's capabilities in endurance sports. Her achievements spurred increased participation in women's swimming and contributed to the wider movement for women's athletics recognition. Events like the annual Ederle Burke Swim and facilities named in her honor ensure that her pioneering spirit remains a cornerstone of women's sports history.

Quote:
Beckett [117:42]: “She inspired so many women to take up swimming during her career. In the years immediately following her Channel swim, the Red Cross issued 60,000 certificates to women who went through their swimming courses.”

---

Conclusion

This episode of The History Chicks beautifully captures the essence of Gertrude Ederle's life—a story of overcoming personal hardships, challenging societal norms, and achieving unprecedented success. Through deep research and compelling storytelling, Susan and Beckett honor Ederle's legacy, making her an enduring symbol of perseverance and empowerment in women's history.

---

Notable Quotes

• Beckett [01:48]: “Trudy was the first woman to ever accomplish this feat and her time wouldn't be beaten for another 24 years.”
• Beckett [17:22]: “Trudy's hearing was almost completely gone in her right ear. Her left was significantly impacted, but still somewhat functional.”
• Beckett [33:10]: “Lou was onto something. He really was an amazing trailblazer in the sport.”
• Susan [58:00]: “The Olympics were her greatest disappointment of her entire life.”
• Beckett [102:43]: “On August 6, 1926, Trudy made history by becoming the first woman to swim the English Channel.”
• Beckett [107:43]: “She was widely called Queen of the Waves.”
• Susan [127:53]: “Trudy said in an interview, I have no complaints. I'm comfortable and satisfied. I'm not a person who reaches for the moon as long as I have the stars.”
• Beckett [117:42]: “She inspired so many women to take up swimming during her career. In the years immediately following her Channel swim, the Red Cross issued 60,000 certificates to women who went through their swimming courses.”

---

Additional Resources

For listeners interested in exploring more about Gertrude Ederle and women's swimming history, the episode references several books and related materials. Visit The History Chicks website for links to biographies, articles, and further reading recommendations.

Transcript

[Susan]

Welcome to the History Tricks where any resemblance to a boring old history lesson is purely coincidental.

[Beckett]

And here's your 30 second summary. They said it couldn't be done, that the deck and the odds were against her. But Trudi Ederly listened only to her heart during her record breaking swim across the English Channel in 1926. She was the first woman to ever accomplish this feat and her time wouldn't be beaten for another 24 years. The Be extra careful. Let's talk about Gertrude Ederle.

[Susan]

But first let's drop her into history. In 1926, Melody Maker magazine, a British music publication that would run until the year 2000 was first published. The Book of the Month Club was formed. Its first selection, Lolly Willows by Sylvia Townsend Warner. The first successful liquid fueled rocket flight flew 184ft in Worcester, Massachusetts. Kruger National park was established as South Africa's first national park. The first SAT Scholastic Aptitude Test was administered by the College Board to 8,040 students. 60% were male. The dahlia was declared the official flower of San Francisco and Agatha Christie mysteriously disappeared for 11 days. Patricia Neal, Cloris Leachman, Ann B. Davis, Marilyn Monroe, Christine Jorgensen, Harper Lee and Queen Elizabeth II were all born. Bessie Coleman, Mary Cassatt, Gertrude Bell and Annie Oakley all died. And in 1926, Gertrude Ederle dove into history.

[Beckett]

Gertrude Caroline Ederle was born on October 23, 1905 in New York City, New York, the third of the six surviving children of Jacob Heinrich Ederle and Gertrude Anna Havertruth Etterly, though in their American lives they were known simply as Henry and Anna. Papa, who maybe we should actually call Pop because that was one of his nicknames. I like that, had traveled to the United states as a 16 year old boy from his home in Germany where he had grown up as one of 20 children. I mean, you almost had to make your own way, didn't you, in that circumstance? His family in Germany owned and operated both an inn and a pretty major farm, so it was natural that he would seek out work he was familiar with when he came to America. Germans were one of the earliest and the most numerous of the waves of immigrants that had come to New York in the 1800s. Usually, though not always, they came with some level of resources and Pop quickly found a steady job job at a butcher's on Amsterdam Avenue in Manhattan, just west of the current site of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

[Susan]

He had actually planned to go over to the United States to emigrate and he had started to learn how to make bologna, so he'd at least have a trade. And a lot of the German immigrants did have some type of trade, which made assimilating themselves into America a whole lot easier. So that's how he came over. He paid an equivalent of $20 for his passage in steerage. I don't know, I just thought that wasn't very much.

[Beckett]

Well, and for a long time they didn't provide in steerage food either. You had to pack your lunch. I'm not sure, of course, on his particular ship if that was the case, but that's one of those reasons the Titanic was seen as like, oh my gosh, so amazing. Even in steerage they got three meals a day and they were nice quality. And so I don't know, maybe that, that had something to do with the price.

[Susan]

When Pop, although not yet a Pop, arrived in the United States, he was able to be processed through the freshly opened Ellis Island. It had opened in January of the year that he came, and he came in May, so everything was still sparkling new. And I guess they probably didn't have all their processing methods streamlined quite yet, but it was a brand new facility.

[Beckett]

As a matter of fact, Pop was listed as Heiner and not Heinrich on the Ellis island records. If you want to look them up, we are actually going to give you a link to how to do that. Anyway, I don't know how he became Heiner. Maybe that was a training, training glitch, because really he's Jakob Heinrich.

[Susan]

A lot of times you'll hear, oh, my family name changed at Ellis island and it didn't. The people processing were doing so many people coming in that they were working from the manifests of the ships which were created in their home countries. So if Heinrich became Heiner, it was done somewhere between him leaving his house and him arriving in the United States.

[Beckett]

Pop literally lived the American dream. Onward and upward. Within 10 years of his arrival, he had been able to buy the butcher business from his employer. He sent for his brother Johan, who promptly Americanized his name to John and began operating as Ederly Brothers meets at 108Amsterdam Avenue. There was a retail establishment in the basement with five stories of apartments above. But most of the money was made with the manufacture and sales of specialty sausages and then larger scale wholesale customers like restaurants, hotels and even other butcher shops. It was kind of a behind the scenes backdoor empire, although there was a face like a retail face also.

[Susan]

In addition to his brother that he brought over, he was also able to, and this is a story you hear In a lot of successful immigrant families, he was able to save the money to send over and start bringing family members over one at a time. He's funding them coming over, he's meeting their chefs. So it's not the they're dropped into US society situation. They're brought into a community, and he's the one that's making that happen.

[Beckett]

At several points during the census takers, you'll see an uncle, a nephew that are living with the family. And those were usually temporary situations while people got established. It was, I mean, how comforting would that be to know that you have a successful relative who's, you know, come live with me for a while and I'll introduce you to people and get you a job. I mean, way better than the way he had had to come over at 16, I think.

[Susan]

Right. Well, you and I just toured Ellis island when we were in New York recently. And I was just trying to imagine while we were there, people coming over, not familiar with the language, having nobody to meet them. And then on the other hand, there's people like the Ederly family that's coming over that have somebody to meet them, to welcome them, to walk them through the process. That must have made a huge difference.

[Beckett]

I'm so sorry to say that we have nowhere near the level of detail about Mama's upbringing. She evidently came to America as a babe in arms sometime around 1884. Too early to have come through Ellis Island. And I checked the Castle Garden site, which was the previous intake facility, but I came up empty on her name. Maybe because she was a baby. Really the first time that we can grab Mama in the official records is the marriage of Henry and Anna in 1901.

[Susan]

He was 26 and she was just 20 at that point. So he's been there just 10 years and he's done all this and now he's starting his own family.

[Beckett]

The Ederleys lived above the store. Very common scenario in New York City. Mama began her married life working in the shop. It was a real family business. Three daughters were born in quick succession and then a child who died as a baby. And I'm sorry to say that this was not the only tragedy the family suffered. Their third born child named Gertrude after her mother, although we will call her Trudy. The family called her Gertie, but history knows her as Trudy. It's very complicated. So let's go with Trudy. Are you okay with that?

[Susan]

Totally.

[Beckett]

Trudy contracted measles at the age of five, before the measles vaccine was created. In 1963, measles was one of the most deadly of the childhood diseases.

[Susan]

Just the year before, the US had more than 6,500 people that would die from measles. There was a massive outbreak. Either measles or the complications, let's be technical about it. Trudy's case of the measles was just like a lot of other cases of the measles. A high fever, congestion, and then this horrible rash that just kind of took over her entire body. She did seem to recover, however. She had developed an ear infection that the doctors didn't catch. And that ear infection, you know, just kept going and going until it caused permanent hearing damage. And that's going to affect her for the rest of her life.

[Beckett]

This hearing loss was an all too common after effect of measles. I would like to give you a little factoid. Measles was almost completely eradicated at one point in the year 2000 in the US it was declared extinct, in fact. But it's coming back and I am going to give you one guess as to why. But I will leave it there anyway. Trudy's hearing was almost completely gone in her right ear. Her left was significantly impacted, but still somewhat functional. Good news, said the doctor. She already knows how to speak, so she'll be fine. Okie dokie.

[Susan]

That's called foreshadowing, right, Will.

[Beckett]

Her sister Meg, slightly older, acted as if. Okay, you know how Laura Ingalls Wilder acted as her. Her sister's eyes. Meg often acted as her sister's ears. She would do a little intervention to prevent Trudy from having to ask people to repeat themselves. Meg would simply repeat the question as if, you know, she was asking the question. She did a lot of, I don't know what to call it. Zone defense.

[Susan]

I know exactly what it is. My kids had the same problem. I had a kid who had partial hearing loss due to ear infections. Exactly this, except we had antibiotics. He didn't get the tube surgery until he was three. And his sister was compensating for him. Like she would be like the interpreter a lot of times to just answer the question for him or if he said something because he was having hearing loss at a time when he should have been learning how to speak. She would just interpret it and tell the person, oh, he says he'd like some milk.

[Beckett]

You know, older sisters rule the world. They do.

[Susan]

And the Adderly sisters are only, you know, they were stair stepped about a year apart. So Meg isn't that much older than Trudy is.

[Beckett]

They were Very close and even got closer after this catastrophe had happened. Now Papa took everyone back to Germany on a triumphant visit. Think about how satisfying that must have been. He's an obviously prosperous, self made man coming back to show everyone how he was doing. Many immigrants, we learned this on our visit to Ellis island, were never able to see their relatives again in their entire lives. Hart story after story there at the Ellis Island Museum. But Trudy's two sisters began immediately to bond with all the cousins. Cousins are the best. They're the best friends of your childhood. But Gertrude, so recently deprived of most of her hearing, found the situation very uncomfortable. It was hard to understand exactly what was going on and held herself a little apart. This is the earliest record of her retreating into the world of books. Upon their return to the United States, Mama ceased work in the shop and the family had a servant, a maid of all work, confusingly named Anna. One of the census records I saw seems to indicate that Pop even bought the building they were living in. But one thing is for certain, he did buy a cottage right on the water in a seaside resort town called Atlantic Highlands in New Jersey.

[Susan]

He loved that they were able to go to Germany and just get away from the city. That cottage, that beach cottage was about 50 miles as the car drives from their home on the Upper west side. So he was able to have a place to retreat in the summer with his family.

[Beckett]

This village was one of the real ones with the holiday pace and a population that returned each summer so you could see your little friends and grow up together. And there were special traditions that developed and the family all loved it. All but Trudy, who, unlike her sisters, didn't know how to swim. The water was treacherous here, deceptively simple looking. But every year there were drownings as unwary waders got swept away or brave machismo turned out to be someone's downfall. Helen and Meg had learned to swim from the cousins in Germany. And I will tell you that Jet Graham was up at the crack of dawn and in nana's pool for 12 hours a day at about this age, in his youth, I mean, we had to set a timer to make sure he got out and peed. That's the advantage of the ocean, is that you don't have to do that. Yeah. She ensured that he did it by letting him pee outside in the open air, which probably wouldn't work for everyone, but worked great for Jed. Is it time? Is it time to get out and pee in the open air? Yeah. Yay.

[Susan]

I was that water baby. Too. My parents had to pull me out of the water. My lips are blue. I'm shattering and I'm still swimming around.

[Beckett]

I know. We had to shove the food in his head. Like it was like Jurassic Park. Like imagine them. It was like with the watermelon right back in the water.

[Susan]

This is the very first time that I have something in common with Jet. I'm so loving it. I'm just going to hug it.

[Beckett]

Well, so that's how kids are and that's how kids were. But something had happened to Trudy in Germany. She had experienced a near drowning. And that's what happens when 10 year olds are in charge of water safety. You know, people didn't find her for a while. She, you know, she was yanked out. She had a trauma. She was sort of afraid of the water and didn't wish to try again. Actually, she had a fear of the water and therefore her parents had a fear of the water for her. Trudy was not allowed to go anywhere near the water, even on the beach without a grownup and couldn't get in the water without her father who was not out here with the family all the time. Trudy could see the other kids having fun from inside of the cottage and it stung so badly. But there was actually a reason that the parents were so jumpy.

[Susan]

The year before Trudy was born, there had been a ferry accident not far from where the Ederleys were living. The paddleship. The General Slocum was working as a ferry in taking a very large church group from the Lower east side, mostly German Americans, for a beach outing on a beach that's off of Long island, so there's a little bit of water travel to go. A fire broke out somewhere inside the boat and it wasn't close enough to shore to get back. Of the 1,358 passengers, 1,021 perished, mostly women and children who could not swim. It was an enormous tragedy the likes of which wouldn't be seen again until 911 in New York.

[Beckett]

So the very thought of women and children drowning within sight of shore really caused kind of a movement about water safety and teaching people to swim that hadn't really been around before that tragedy. And finally Papa had sort of had enough of his daughter looking wistfully out the window of the cottage. And he gathered all his children and a length of clothesline, which seems like a very ominous sentence, and headed for the shadow of Patton Line Pier. And he fashioned a harness for Trudy out of the rope. And then he made his way up onto the pier, tossing out slack as he went. We are fully 20 years away from Scotch tape. Or if you're British, Sellotape. A butcher has tied a lot of knots in his day. So when Papa says, okay, get in, you're safe, you're safe. It's a burst of fear. But such trust. Well, she went right in. And she could feel the support of the rope and her father's voice from above. Is that symbolic? Her father's voice from above. And her excited sisters were like. What's that word you use for lambs? Gambling. Not gambling like cards, but gambolling. I like that word. Around her in the water, and they spent all day at it. He would let out the slack. She could feel herself floating. And then any slight incident of fear. Papa had the support right there. By the end of the day, Trudy was a swimmer. And I will tell you, I have seen that transformation. Jet went from arm floaties to the high dive in two days. Perhaps a dash of his father's adrenaline. Junkie genetics.

[Susan]

Well, parents, as you might see, when you watch a kid learn how to ride a bike, swimming is the same thing. When they get it, they've got it. It's theirs forever. And Trudy was able to do that in one day. And at one point, you know, Pop just kind of like let the line, you know, really loose and let her play. Because he knew that he didn't have to be there to fish her out if she started sinking again. She was having so much fun.

[Beckett]

Trudy had found her happy place. She had turned into just like Susan had referred to herself as a real water baby. She began to set herself impossible challenges. Like, I'm going to swim from here to here in one breath. Or by the time this boat passes me, I've got to be there. You know, how long can I stay underwater? She later said of this time. To me, the sea is like a person, like a child I've known a long time. It sounds crazy, I know, but when I swim in the sea, I talk to it. I never feel alone when I'm out there. And that would actually be true for the rest of her life. Her hearing loss gave her a little bit of distance from other people. But in the ocean, she was free. It was all comfortable.

[Susan]

The flip side of all that was that every single year, she's in the ocean, she's getting water in her ears. She might get another infection. Every single year, her hearing was getting a little bit worse every single year. And the doctors told her and her parents that all this swimming was just going to make it go completely away if she continued it. But there's no way they were gonna be able to fish their daughter out of the water at this point. And I guess they just hope for.

[Beckett]

The best at home in the city. Mama, with two new babies at home, watched with a little bit of dismay as Trudy sort of withdrew into herself. Back to the land of books and solitud. I imagine many of us listening lived there, still do. There's literally nothing wrong with that, you know. Their home life was happy in general. The two older sisters were living their own versions of the American dream. Consuming pop culture, making friends, beginning to date.

[Susan]

Woo.

[Beckett]

That's a. That's a stressful time for a parent. But mama just worried that Trudy might be unhappy. You know, you're only as happy as your least happy child. Go the saying. And it seemed to be Trudy. Well, one year at the summer establishment, there were posters up for a women's swimming and diving exhibition by this new group called the Women's Swimming association, or wsa. I'm sorry to say that much of the attention from the public was on the swimmers costumes, a fact that had dogged women's participation in swimming for hundreds of years. Here's a quick history of women's costumes while swimming in ancient Greece. Well, we're separate, so it's nudity. There you go.

[Susan]

No drag on the birthday suit. Yep, that's right.

[Beckett]

In medieval times, it was also not a problem because most of the time, water, at least in the west, is not something you want to immerse your whole body in. In the 16 and 1700s, women wore linen smocks with weights sewn in the bottom to keep them from floating up. In the 1800s, we started with those smocks and moved on to bathing dresses, including stockings, shoes, caps, and Victorian bathing machines to haul you out into the water so no one could see any of your bathing costume. Basically, you held onto a rope so you didn't get dragged down by your outfit, which sounds real fun.

[Susan]

I do like the part about not having to like go in over the rocks. You're like already out there, you know, in the water. But if you've ever had to walk over those rocks of like Maine, there's something appealing about it.

[Beckett]

I am going to give you that because I have to tell you, as someone that grew up in the center of the country, the ocean is uncomfortable for me. I'm not comfortable with like, what denizens might be approaching me from below.

[Susan]

Oh, I mean, I think of that too. I mean, I know it's down there, but I guess I have a lot of experience of none of it bothering me.

[Beckett]

Right, right.

[Susan]

To back me up.

[Beckett]

It does make your hair super awesome and curly. Yeah, that's the salt water with the salt. Yeah. But you can buy salts probably at Ulta.

[Susan]

That's true.

[Beckett]

Well, in the very early 1900s, an Australian swimming pioneer by the name of Annette Kellerman shocked the world with her form fitting attire, which is basically, you know, those mustachioed weightlifter cartoons, the ones with the round weights at the end of their barbells? It was that suit. But the blinding sexiness of the female leg made it necessary to sew full length tights to the legs in, even over her feet. So much of the public's reaction to Annette Kellerman was all bound up in prejudice, like against actresses and dancers and performers. Annette performed as a mermaid in a tank in a vaudeville show. Later, she had the distinction of being the first woman to appear nude in a major motion picture. Surprise, she's coming out of the water in 1916's Lost Daughter of the Gods.

[Susan]

Although in between she was also pushing the boundaries and trying to, of course, you know, propel herself in popularity, but also to say, these are women's bodies, this is what they look like. This is what they look like when we want to swim and not drown because our clothes are wearing us down. And she would do things like cut the tights off, for instance, and now she's showing a naked leg and that's against the law at a lot of beaches. So she was getting a lot of publicity for showing herself off.

[Beckett]

And just like Amelia Bloomer and her pioneering short pants, later used for bicycling, women's sportswear was deeply bound up in the suffrage movement. An increasing groundswell of sentiment around not only women's rights, but around women's full participation in society. And by 1912, Annette Kellerman style suits without tights were the uniform of choice for the pioneering women swimmers in the Olympics in Stockholm. America unfortunately sent no women because the chairman of our Olympic committee thought that was out of control and not proper at all. He was deeply suspicious of the outfits. Well, 27 women competed in eight events in the 1912 Olympics. And in the picture, all of them have their arms crossed in their photo. I'm sure there was a lot of unwanted attention. Tights for non competitive swimmers remained standard until the 1920s. Who knew that your cotton pillowcase could be disrupting your sleep? Get better sleep. Hair and skin With Blissey's award winning 100% mulberry silk pillowcases. If you haven't used silk, what are you doing? Blissey's silk is the best thing you can do for your hair and your skin. It reduces frizz, tangles, and even helps prevent thinning. It also can help reduce blemishes and the appearance of fine lines. There's a lot of dupes out there that claim satin is an alternative to silk, but that's not the case. Satin is made from synthetic fibers like microplastics, while Blissey's silk is a luxurious, all natural material that's breathable, cool to touch and gentle for your skin and hair.

[Susan]

And not just your skin and hair, anybody's skin and hair. Even the little ones in your family. Blissey has colors and patterns that will match any aesthetic. They even have collaborations with brands like Minions and Harry Potter. And there's more on the way. The Blissey mulberry silk pillowcases are washable, hypoallergenic, and they have a hidden zipper so your pillow is not going to come sliding out. I started using silk pillowcases probably almost a year ago because my hairstylist had suggested it for my curly hair. It was getting kind of frizzy and breaking and she said, just try it. And I did see a difference in my hair. So much so that I bought a whole set of pillowcases and the Blissey bonnet.

[Beckett]

Blissey has been featured on Good Morning America, the View Live with Kelly and Mark and is dermatologist recommended. Everyone loves them. They have over 2 million fans and you could be next because you're a listener. Blissey is offering 60 nights risk free plus an additional 30% off when you [e-mail] historychicks that's Blissey B L I.

[Susan]

S S Y.com historychicks and use code historychicks to get an additional 30% off. Your skin and hair will thank you.

[Beckett]

Attention and interest in women's swimming grew during the World War I years to go along with women's increased participation in public life at home. The 1916 Olympics were canceled, of course, due to war. So most competitions and women's involvement were at a local level.

[Susan]

In 1914, a woman named Charlotte Epstein, who went by Epi, which I love, she founded an organization called the National Women's Life Saving League. It was kind of a baby step in getting women's athletics recognized, getting women's abilities understood. As far as swimming goes, swimming was not an acceptable thing for a proper lady to do at this era and it was also believed by men that women didn't have what it took to survive in the water. You know, they don't have the strength. They don't have the whatever it is that we need to survive in the water. They didn't think we had it. Which just makes me raise an eyebrow and think about, well, then how are we made to give birth to children? You don't think we have strength and stamina? Okay, yeah.

[Beckett]

There were feelings all along. This is a common theme when we were talking about Annie Londonderry and women riding bicycles. That women exerting themselves mentally or physically would drain all the energy from their main purpose, which was to give birth to children. So maybe it's not that they don't feel that we have the inherent strength, just that we need to keep it concentrated where it matters to them.

[Susan]

Right.

[Beckett]

Maybe that's what it is. Well, the National Women's Life Saving League was Based on the U.S. life Saving Corps that was founded after the Civil War. Men only, of course. And Appy worked hard to get this women's organization sort of attached to their umbrella. They offered lessons and camaraderie, really, with everyone that also wanted to swim support and competitions. I will say that having it under the banner of, quote, life saving seems like we just saw Suffs on Broadway. And there is a song at the beginning called Let Mother Vote. And drafting swimming in under life saving almost seems like, oh, it's so useful. We'll stay ladylike. It helps the community. We're not threatening. This is all good. This is under a recognized umbrella. That's what it seemed like to me. So it was like the conservative way to get women swimming, kind of placed on a little bit of a respectable pedestal.

[Susan]

Yeah.

[Beckett]

In 1917, EPI founded the group Trudy was watching on the beach, the Women's Swimming association wsa. She came out from the shadow of life saving and on to overt swimming as exercise, swimming as competition, because women are people too. Radical. Woo. They even staged suffrage swimming races. It's out here now. Like it or not, we plan to be a force.

[Susan]

Right.

[Beckett]

So we had three years of Let Mother Vote, and now we're fully. We are swimming, like it or not.

[Susan]

Right? Right. And I think working alongside at the same time as people like Annette Kellerman who were more flashy, more in your face, more extreme about how they were approaching swimming and having this more, I don't want to say demure, but this quieter professional organization, I think they kind of work together to help promote swimming among women.

[Beckett]

The motto of The Women's Swimming association was good. Sportsmanship is greater than victory. That would not always be true for all the competitors as we should see later in the show. It was on their 1918 membership recruiting trip that the Adderleys saw the WSA for the first time. 12 year old old Trudy was amazed at the prowess of the swimmers using this new stroke called the American Crawl. The athleticism amazed everyone on the beach. Mama eagerly signed her three eldest daughters up for $3, roughly the equivalent of $55 today. You could join the WSA, you could have lessons, you could meet like minded young women and girls. That part you know, Mamaw thought was absolutely essential for Trudy in particular. And there was the possibility that you could join in their competitions. It was very exciting.

[Susan]

It was. And for somebody like Trudy who just loved swimming so much at the time that the elderly's joined the wsa, they had an indoor pool in the basement of a Brooklyn apartment building. It was alongside the boiler room of that building that you know, provided heat for all the residents. But it was an indoor pool and she could swim all year with twice weekly lessons.

[Beckett]

I think it's funny that they did an initial assessment of everybody that came in. You had a six month, you know, kind of training period where they tried to see if you were a suitable fit for the organization. They wanted to see how you swam. Well, you know, they learned to swim from a 10 year old cousins and be floating around in the ocean which is not a kind master.

[Susan]

No.

[Beckett]

So Trudy gets in and like lays waste to the water which is mostly out of the pool. And it's like Trudy you are like a wild animal in here. But I love your passion. The diving instructor is like mine, mine. And the swimming instructor is like actually you know what, I'm going to do something with this.

[Susan]

Yeah. Coaches like people that they can train. The coach of the WSA was actually a man. His name is Lou Hanley. He was one of the people who developed that American Crawl stroke from a stroke that they had been using for a million years called the Trojan. I will link you up to some articles about the difference between the two. Lou was the one that said I like her enthusiasm, her energy, I can teach her how to swim. I can't teach heart. That's not a direct quote, that's me paraphrasing what he was saying.

[Beckett]

Well, this man who had developed this stroke, it's basically your over head arms, your overhand arms, just like you would think. But the difference between it and the standard Crawl everyone was using is, instead of kicking from the knees, like you're wearing a little hobble skirt, your whole leg moves from the hip. And it's really key to swimming in a pool because saltwater will hold you up in a way that pool water will not. Yeah. And so if you're using the standard stroke in a pool, you're going to find yourself sinking and working against yourself with the force of the water on your chest.

[Susan]

Right. As far as competition goes, it was faster. Your face was in the water for eight strokes, ideally, versus not in the water at all with the stroke that they had been using. And then the first version of a crawl, their face was in the water, but it wasn't for eight strokes, it was for four, I think. So this was faster if you're swimming, you know, in competition. And the beauty of this is, at the time, this American crawl was really controversial in the swimming world. Lou Hanley said, no, this is the one I'm going to teach people. I'm not going to teach them any other strokes first. I'm going to teach them this one. This is their baby step. Their baby step is going to be learning the American crawl right out of.

[Beckett]

The gate, which is kind of like jumping in the deep end, but then everything else is easier.

[Susan]

Right.

[Beckett]

This man was the best known swimming coach in the country. But he was constantly thwarted by his swimmers past habits and other coaches resistance to change. So how amazing for him to work with the wsa, with this vast group of enthusiastic learners who had never learned, quote, the wrong way.

[Susan]

Right.

[Beckett]

He was also very realistic. Most of them aren't going to have access to an indoor pool most of the time or the ocean most of the time. And so he developed all these things he called land drills. So when you weren't actually in the pools, you would do your land drills. It was like choreography for outside the pool. Also, he would teach this in stages. First you had to float without moving. Trudy. We'd always try to kick. No, you're floating without kicking. You're floating without using your hands. You're just floating, girl. Then you could kick without using your arms. Just kick, Just kick. Trudy always had to bring her back. This is not the ocean. And then they learned the arm motion, and then they learned proper breathing technique. And then you would put it all together.

[Susan]

And you know what? That was the same method that I Learned in the 1970s. Exactly like that. And it's the same method that my kids Learned in the 2000s when they took swimming lessons. So Lou was Onto something.

[Beckett]

He really was. He was kind of a. I mean, he was an amazing trailblazer in the sport.

[Susan]

Absolutely.

[Beckett]

The WSA held swim meets to raise their profile. The biggest obstacle to women's sports at a national level had died. The man that literally prevented American women from having gone to the 1912 Olympics, that had a big, powerful paddle, like whacking them away from the public eye, he was gone. And Abby had her eye on the 1920 Olympics, didn't she? And WSA swimmers and their magic American crawl dominated competitions. I mean, dang.

[Susan]

Yeah. Another thing that helped them along, having Lou as their coach is, he thought, against conventional wisdom, was that women were actually built for swimming much better than men because we have an extra layer of body fat that makes us a little bit more buoyant. He was spot on. So he trained these women and they kicked swimming Heiney.

[Beckett]

At the 1920 Olympics, America for the first time sent a women's swim team. It was in Antwerp, Belgium. And again, American women dominated the competition. They were heroes when they got home. And for the younger swimmers of the wsa, their minds were blown. Someone they had been training with was now number one in the world. A girl younger than Trudy, named Helen Wainwright, had won a silver medal in diving. Astonishing, you know, to say it was inspirational for Trudy and the others would have been a vast understatement. A fire was kindled in Trudy's heart.

[Susan]

Usually we talk about what kind of classes our subjects would have had. And Trudi did go to school. Up until her freshman year of high school in 1919, she stopped. It wasn't like as radical as it would be for modern day kids to stop going to school at the time, you know, kids were getting ready to marry, kids were going to work. So it wasn't an unusual thing for her to stop. But for her, it gave her an opportunity to work more on her swimming and focus on it.

[Beckett]

And her family supported her passion. There was no real need for her to work in the family business. She was from a very successful family. No need for her to earn her own living.

[Susan]

Right.

[Beckett]

So it was nice that she had this passion, you know, it's nice that she had a goal, right.

[Susan]

And that support team. Even her father, I mean, her parents were at her meets, cheering her on. Just like modern day sports parents, just like I did for my kids, except not in a pool. It's great. I don't know that there was a lot of fathers that were also encouraging their daughters to be competitive in any sport.

[Beckett]

Right. When Trudy was 15 years old. The WSA, they'd had this event for a decade, but this was the first year that Trudy had participated in it. It was a three and a half mile open water race starting at Coney island during this year of 1922. A developer named Joseph Day was sponsoring the event. Papers were full of the 52 quote, mermaids who would compete in their skimpy outfits. Subtext. Har har. You know what? Police would still arrest you. My own grandmother got taken in because her swimsuit ended too high above her kneecap.

[Susan]

Is this a city, grandma?

[Beckett]

It is not. It is country, grandma. And it was the shores of Texas, which may have been more conservative than up here in the Northeast. I wouldn't hold your breath on that, though. They didn't arrest arrest you. They would take you in and call your dad. That's what they would do to make him look at your kneecaps like, is this what you want happening? I didn't think so. Put a jacket on her and get her out of here. You know, that kind of thing. Anyway, so the skimpy outfits kind of drew the crowd. Unfortunately, nearby, another set of businessmen had just started a competition largely based on those swimsuits that they called the Miss America Pageant. These events were seen as a way to extend the profitable season at beach resorts. And notably, both of these events are held in the very late summer or early fall, which is probably okay if the main event takes place on land, you know, for Miss America. But the competitors in the 1922, quote, International Women's Long Distance Swimming Championship, they were facing rain and wind and choppy water as they prepared to swim. The audience had gathered both on land and in boats along the course. Notably, there were many cases of boat occupants, quote, presenting their accounts to the waves. Which is a nice way of saying everybody was hurling their guts out into the ocean. But I'm going to start saying that I had to present my account to the waves. There was a fabulously attractive British swimmer named Hilda James. She was the world record holder in long distance events. May have been the only reason they could call themselves the International. Kind of like the World Series. It's like, technically, I think we have a Canadian team, right? Well, anyway, There were also two 1920American Olympians in the race. The course was considered so dangerous, though, that each swimmer would be followed by a rowboat. The beginning of this course was amazing chaos. Imagine it, 52 swimmers have all taken off and the boats have to figure out which of these heads and arms were their responsibility. You know, they had to get in place. And the spectators think they've found the leader. Okay, we're cheering, we're cheering. It's that American Olympian, Helen Wainwright. But then suddenly everyone sees a swimmer way, way ahead in the water from Helen Wainwright. Like, who's that?

[Susan]

Eh.

[Beckett]

Eh Ederly, maybe Margaret. No, Trudy. What? Like, everyone is like, what is going on? She is moving through the water as if she was a machine. No one could come close to her. When she came out at the finish line, she hardly even looked winded. After a swim of well over an hour in an ocean that was blowing swimmers all over the place.

[Susan]

She'd gotten all that practice down in New Jersey. I mean, one of the things she did was swim farther and farther from one place to another in the open water. So she is probably more experienced at open water swimming at 16 than anybody else in the competition.

[Beckett]

Absolutely. The recognized best swimmer in the world. That Helen James was almost a minute after Trudy. Do you remember? And I know it was a shorter race, but how astonished everyone was that the second place finisher came in 10 seconds after Katie Ledecky.

[Susan]

Right.

[Beckett]

Okay. This person, the record holder, came in a minute after Trudy. So long that Trudy had actually put her skirt on and left with some friends like, she wasn't even there when Helen James pitched up. And so the reporters had to interview the second place contestant who is like, I guess the best swimmer won. Then, like, I don't even know what just happened. Everyone was bewildered. Now, I will tell you, the WSA was also very confused that they kept it all inside. Trudy was not a person they'd been grooming for competition. She often ditched practice. She was not even that invested in the pool, it seemed to them.

[Susan]

Right.

[Beckett]

Her sister Meg had actually made her sign up at the last minute. Well, like it or not, right now Trudy was the public face of the Women's Swimming Association. So EPI set up an interview with a woman named Marguerite Marshall, a famous woman reporter at the New York Evening Herald. And EPI herself made a point of heading to Trudy's house the next day to be there as sort of a chaperone. Her parents were out of the country during this whole thing, and she's gonna head off anything that went off the rails. EPI needn't have worried. The press could not get enough of this quote. All American Girl, so refreshing, so wholesome. And instead of those painted flappers, Chun chun chum. Like, literally, I'm going to read this to you. This is What Marshall wrote, Trudy is that almost extinct person, if we may believe the cynics. The normal, healthy, pretty, sport loving, fun, loving home and family loving American girl. She is everything that is the converse of the flighty flapper. She was asked about her routine, her diet. I don't train, I don't practice much here at the beach I swim for hours a day. But at the pool, I should say not. I do rowing, I do basketball, I love dancing. But swimming is my favorite and I will never give up my ice cream. Like me, you know, that's a good call. Very relatable. She waxed poetic about the peace and joy that swimming gave her. That's actually where you know her happy place. What do you want to do with your triumph? And Trudy said, I want to win more races and go to the Olympics. Well, the WSA immediately added Trudy to the race circuit. They would have been fools not to.

[Susan]

Between 1920 and 1924, Trudy held 29 US and world records. Astonishingly, seven of those were set at one event at Brighton beach in New York and six were world records. So six of the seven she set in one day were world records. I think they were doing good. Putting her into the swimming competition track.

[Beckett]

Sportswriters of the day. They had Babe Ruth and other stars of sport, including Johnny Weissmuller, another swimming superstar. Sports writers of the time pointed to Trudi Adderly's achievements as, and I quote, the biggest achievement in sports to date.

[Susan]

And in those articles you'll see her mentioned as a 15 year old swimming star. At some point, somehow one year had been shaved off of her age. So nobody corrected it. Nobody corrected it so much that even in the first biographies that are written about her, it says she was born in 1906 instead of 1905.

[Beckett]

The Ederleys were surprised and delighted at her success. Trudy wasn't just a hometown hero, she had international fame. So for years, Trudy dominated her sport. You know, dominated. She won 11 to the infinite power. The only possible competitor contender was Helen Wainwright, who had eked out two and I mean one two wins against Trudy in all that time. Poor old everyone. Yeah, I mean, I mean, yeah. Well, it's like those ladies that keep winning at the state fair to the point where they make you the PI emeritus because, like, can you please let someone win else just for one year, can somebody else have a chance at winning? Yeah, that's kind of Trudy's level of dominance. She was swimmer emeritus, although she wasn't really. They kept Letting her win. There's no mercy rule in swimming.

[Susan]

No, but she's getting all this press. It's like nowadays, like Simone Biles level press. It would be that equivalent for this young girl who just likes to swim. It's not necessarily the winning, which she did like. I mean, let's not say she.

[Beckett]

Well, she's a middle child.

[Susan]

That's true.

[Beckett]

And I don't know that there was a lot of attention paid. Do you know what I mean? So I'm glad that she's getting it.

[Susan]

Yeah. Yeah. I had to stop and think about it like on a history chick's timeline. We are still a decade away from Babe Dedrickson's Olympics and 20 years from Althea Gibson's rise. So this is way before them. That's.

[Beckett]

Yeah, she's the OG. When it came time to choose swimmers for the 1924 Olympics, Trudy easily won her place during the Olympic trials. And almost immediately, like within a week, along with 298 other American athletes, only 24 of which were women, she embarked on a nine day journey to Paris, where the country expected the world from its champion athlete. It's cardigan season at last.

[Susan]

Hooray.

[Beckett]

Fuel up for the cooler days with Factor's no prep, no mess meals. You can meet your wellness goals thanks to the menu of chef crafted meals with options like Calorie Smart, Protein plus and Keto. Factor's fresh Never frozen meals are dietitian approved and ready to eat in just two minutes.

[Susan]

I know that at this time of year, I don't get enough activity unless I force myself outside to do it. So factors, 35 different meals and 60 different add ons every week helps me focus on my wellness goals. And I can treat myself to restaurant quality meals that feature premium ingredients like filet mignon, shrimp, blackened salmon. My cousin called me up the other day and she said, I've heard you and Beckett talking about factor meals for so long. I finally ordered them and she said, I love them. Her favorite meal in her first box was chicken with potato and leek mash with zucchini and corn. And I have had that chicken and I thought it was delicious. I really like the zucchini and corn. I wouldn't do that on my own.

[Beckett]

Well, and it like goes with my whole eat more vegetables scenario. Absolutely. And it's kind of sneaky. There's four in there.

[Susan]

Yeah, that's true.

[Beckett]

Well, you can be a vegetable eater too, if that's your thing. Head to FactorMeals.com hc50 and use code hc50 to get 50% off your first box plus 20% off your next month.

[Susan]

That's code [e-mail] hc50 to get 50 percent off your first box, plus 20% off your next month while your subscription is active. The Olympic problems started aboard the ship. On the plus side, Lou Hanley had been named the coach of the women's swim team. So she had her coach with her. And he did his best to have his women trained aboard the ship. But even his best wasn't going to be enough for them. They only had a 10 by 10 foot, 4 foot deep pool to practice in. It's filled with saltwater, which is not what they were going to be swimming in when they got to France in the Olympics and they had to share it with the men's team. So their actual in water training time was seriously limited.

[Beckett]

Well, and they would get hooked to this harness. You know those pools that like serious swimmers have, that's basically like a wave pool, single lane wave pool where they can swim to their heart's content and never reach the end. Like I have PTSD from using my treadmill, which always throws me off the back.

[Susan]

Oh no.

[Beckett]

Well, it doesn't have any handles. So I get engrossed in like, ooh, Gilmore Girls. It must be fall. Oh, the chop suey sandwich. And I'm like, bling. Next thing I know I've been thrown off the back. So I have a feeling that is what I would do in those kind of pools. But, but nevertheless it was a very, I don't know, temu version of that. They were on a harness, a guy was holding a rope and they could swim the dickens out. But like not really because you're, I mean you're having to really pull yourself in. You can't use your right stroke, you don't have the right kind of water. It was probably would have been better not to train at all, frankly. Luckily they'd all been trained or were trained on the boat for his land drills like she used to use in the basement in New York, which if.

[Susan]

You think about it, that's just cross training and he was having them do that forever. So yeah, the water time probably would have been the most beneficial, but they were doing their best and he was really working with them to help them not get out of shape on this cruise. Cruise like it's the Love Boat.

[Beckett]

Well, actually, well, they were very anxious about fraternization, more about how it would look than the actual fact of same. They were also really weirdly class conscious. Like all the officials and celebrities filled the first class cabins. Like Mary Pickford was on the boat with them. That's pretty cool. But, you know, she's not going to the Olympics to compete. So the Olympians were in steerage. You know, that's not cool. Anyway, so when they were hanging out, they were very, very heavily supervised there. There was an incident where Trudy was dared to wrestle a tiny man wrestler. And they did wrestle. And the word is that Trudy might have gotten injured during the process of that competition. But since it was 100% illegal and under the radar, all the athletes agreed to keep it from all of the coaches and officials. And I don't know that Trudy's probable injury was ever reported.

[Susan]

No, and that's not a euphemism, wrestling. It was actual wrestling. It wasn't just like one time on the. Whatever they were using as a mat. They did several rounds of actual wrestling.

[Beckett]

When they got to Paris, most Olympic athletes, the male ones anyway, got to experience a brand new concept. It was called the Olympic Village, which is really, at this time, and we will show you some pictures. It looks like a mining camp. It's a whole bunch of wooden shacks, really, cheek by jowl. In the 20th arrondissement, they did have plumbing. I don't know how, but they did. They had plumbing. And they were sort of like those cabins that you can find in national parks. There were three athletes to a little house. They did have the camaraderie of all being together and being able to mix and mingle. So I think that's the who whole beginning concept. And that's certainly how it is now. I'm also certain there was a measure of chivalry about not assigning the women to live in the Olympic Village. Again, they're worried about fraternization. But the women athletes of all countries were distributed throughout the city in more lush accommodations. The whole American contingent actually decamped from that arrondissement entirely and went to the Chateau de Roquencourt, which I am very sorry to say you can no longer visit, as it was demolished in 1963. However, you know, imagine a chateau. It was owned by a prince. It was relatively super fancy, and they erected on the grounds, believe it or not, a sadder, smaller version of the Olympic Village for the male athletes. The ladies of America were a great distance from the men on purpose in the carriage houses, while the officials and coaches and celebrity visitors enjoyed the inside of the actual chateau. So they've taken what happened on the boat and put it on land.

[Susan]

Right.

[Beckett]

Even worse, the pool that was supposed to have been constructed nearby the chateau to use during the Olympics. The whole sort of cheaty reason the Americans had gone there in the first place. Oh, desolate. It will not be ready in time. So another pool was up for bids. It's actually still there. It's called the Piscine Georges Valerie. Now, that's not its name at the time, but you can still visit there and I think put your toe in it, if you're sly. But. So the whole reason for them to have gone that far out and kind of clustered in a remote area was moot. And now they had a bigger problem.

[Susan]

The pool that they were assigned to use was a two hour bus ride away from their chateau. So that's two hours there, two hours back on a bus. And when they got to the pool, they were only allotted one hour, and they had to share the pool with the men's team. So, again, these women are not getting enough time to practice in the pool. They did try to do their best. I mean, they have more room now at a chateau than they had on the boat to do, you know, some of the cross training and the land drills that Coach Hanley had them doing. But sometimes they would try to sneak out early to get to a pool to use it. And what would happen is they would miss breakfast. And the staff at the chateau would not feed them when they returned because they missed the breakfast hours. So here's athletes not having breakfast. And then when they ate the big meal of the day, there was a rumor that they were eating horse meat. So a lot of women athletes were like, I am not touching that. I'll just have the bread and the few vegetables that were presented to them. So again, they're not exercising enough. They're not getting their water time, and the nutrition that they're bringing in is not good.

[Beckett]

Trudy was going downhill. They all were going downhill. But despite all of these obstacles in front of them, like a wedding day, I think, you know, the eye was on the prize. Like, things are gonna go wrong. Things have been going wrong. But look what we have ahead of us. During the Olympics, America dominated, dominated the swimming events. Men and women. They won 80% of the medals in these events. I mean, 80% of all the medals. They, you know, Trudy utterly was supposed to be a shoe in for gold in her events. No one doubted it. She was up for three events. First, the 400 meter freestyle. And she came in bronze behind two other swimmers, American swimmers. It was shocking. Most of the time, I say the person that comes in fourth has the worst time. But for a person who worldwide was expected to get the gold, a bronze, metal finishing was embarrassing. Well, then in the 400 meter freestyle relay, well, they had Gertrude do the first leg, and she did set them up for success, and they won the gold. And so you would think that would be like, all right, I am a gold medal Olympian. Well, the truth was, and the truth that every single person knew, Americans were dominating so thoroughly that literally, you could have picked four women out of a hat and they would have spanked everyone.

[Susan]

Right?

[Beckett]

So it doesn't matter that Trudy is there. She wasn't critical to the mission. So it's almost like she got a participation trophy. Thanks for helping us. Ha ha. You know, like, thanks for being one of the lucky four that got your name pulled out of a hat. She was really disgusted. And she had one more chance to kind of redeem her reputation, and that.

[Susan]

Was the hundred meter freestyle. It's a short swim. She held world records. Unfortunately, she came in third, and again she received a bronze medal. She was crushed.

[Beckett]

It's not an excuse or, in fact, a reason, but remember, she was hard of hearing and relied a lot on visual cues. The starting gun was located right behind her, and her start was, you know, seconds behind everyone else. But in a race that short, that made all the difference. So had it been a longer race, she could probably have caught up. But alas, she didn't have enough time. That slower, however slight, slower start ruined her chances at gold.

[Susan]

She said later that the Olympics were her greatest disappointment of her entire life. And then as the years went on and she would watch the Olympics, she would relive it all over again. All the emotions that she was feeling while she was not doing the best that she had expected of herself. And she said, how do they say it? The agony of defeat when a champion is defeated in the Olympics. I went through that agony every year since. I cry when I watch it. I should have had three golds. I definitely should have. So she held onto the feelings of this loss forever.

[Beckett]

And in the official complaint to the International Olympic Committee, the American coaches literally called her out. Specifically, Ms. Ederly was off her form completely because of this botched Olympics. I'm like, that's embarrassing, too, because everyone suffered the same privations, you know, but they made a point of saying that they had destroyed the sure thing by their bungling and incompetence. That doesn't feel good.

[Susan]

No, not at all.

[Beckett]

So Trudy, once back home, I mean, I guess I have to say she languished. She was out of sorts and out of shape. She had no more goals, really. Honestly, I think it's, I mean, it was, it was depression. She didn't forgive herself. She felt like the country didn't forgive her. She had let her family down, she had let her team down. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. She's going down a Rabb rabbit hole and, you know, that's, that's real. And I feel very, very sorry for her feelings at about this time. But fellow WSA swimmer and Olympian Helen Wainwright had a challenge in mind for herself. No woman had ever successfully swum across the English Channel. In fact, only five men had ever successfully done it in the entirety of recorded history. So wouldn't this be something? And no one had ever tried using the American crawl stroke that the WSA was supreme at. It had been so dominant in the Olympics, you know what I mean? And now it's being taught all over the world. I think I have a small window to be supreme at it and I better take it right now. The English Channel, you know where it is, it's a relatively narrow body of water that separates England and France. It's the closest you'll get to each country on a map. It looks really close together. I have that problem. I have that problem in a city. I think, oh, I can walk there. It's like a quarter inch away. And then like, you know, 45 minutes later, you're like laying on the sidewalk, I want some water. And you know what? A lot of energy has been spent throughout history either trying to invade Britain over the English Channel because you think it's small or carefully guarding it so no one comes in. Hello, Elizabeth I and the Spanish Armada. Very critical, very critical place in history. Previous subject Sophie Blanchard's husband was the first man to cross it in the air in a hot air balloon. That's a claim to fame, isn't it? It's all well and good in a vehicle, perhaps, although it is still considered something that requires extremely expert skills in navigation. But all of those problems that the quote mermaids had had at Trudy's first long distance swimming are absolutely magnified at the English Channel. The tides go violently in and out. Fog reduces visibility, storm systems blow up with no warning. Temperature chilled your muscles and made the possibility of cramping a probability. Hypothermia, hallucinations. You have to crisscross using the direction of the currents, the speed of which changes with the varying depth of the changeable water. It seems like a lot of mathematics and geography and all kind of nonsense. It doesn't mean you're swimming a straight line across the water. In fact, up to this point, despite hundreds of attempts, there had been only five successful crossings.

[Susan]

The first recorded attempt to swim 21 mile as the seagull flies. Now that's the narrowest part, was a fail in 1872. And that guy only made it an hour in the water. That's it. The first man to make it on his own power was British merchant marine captain Matthew Webb in 1875. And he did it in a time just shy of 22 hours. What that did to all the other male open water swimmers is think, oh, hold my beer. What made swimming the English Channel even more attractive to all these men was when Matthew Web Webb succeeded the Prince of Wales gave him the equivalent of going viral status. You know, he was. It was a big news. And the Prince of Wales gave him a sum of money. And Matthew Webb was also able to parlay his fame into speaking engagements. And he was kind of like a TikTok celebrity in some ways. You know, just popping up, doing this and that, whatever he could do to earn some money writing the back of his achievement. So people wanted in on that action too. What nobody knew at the time was that Matthew Webb would die trying to swim the base of Niagara Falls. He was killed in a whirlpool buried in a pauper's grave, while the town folks kind of stood over him saying, we told you so. He just kept pushing it and pushing it and trying to get the fame that he had when he crossed the English Channel and the lucrative opportunities that had followed it.

[Beckett]

So you said that it kind of engendered the hold my beer attitude among male swimmers. And by the hundreds, they took off thinking, oh, looks short on a map. Whatever preparation I do will probably be fine. I'll just get in the water, Just go across. Okay. You know how long it took before the second man swam it? It didn't happen until 1911. In fact, it took so long that doubt began to be cast that Matthew Webb had done it at all. It was sort of viewed as, okay, this is impossible, right? It shouldn't take this long for the second guy to go. So the first guy was probably a liar head, right?

[Susan]

The second person to succeed was a man named Bill Burgess, and he does play a part in Trudy's story, as does another man who also tried 22 times and never succeeded, named Jabez Wolf. By 1925, the time that we're at in our story, both of These gentlemen had been able to parlay their attempts and success on Bill's part to become coaches for people who wanted to give it a go. So there is a financial reward for people who try enough times or can tell people that they've learned enough to coach them.

[Beckett]

So there have been five successful crossings at the time of our rejoining Trudy's story. And in fact, so we've got Matthew Webb and then we have Bill Burgess and then three men trained by Bill Burgess, but no woman, not yet. But the time was coming. And let me quote something written in the paper. Masculine holders of championships and athletics, look to your laurels. Sundry members of the so called weaker sex, having obtained the vote and many other things upon which they'd set their dear fluttering little hearts, are now out for far bigger game. Frankly, they're making what might be called Herculean efforts to overcome the vaunted superiority of their brothers.

[Susan]

Now one woman who we've already talked about, Annette Kellerman from Australia, she actually did think she could be the first woman to swim it. And she did try. I mean, she tried with a lot of press following her because, you know, she was a media star. For better or for worse, she was unsuccessful as well.

[Beckett]

So the WSA had weirdly sort of washed their hands of Trudy. It seemed like they were putting their full court press behind Helen Wainwright and her attempt at the English Channel. They know, they know who's the best open water swimmer. But maybe it was Trudy's kind of reputation as a non trainer that was getting to her. Or maybe she'd just given up openly and they just didn't want to fight it or whatever.

[Susan]

I think that was it. She was starting to skip practices. Her heart was not in it like before. She wasn't getting any column space on sports pages at this time. She wasn't setting any records. You know, she was just kind of moping at such a young age, which is really sad. But Helen was not, she was still at it. And she had what they saw as the heart and the skills to succeed.

[Beckett]

Well, the press started calling Helen Helen Swimwright instead of Helen Wainwright. Oh yeah, she was the darling of the sports pages. Sister Meg saw the writing on the wall, I think, just like saw the whole picture. I like Sister Meg. I love that she convinced Trudy to get back in shape. And you know what, make your case, get with it, pull yourself together. And Trudy did get back into her own old regimen and she was starting to win competitions again. And then Helen Wainwright fell out of A streetcar and tore a muscle in her thigh. And Meg, like raced down there to practice. Truly, this is your time. You're a better swimmer than her. Everybody knows it. Put your quarter up. That would come up a lot later, wouldn't it, in the 70s where you put your quarter up. I would like to know anyone that's younger than 40. Do you know what I mean by putting your quarter up? Send us in. Note, I'm interested to know. Well, the WSA had spent all this money and honestly street cred in the press that they were going to have a woman try to swim the English Channel. And you know what? After this accident, sentiment was all like, well, okay, let let Trudy do it or at least let her do it too. And the WSA was sort of forced into including Trudy in the trip as kind of the understudy. They really wanted Helen to do it. Just know that they really would prefer that Helen did it. Trudy was like the backup. They decided they would go ahead and take both women since Bill Burgess was actually coaching a woman right then from France to England. They had to hire kind of the second place, the second choice coach for Helen and Trudy. They hired Jabez Wolf, who would handle their training on site. And old coach Lou began to train them at home. And then Helen slipped on a wet sidewalk and re injured her thigh. Helen was out. And all eyes turned to Trudy.

[Susan]

How did I look at the dinner cruise in my fancy dress?

[Beckett]

Back Fabulous.

[Susan]

Yeah. Let me tell you how I felt at the dinner cruise in my fabulous dress. The dress I loved. It was so comfortable, but I had brought the wrong bra to wear underneath it. And by the end of the night, I was so excited to rip that thing off. It was nowhere near as comfortable as my Honey Love bras. It was bad underneath that really pretty dress.

[Beckett]

Honey Love has revolutionized the wireless bra game for sure. Their bras feature supportive bonding that eliminates the need for those wires and all that unnecessary bulk that does not go nicely under your fancy dress on a dinner cruise. You deserve a bra, we all do, that's lightweight and comfortable and that doesn't sacrifice support so we can embrace freedom and flexibility and comfort for our dancing purposes with Honey Love's wire free bras. Plus they're made with fabric that's so soft you'll forget you're wearing it.

[Susan]

No grooves.

[Beckett]

No grooves. Well, except on the dance floor, but not in your back. For a limited time only, you can get Honey Love on sale. Get 20% off your entire order with our exclusive link honeylove.com historychicks Support our.

[Susan]

Show and check them out at honeylove.com historytricks if you're tired of bras that cause bulging in the back, because Honey Love bras are designed to be back smoothing fabric and they prevent that bulge that I know I had going on that night. And for a more relaxed bra, which I personally wear bras to bed, I need this bra. The V bra. It offers the support of traditional bras but without the uncomfortable underwire. Without giving me that uni boob like sports bras do.

[Beckett]

Or that was so popular during the Titanic era, not so popular now. No. It's time to treat yourself to the best bras on the market and save 20% off at honeylove.com historychicks use our exclusive link to get 20% off at honeylove.community historychicks to find your perfect fit.

[Susan]

After your purchase, they're going to ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them that we sent you. You can elevate your comfort, elevate your style with bras that empower your lifestyle of flexibility.

[Beckett]

It's 1925. Gertrude is 19 years old. Most English Channel attempts happen in the fall. People have done the math or the oceanography and that seems to be at your best odds, though we all know the odds are not that good historically. So Trudi decided to spend the summer training that summer.

[Susan]

One of the things that she did there had been a standing race from Battery park, which is on the southernmost tip of Manhattan, to a beach in New Jersey called Sandy Hook, which was one of her stomping grounds, I guess if you can call swimming stomping at her summer house, this distant swim was about 22 miles. It was open water, very similar to the distance that you would cover in the English Channel. It had been going on since 1914, a very long time. Several men, but no women, had won this competition. In June of that summer, not as part of the race, but just as part of her training, Trudy slipped into the water, followed by a boat, and started swimming. She swam for 11 hours, 11 minutes and 30 seconds before she stepped ashore at Sandy Hook. In addition to finishing, she broke the previously held record, which was of course held by a man, one reporter said of Trudie Swim. She crawled and kicked down the bay. The churning of her feet beat against the tradition and bruised it. The various theories about male superiority may have to be amended.

[Beckett]

Trudy spent the rest of the summer training, but was very careful not to train to the Point of exhaustion, she and her pop constructed something they called the bubble boat. It was like a floating rest stop so that she wouldn't have to depend on anyone to be free to go follow her in a boat. She could handle it herself. And of course, the goal would be to not have to use the bubble boat. That was like what you're working toward, kind of like not having to use the rope. It's like training wheels. The main obstacle that she thought was to get used to the cold water, which is why tends to annihilate a lot of people swimming the Channel. So beginning the week after her major swim, she started to overcome this by swimming at Atlantic Highlands, which is the closest she could get to the temperature of the English Channel. But I will tell you, it's about 10 degrees warmer. So she didn't get all the way, but she got part of the way. Won't you have to have some kind of a diet also while you're training? Said the reporters. And she's like, that doesn't worry me.

[Susan]

Me.

[Beckett]

Anyway, I'm not going to give up my ice cream. Hilariously, her coach, Jabez Wolf, had encouraged her to put on a little weight as both insulation and buoyancy. Because you're not allowed to have a thermal swimsuit for an official crossing, and you're also not allowed any flotation devices, but if they're part of your body, they have to let you take them in the water. Pretty sly. I will tell you, I am not a big fan of Mr. Wolf. From the very beginning, he openly, openly expressed doubts about her ability to cross. I don't know if it's that he wasn't familiar with it or he wasn't willing to have an open mind, but he criticized her fast swimming style. He criticized the American crawl like, honey, this is the expert, the world expert in the American crawl in open water. But he was very skeptical, openly. Like anyone who asked him, he'd be like, eh, yeah, she's not gonna be able to keep up this pace. It's hardly worth it. I'm getting a little paycheck. Blah, blah, blah, nonsense.

[Susan]

I think it was a comb of him being, you know, just kind of dismissive of it, like, here's another paycheck, like you just said. But I also think that it was part of his mentality to be a we never did it that way before, so it's not going to work guy, combined with someone who may think that negative comments motivate people.

[Beckett]

I've had a boss like that.

[Susan]

We all Have.

[Beckett]

I mean, spoiler alert. It does not.

[Susan]

For her part, Trudy didn't actually treat Jabez with wide eyed yes, coach deference like he had expected. She did not do everything he suggested. She had come with a training schedule from Lou Hanley, who said, yes, stay in the water sometime. That's not the primary part of your training. You're doing that to get used to the cold, but continue to do all those land drills, you know, go for long walks. Just build up your stamina in other ways than swimming in the water. Where Jabez Wolf was like, no, you have to keep swimming. That's your training. And she doesn't want any part of it. So they butted heads right from the beginning. She's not really listening to him. He's just getting angrier and angrier.

[Beckett]

On August 17, 1925, Trudy began her first channel swim from a place called Cape Grene, which stands for Gray nose. It's a little outcrop of rock which looks like, you might guess, like a big giant's nose. When people tried to swim the other way, that's the closest place you want to aim for. But it's hard to hit that little tiny place coming from the other direction. So more and more swimmers were tending to leave from there. She ate breakfast, but the follow boat began to offer her hot beverages from time to time as she swam. Beef tea, which is functionally bone broth, Right?

[Susan]

Yeah.

[Beckett]

I mean, yeah.

[Susan]

Which, of course, the taste of which she would have been familiar with as the daughter of a butcher.

[Beckett]

I will tell you the best float of my life. It was in early November. What were we doing on the boat? I don't really know. Like, it's one of those summers where you're like, oh, I don't want summer to end. But we literally took the boat out with some friends and we all. The air was 49 degrees. I remember because we talked about. I have no idea what the water temperature was, but it was warmer than the air. And we all got in and drank hot coffee while we were sitting in the armholes of the life jackets. And that is so memorable to me. So drinking hot beverages while you're in cold water is highly recommend. The closest people can probably get is drinking whiskey in the bathtub.

[Susan]

So do it.

[Beckett]

Do it. The early part of the swim was smooth, but the weather began to deteriorate as the day progressed and the sea became rough. And despite the worsening conditions and a jellyfish encounter. I was gonna say a jellyfish attack, but you know what, Trudy came to them. They were just hanging out. They were just being. Trudy came upon them like they. And then they stung her like they do.

[Susan]

Well, she knew that there was gonna be jellyfish. That was part of it. There's jellyfish. Where she had been swimming in the United States, too. There were sharks. But she, having grown up in the water, knew that sharks were something she probably would never see. There were so few of them there. But Jabez, I'm sorry, I'm so mad at this guy. He decided to tell her every time there was a fisherman that caught a shark somewhere in the channel just to kind of scare her, you know, get into her head or something.

[Beckett]

Well, I don't know why we. We can depend on sharks and jellyfish not to attack her. But not her coach, right?

[Susan]

Excellent.

[Beckett]

You know what I mean? And he would yell negative things to her while she was swimming. And you know what? Ideally, she didn't hear most of them because of her hearing loss. The joke's on you, Jabbas. But nevertheless, she never really felt supported by this coach. I mean, he openly thought this whole thing was a waste of time. So that's an awesome thing to bring with you. Like, horrible suitcase.

[Susan]

You know what else he thought was a good motivator for her? And I put a big question mark after that? Bagpipes. She had asked for some music from, you know, modern music, and he thought bagpipes were the way to go.

[Beckett]

Yeah, you know what? Maybe he was mistaking her for the Queen, because I literally just watched that episode where Queen Elizabeth and the bagpiper have a really touching conversation about which bagpipe song the bagpiper would choose to play at her funeral. That's the one he played during her funeral. So it's not a given that everybody hates bagpipes, but I would say 99.99% of people won't find that as relaxing as Jabez decided it was, or motivating.

[Susan]

She had heard from other swimmers that there was a small four piece band that she could hire to play modern music. And she did hire them to go along, but ultimately it was not the wisest move. At about six hours in the beautiful day, they had suddenly turned nine not so beautiful people in the support boat. People in the press boat, because the press is following the story kind of started. What was that that you said before?

[Beckett]

Oh, presenting their accounts to the waves.

[Susan]

I would just call it chumming. But yes, that and the band that she had hired, they were in a very small boat and they started yakking up as well. So you can't play an instrument and hurl. I know lots of ways to say vomit.

[Beckett]

I think it's hilarious that you could hire a band for your English Channel swimming adventures.

[Susan]

It's like a whole cottage industry getting these swimmers who are attempting, you know, to swim the Channel. You got your coaches, you've got your inns and, you know, people that supply the food. You've got bands, you know, you've got people that take care of the boats. There's a whole industry surrounding these swimmers attempting to cross the English Channel every summer.

[Beckett]

Kind of reminds me of the whole base camp industry at Mount Everest at this in modern day, you know. Trudy pushed on. After nearly nine hours in the water with the English coast in sight, she felt exhausted. She was pretty disoriented. That's a pretty common syndrome. People start to hallucinate, get a little hypothermia. She was resting, floating face down, as she had been instructed to do down in the basement with the wsa. Don't use your arms and legs. Trudy, remember, she was especially trained that the best way to rest is to literally rest. I don't know if people weren't familiar with that or it engendered a little alarm among the people in the boat. But her coach ordered the companion swimmer, Egyptian swimmer, Ishak Helmi, who was kind of keeping her company in the water. He ordered Helmi to recover her from the water even though she wasn't in trouble. And thus Gertrude utterly was disqualified. That's the rules. You cannot touch the swimmer in the water.

[Susan]

And when they pulled her aboard the boat, she was very uncharacteristically weak. And she kind of just went down below and curled up in a blanket and slept. And then she slept for the whole next day, which was very strange for her to do. I mean, this is a woman who's done long distance swimsuit for years. And for her to be that physically exhausted just didn't make sense after such a short swim, as far as, you know, the type of swim she was able to do.

[Beckett]

So it's not just the sketchy scenario of having been pulled out of the water early that put Jabez Wolf on the WSA enemies list. Ann Trudy's Trudy had had a woman chaperone in the boat, a woman named Elsie Vitz, and there was a fellow Olympian in the boat named Vera Tanner. And these two women were alarmed at Gertrude's mental condition when she was pulled out of the water. And also the state of her the whole Next day. And so the two ladies, and later journalists and the officials at the WSA began to suspect that the beef tea that her coach Wolf had provided her may have been tampered with with Dun dun Dun. So before drinking the tea, Trudy said she had felt fine, and afterwards she felt increasingly lethargic and confused. A quote from an interview. I felt like a heavy band was being pressed against my head. My main trouble was the absence of encouragement and that queer feeling in my head. And honestly, this is me talking. It does seem like everyone was convinced that he had done it. It was pretty much a known fact. Like, even remember that other famous channel coach, the one they didn't end up hiring? He came down on the side that, and I quote, trudy was doped cocaine. Seems to be the consensus, though there's still no hard proof. Historically speaking, I have to report that Wolf's general demeanor and past sketchy behavior, also his, like, known frustration at not finishing, despite his many attempts, all conspired to make people believe it was true, whether or not it really was. It was easy to tar him with the brush because he was just him, you know.

[Susan]

Yeah, he had a lot of things going against him going in that were actually known. You know, there was proof of how he was treating her and it was.

[Beckett]

Generally believed to be sabotage rather than an attempt to give her performance enhancing drugs, which actually were perfectly legal. Hilariously, like Jabez himself, I think at one point had a. Had an oxygen tank following him. This is during one of his, like, very early swims and no one batted eye. It's like, well, just, just don't touch them. But yeah, put whatever chemicals you want.

[Susan]

Another thing that he was doing that just. There's a picture I have and I'll put it in the show notes. You had just said there is one major rule, you cannot touch the swimmer. And he at some points was in a rowboat rowing alongside of her and feeding her things. Now, in practice and in this swim, and his hand is suspiciously close to her during the swim, he's like feeding things to her on a pole so she wouldn't touch. But in this particular photograph, looks like he's almost touching her mouth, putting the food right into it. I don't know what to make of that.

[Beckett]

Well, you know what? There's a noted. There is a noted incident that Gertrude talks about later. I hadn't thought about this until just then. He had handed her one bottle of beef tea and she dropped it in the water as she avoided his hand and he mocked her for it. That's her words, not mine. Mocked her for it and reluctantly gave her another one. So I think even very early on in the swim, he was trying to make things difficult.

[Susan]

Yeah, no, no argument there.

[Beckett]

So in response to Jabez Wolf's whole deal, the Women's Swimming Association WSA openly fired Wolf. And then Wright then hired Bill Burgess as Trudy's new trainer for any future attempt that she may make. Although they almost very quickly washed their hands of the whole thing.

[Susan]

When Trudy returned back to the United States, that press had been following her. So she had been in the news and she was still a big deal for having tried it. So offers started to roll in and she had a choice. You know, am I going to start making money, making the money that I thought maybe I would make from doing this swim or continue on competing? In the time that she had been practicing to do this long distance swim, other younger swimmers had come up in the races that she had been winning and setting records in. And that wasn't her thing anymore. She just didn't have the heart for that. Her heart was on swimming the English Channel. So she decided that it was time for her to go pro. We talked about this with Althea Gibson and Babe Diedrichsen. They could be either amateurs and compete, or she could go pro and make some money. Along those lines. Her father had a connection. He knew a guy and this guy decided he was going to become Trudy's agent and he was going to negotiate deals for her. Dad was happy about it because dad was going to get a cut of it. And this gentleman, whose name was Dudley Field Malone, was very happy about it. He was a lawyer and he also was going to get a cut of the money that Trudy was going to be making.

[Beckett]

After her failed attempt, Trudy, along with a fellow Olympic swimmer named Aileen Riggin, took a job. I'm going to put that in quotes, a job, question mark at the Deauville Hotel in Miami. It's no longer there. The Beatles once played their second ever United States show there. You would think that'd be a historical monument, but it is gone. Well, what their job was is they lived in the hotel and they dined in the dining and they were celebrities living in luxury, sitting around the pool. Their whole job was they're supposed to say hello to people and be there for, you know, shaking hands and the excitement of meeting celebrities. And they'd put on little diving competitions and it was right on the beach. They'd go in the ocean and swim for A while. Their whole job was to be seen. If anyone wanted lessons, they were supposed to give them. But she's like, people on vacation do not, not rush out to spend their morning taking some lessons.

[Susan]

You know, it's not like the Catskills and taking cha cha lessons from Johnny.

[Beckett]

Right. And so they said that was like the best time. They had a great time. That was a great break. That was a great break. The life of luxury, fabulous with your friend. And after the season, because it was an outdoor pool. After that ended, the two ladies and Ms. Helen Wainwright, back in the picture, returned to New York to appear at a theater called the Hippodrome. The Hippodrome had been famous since the turn of the century for their mermaid acts. Like, they had this one big act, I mean, decades long, where this whole group of marching lady soldiers just disappeared into an underground tank. What happened? How did they get out? No one could figure it out. I mean, it went on for decades. So the Hippodrome was pretty famous for their water, I don't know, acts. They were in a cast with lots of athletes from various sports. Golf and tennis, in particular swimming. The ladies performed in a glass tank that had once belonged to Annette Kellerman. Two shows a day for weeks in front of the Hippodrome could hold about 6,000 people. And in an interview much later, Ms. Riggin said, so there we were. And it was held over and held over for weeks after weeks. I guess our thing was probably the hit of the show. Along with ice skating, they had this little ice skating rink there. Not with ice. It was kind of a wax they used to skate on. I loved it. It was New York City where I lived. All my friends would come and they'd come backstage. We weren't professionals, so we didn't care. We were sportswomen who happened to be on the stage. Yeah, you know, there's gotta be a difference. So being a lady of luxury and an object of curiosity was well and good for a while. But Trudy knew she had to try again and quickly if she was going to complete her mission.

[Susan]

Because she had attempted it. Other women had attempted it more and more. Women were coming out of the ocean and saying, I'm a long distance open swimmer. And all this did was kind of fuel her competitive fire. She wants to be the first woman. But you know what? All these other women want to be the first woman too. Including a woman named Millie Corson. She was a Danish immigrant to the United States. She ran a swimming school. By the age of 16, she was decorated three times by the King of Denmark for saving people from drowning. Once she emigrated to the United States to marry her husband. She won a Carnegie Medal for heroism when she saved yet another life. So she's not only competing with Trudy, she's in the same area physically, in the Northeast. She's doing the swims for fun. She swam around Manhattan island, which is 42 miles, and she had actually tried to swim the channel before. She was about two miles from shore when the tides switch, and she suddenly found herself seven miles from shore, caught up in the current. So she had a failed attempt. They're kind of neck and neck here. One failed attempt each. So this is a legitimate competitor here.

[Beckett]

Right? So we cannot lounge around anymore by the pool. We cannot lounge around anymore in a tank on a stage. We have to get our poop in a scoop and get our crap together. And we have to go back to France. The WSA declined to pay her way this time. And so she had to be creative with her financing with the help of her agent and pop. I mostly just like saying the word pop. She signed a contract with the New York Daily News and also the Chicago Tribune Press Service, which is kind of affiliated with it. And they agreed to provide money for her expenses and then an additional amount if she successfully completed the swim. And she would write stories for the paper, even if it's ghost written, like, functionally, her name would be on it. And she would have to accept the fact that she's going to be trailed by a reporter and a photographer for the entire trip. But it seemed like a good deal. You know, they're paying her whole expenses, like anything that happens. Food, drink, travel, training, whatever you need. Clothes, we're there for you. Fabulous. Well, so she moved to this decrepit lighthouse near Cape Grenos. I just wanted to say that in France. And she began her on site preparations. And there. I'm gonna. I kind of want to read this whole thing from the article. This is from an article in the 1926 Herald Tribune from the writer that was following her. That's kind of like the real world, isn't it? Paris bookmakers are placing heavy odds on the Channel, winning against this young champion. But standing beside Ms. Etterly as she sat on one of the rocks near the lighthouse and looked across the gray, sullen water. I'll back this girl against the ocean. If there's one woman who can make the swim, it is this girl with the simplicity of Joan of Arc, what I say. And the shoulders and back of Jack Dempsey. And the frankest and bravest pair of eyes that ever looked into a face.

[Susan]

I mean, if you want to think that that was, you know, a male sports writer. Because male sports writers, even to this day, have very colorful ways of wording things. It was not. It was a female. Her name was Julia Hapman, and I love her because she and Trudi really got along well right from the boat. And Trudi was starting to tell her things. That Julia could write in Trudi's name and to ghostwrite these articles. Air quotes coming from Gertrude. Also on this one, she didn't have a chaperone, exactly. Her sister Meg and Pop went over with her. So she has quite a little support system with her this time.

[Beckett]

Julia wrote, I felt that I would sooner be in that tug the day she starts than at the ringside of the greatest fight or at the arena of the greatest game in the world. For this, in my opinion, is to be the greatest sports story in the world. You know what? 10 points for supporting the sisterhood, Julia. Love it.

[Susan]

Definitely.

[Beckett]

For this second attempt, Trudi had hired Mr. Burgess, like everyone probably should have done the first time.

[Susan]

And unlike the last time, she and Bill Burgess sat down and had a very mature discussion about teamwork and mutual respect. She insisted that she was going to do the American Crawl. He agreed because that was her. I mean, they got along so much better than her and Jabez Wolf ever did. Right out of the gate, they just decided what roles Bill was gonna play and what things Trudy was gonna do and what she expected of him. And one of those things was not to pull her out of the water.

[Beckett]

And I will tell you, at the beginning of this conversation, he almost derailed everyone. He had agreed to train another swimmer. Her name's Lillian Cannon. At the same time that he was working with Trudy, and Pop was incensed. I mean, you hardly ever saw Pop get mad, but he was mad, mad, mad. And it was pretty tense for a while. Trudy finally said, you know, really, you do have to do this exclusively or we can't work together. You know, you can't have divided loyalties here. And they made up. You know, Bill and Trudy made up, and they were fine. And, you know, those legitimately mature conversations smoothed the waters. But you know what? I have often said that parents can hold grudges for their children long after the children have forgotten the incident.

[Susan]

Oh, absolutely.

[Beckett]

And, yeah, this was definitely the case between Pop and Burgess. Pop was like, mm, I don't like him. But then, of course, Trudy's like oh yeah, you should have seen the other one.

[Susan]

Yeah. I think this is kind of crucial to why, why Bill stayed on Julia. Let's, on behalf of the Daily News, doubled Bill Burgess salary. So he had absolutely no reason to train anybody else.

[Beckett]

So it was like a team effort. Like there was irritation, mature conversation and filthy lucre. It all worked great and, and now it was time to get geared up. Trudy had the advantage of having just had a recent attempt and she knew based on that experience what she needed to change. She had suffered from very bad chafing during her first attempt from her one piece swimsuit and she decided the time was right to modify it. So. So Trudy and her sister made a swimsuit in a style entirely new, not to steal from Jane Austen. A two piece bathing suit using jersey silk, which is very smooth on the skin. And it was basically a bra top in short, short trunks, a proto bikini clutch the pearls. You know what everyone, it's as functional of an outfit for this as it could be for the purposes I intend to wear it. I am not going to be on a stage, I'm gonna be in the water. Deal.

[Susan]

The other thing that they worked on together was a problem with the goggles. All of the goggles that Trudy had been using at some point started to leak and that let salt water in and just kind of defeated the whole purpose of goggles. She had a pair of kind of wraparound lenses made by an optometrist in New York that she thought was gonna do the trick. But when she started training with them, water was leaking too. Then she had this idea and they lined the edges of these goggles with candle wax that stuck to her face and it's completely solved the leaking galgo problem. So she's working on her body, she's working on all these tools to help her swim across the channel. I mean, tools that are going to be in use. That two piece bathing suit, that's going to be in use for years, right? Goggles improved, also in use for years. I don't think she gets the credit for those things as much as she should.

[Beckett]

On August 6, 1926 at 4 in the morning, Trudy was slathered in sheep grease for insulation and chafing prevention. The photo looks. I hate sticky stuff. I feel claustrophobic and weird looking at, I just, I mean it skeeves me out. Even now I got a little in my spine. Doesn't matter what I think. Off she went for her second attempt. She was followed by the Alsace, which was A tug which had pop, Mr. Burgess, Sister Meg, and Julia and disgruntled reporters from other papers hadn't been allowed aboard. So they hired a second tug named the Moroni, which nearly killed Trudy on several occasions, almost running her right over. Because this is what we need is another obstacle. That's what we need.

[Susan]

The people that weren't on either of these boats was that band.

[Beckett]

No, we. We ditched the band. We ditched the bagpipes. For most of the way, Trudy sang let me call you sweetheart to herself. She had a very, very big thing in her mind. How's this for motivation? Now, Pop had been her financial manager. He had no one took advantage of her. And also, you know how it is when young people get a giant sum of money. He didn't want her to blow it all on nonsense. And of course, it's a very paternalistic time. But Trudy had always wanted to buy a red convertible roadster, and her father had always told her, no, no, no, no, it's not practical. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, okay. But now and then, when she looked up and looked over to the tug, the crew of the tug, including all of her support orders, held up signs to encourage her, like, you've earned one wheel. You're at two wheel level. Pop had promised if she finished, the first thing he'd do is go out and buy her a red convertible roadster. You know what rewards work better than criticism? Job as.

[Susan]

No kidding. No kidding.

[Beckett]

Do you see how this is done? You do see how this is done? No, it wasn't all idyllic, though. The sea became so rough that at one point, Trudy was ordered out of the water. It was so dangerous, everyone was afraid for her. But she didn't listen. Or she chose to pretend not to hear.

[Susan]

That in addition to Bill promising not to pull her out of the water, she had made Julia, Meg, Pop all promise not to pull her out of the water. So every time Bill was like, we have to take her out. It's risky. The others were like, no, we can't. We made a promise to her. She'll let us know if she's starting to get in trouble. There's this whole argument going on as they're crossing.

[Beckett]

I mean, at one point they heard Trudy yell, God help me. You know what? If you're a dad in that boat and you hear your daughter yell, God help me, your first instinct is to get her out. And they just really. They had really had that conversation ahead of time. It has to come from her. It has to come from her.

[Susan]

And Pop was being a pop on the boat, especially at this time as the water was getting rough. That other tug is still following. And a couple times, like you had said before, they did almost accidentally run her over. And he is yelling at the people in the other tug. You loafers. If I had a gun, I'd shoot you. Keep back. Don't you see you're trying to kill the child? And Trudy looked up at him and she said, why, Pop? What will people think of you? About 13 hours into her swim, after hours of being battered by waves that were reported to be 20 foot swells, Bill yelled at her, come out, Gertie, you must come out. And she kind of looked up at him and she said, what for? Her humor is still going. I mean, that had to be encouraging that she wasn't in any trouble, that she was, you know, comfortable with what she was doing.

[Beckett]

Well, and I also think it helped to have the knowledge of that everybody nearest to you was on your side and they all wanted what you wanted.

[Susan]

She also was drinking chicken broth instead of beef. Beef, yeah.

[Beckett]

Untainted by cocaine, ideally later in the day. Again, we're still. On August 6, 1926, Trudy made history by becoming the first woman to swim the English Channel. She did it. She set a record time of only 14 hours and 39 minutes. She was only 20 years old, but you will read 19 because people aren't au fait with the year change of her birthday quite yet. But she was 20. But you'll often read 19. And the first person she encountered on shore was this comedy, I have no idea, was a British official who asked for her passport. Yes, I hope someone in the boat had a pocket because that is, that's the weirdest thing. Was that for a photo op maybe?

[Susan]

No, I don't think it was. I mean, she went ashore, she, she got all the reward, you know, all the woohoos. And she hightailed it back to the tug so the whole thing could go to a dock, so everybody could disembodied. And that's where the guy met them. And I honestly don't think that he knew what was going on because by the morning it had all been forgotten. You know, he had been talked to by people and said, no, no, no, you don't understand. Why would she have a passport on her?

[Beckett]

Well, and he explained his first impression of her as a, quote, disheveled teenager. And he was kind of bewildered, like, I don't know what her deal is. She didn't seem to be wearing much clothing and yeah, her hair was kind of messed up. And I do not think he was aware of the monumental thing that had just happened, but the world certainly was. I am one of those people that would really love to sleep in complete darkness. But in this elderly house with the blinds that honestly I think came with the house, the blinds always allow light in at the crack of dawn. Worse in the spring. Slowly getting better. But like, why am I lurking around waiting for it to get better? I can shop for almost anything from my house now, so why not shop for blinds at home too? Well, three day blinds has local professionally trained design consultants who have an average of 10 plus years of experience. They provide expert guidance on the right blinds for you, especially in this neighborhood with all of these cockamines hand carved window sizes. You know what?

[Susan]

No. Yeah.

[Beckett]

Like no matter what your unique need in this old neighborhood, they have a design professional that can help you.

[Susan]

Not just weirdly sized windows, but how about arched windows? Or maybe it's time to upgrade to motorized blinds or I know, doesn't that sound cool or what? Blinds are better. Roller shades, a Roman shade. I do not like going to stores to do things. I love shopping from home and shopping from home for home decor and home improvements. Like three day blinds makes so much sense.

[Beckett]

They're the leading manufacturer of custom window treatments in the United States and right now they're running a buy one, get 50% off deal.

[Susan]

Right now you can get three day blinds, buy one, get one 50% off deal on custom blind blinds, shades, shutters and draperies for a free no charge, no obligation consultation. Just head to threedayblinds.com chicks that's buy.

[Beckett]

One get one 50% off when you head to threedayblinds dot com chicks one last time. That's the number 3D a Y blinds dot com chicks. When Triti returned home, she was greeted with a ticker tape parade through Manhattan which began at her house at 108Amsterdam Avenue. With more than 2 million people along the parade route, it was actually her second. I don't know if we mentioned it or not, but the returning, triumphant 1924 Olympians also received a Manhattan ticker tape.

[Susan]

Parade, but not as big as this one. This was the biggest ticker tape parade as far as attendance goes for any athlete, male or female. That's how big it was.

[Beckett]

President Coolidge invited Trudy to the White House and she kind of couldn't believe, like, is this me? Is this real life? Everyone was so proud of her. The President called her, and I quote, america's best girl.

[Susan]

This is not just American news. The news of her making this swim is global and it's huge all around the world. At the time, Ed Sullivan, speaking of the Beatles opening. Ed Sullivan was a sports writer in New York. What he wrote the day after she had completed her swim. Gertrude Ederle yesterday proved that the female of the species is far greater than the male. Oh, I know.

[Beckett]

What do you know?

[Susan]

I know.

[Beckett]

She was widely called Queen of the Waves. And grossly, the grease smeared Venus.

[Susan]

Ew.

[Beckett]

Is that a compliment? I don't really know. But the aftermath, I have to say, was very difficult for her. The public attention really did catch her off guard. She thought she wanted this, and then she struggled honestly with the pressures of being a national hero, for that's what it was. She had a lot of requests for appearances and endorsements. And one telegram I saw a picture of indicating that the possible revenues that she was going to gain just from this in its immediate wake were $1 million in 1926 money. It's a lot.

[Susan]

Perhaps most importantly, the very day she got back, she was presented with that red Buick convertible. It was purchased by the Daily News, who were selling newspapers like crazy following her TR.

[Beckett]

That was a good deal. That was a good deal for everybody. Soon after, and I mean, a matter of weeks, Trudy's achievement was challenged by other swimmers. In particular one Mrs. Milgade Courson, who swam it just weeks after Trudy. She was the first mother to swim the Channel. She also got a ticker tape parade, by the way. But I will tell you that Ms. Corson did not beat Trudy's time. But her achievement sort of added pressure to Trudy's newfound fame. It had functionally an expiration date. You know, she was invited to join a touring vaudeville act, which she did. She was earning $3,000 a week. That's a lot. Yeah, but that's like $2.27 million a year. I mean, had she stayed a year, which he didn't.

[Susan]

I'm being. I'm just being. I'm gonna be negative here. Remember the agent that she had? He's the one that's fielding all these offers, and they were coming in like an avalanche at first. But he's rejecting, like, the little projects, you know, endorse this chewing gum or, you know, just a quick little turnaround with not a big payoff. And the one that he accepts is that touring show. And, okay, he gets his 20%. Pop gets his 20%. Gertrude from her. The rest that she has left is paying. I mean, she's not writing the checks, but she's paying the expenses for this tour. It was great for the agent, not as great as it could have been for Gertrude. And it kept her on the road. She wasn't doing all the little projects that could have made a lot of money when you combine them. Like Millie Corson actually was.

[Beckett]

Well, her hearing loss and natural introversion, I think, caught up with her. After a short while, she wrote, I finally got the shakes. I was just a bundle of nerves. I had to quit the tour. By then, I was stone deaf. And it is a lot. It's a lot being on all the time. One thing she did do that was kind of spectacular, that she thought was a treat for herself. She was invited to come to Hollywood, where she guest starred as herself in a lost silent film called Swim Girl Swim, starring Bebe Daniels. Now, like 75% of all. All silent movies, that movie is no longer in existence. The materials degraded quickly or exploded. They're very subject to humidity. It's just a victim of the environment. But for that movie, she was paid about $115,000 in today's money. And also she got to see herself on the silver screen, which was pretty cool.

[Susan]

Yeah, pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, with actually clothes on. Unlike Annette Kellerman.

[Beckett]

Yes. We are not all as brave as Annette.

[Susan]

No, no. But, gosh, I kind of wish I was. I mean, I don't think I'd be swimming up like Venus out of the water naked or anything, but just having some of that, I think that would be good. Trudy did compete in one more race. It was two years after her Channel Swim, but by then she had lost her competitive edge. She wasn't training at all, so she wasn't physically ready to do it. And of a field of 53 women, she came in sixth. So, I mean, it's. It's up at the top, but it's not the top. And that was the last race that.

[Beckett]

She ever competed in, in 1933, when Trudy was only 28. We're only at 28.

[Susan]

I know.

[Beckett]

Trudy slipped on a loose tile and fell down a flight of stairs at one of her friend's apartments. All this slipping on floor materials for champion swimmers. What is the story? She broke her pelvis and tore ligaments in her back, and doctors told her she might never walk again. And we all know her by now. That's like red rag to a bull, because of course she's going to walk again. No one has ever seen anyone more determined than Trudy to get herself out of her chair. And it took a year, but she finally fully recovered from her injuries. And while she was recovering, she made another little design, some earplugs for swimmers. She made them out of sort of a. Almost like a silly Putty like mixture. And the whole intent on that is to help prevent others from experiencing the same hearing loss that she had. So she used her time well.

[Susan]

Yes, and she did move out of her parents home into an apartment of her own that she shared with a couple roommates. She may be fading back from history in the public view, but she's living a life that she's created for herself. She took jobs, she managed a pool. She worked for a while as a saleswoman and an advisor for a dress manufacturer who focused on plus size women. I kept seeing in my head Ilona Mar, you know, the rugby player from the Olympics this year who was very, very fast. And she. I'd seen a TikTok that she did where she talked about body positivity and how she'd always been called overweight, but she wasn't because she's so muscular. And that's kind of the same shape that Trudi Ederle had. Unfortunately, at a time where body positivity wasn't as great as it is now.

[Beckett]

You know, I have a vague recollection of President Coolidge having said something inappropriate just about that when she was visiting him. I'm pulling this out of my head, but something about like, oh, I'm surprised such a small lady as yourself had the strength to get across the water. Yeah, like something like, I'm gonna smack you.

[Susan]

No, he said something like that too.

[Beckett]

Yeah, Yeah. I don't think it was very cool. I mean, you know, be better. President of the United States.

[Susan]

Yeah.

[Beckett]

So it could be said that she might be fading into a little bit of obscurity. And then came the 1939 World's Fair in Flushing, Queens. Billy Rose's Aquacade was on the case. There's a giant arena with 10,000 seats looking down on a pool and I quote, big enough to fit 1750 tons of water. Because when there's that much water, sister, gallons ain't gonna cut it. Okie dokie, Billy Rose. But what it was was synchronized swimming, bathing beauties. You've all seen those movies, you know, all the dance numbers in the pool for which Esther Williams became famous. Well, Gertrude was not in the company, but she walked out on stage and received the screams and cheers of the crowd. When she made a walk on appearance during the opening of the theater, which was later named the Gertrude Ederly Amphitheater in her honor. Hooray. So she is not being forgotten. You know what? Up until very, very recently, there was a remnant of this world fair. It's like a spaceship looking little cafe called the Utterly Terrace Cafe at Meadow Lake park, which, I'm sorry to say, according to Yelp, seems to have been recently closed.

[Susan]

Oh, victim of COVID maybe.

[Beckett]

But it's served. I saw the menu. Your standard park fare, hot dogs, hamburgers, relatively inexpensive prices. Notably, they serve ice cream, so Gertrude would have approved.

[Susan]

Yeah, hooray.

[Beckett]

But I mean, the structure is still there. I just don't think the cafe's there anymore. Well, I'll put a picture on the Pinterest because it's pretty cute. It's pretty cute. Well, as World War II began, Gertrude took a job working for an airline at LaGuardia Airport, checking flight instruments that were used by airplanes. And she really loved it. She felt very useful and loved to keep busy and knew that she was doing her part for the war effort.

[Susan]

Every few years, a reporter would come out of the woodwork, find her for one of those, where are they now? Articulate. And so there are, you know, interviews with her as the years go by, where she sounds, you know, for the most part, very, very content with her life. At one point, she was also teaching swimming at the Lexington School for the Deaf. So she was teaching little children who were deaf how to swim.

[Beckett]

On August 8, 1950, American swimmer Florence Chadwick, age 32, finally broke Trudy's 24 year old time by crossing the English Channel from France to England in 13 hours and 23 minutes. I will tell you, a year later, Ms. Chadwick crossed again from England to France and made that made her the first woman to swim in both directions. But she didn't get a trick or tape parade because by then it wasn't old hat, but it was like been there slightly aged headwear.

[Susan]

You know, it was more of a personal accomplishment than A Worldwide News 1.

[Beckett]

Trudy was inducted into the Swimming hall of Fame at the age of 60 in 1965, which was a testament to the woman that never gave up. She had inspired so many women to take up swimming during her career. In fact, in the years immediately following her Channel swim, the red cross issued 60,000 certificates to women who went through their swimming courses. The ripples she caused then are still expanded.

[Susan]

In 1976, she was part of a celebration of athletes who had made major accomplishments in the last 50 years. And this was the 50th anniversary of her completing the Channel swim. One of her roommates had just passed away, so she wasn't able to be part of the big hoopla leading up to it, you know, the press coverage and everything. But she did show up at the night of the awards. And what she said that night was, if God called me tomorrow, I'd go willingly. I've led a full, beautiful life. That wasn't going to happen for another 27 years. In 2003, she was inducted into the National Women's hall of Fame. But by then, she was living in a nursing home, being looked after by one of her nieces. And Gertrude iterle died on November 30, 2003, at the age of 98. She's buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. One of the things that has happened since her passing, that swim that she had done from Battery park to Sandy Hook, somehow it's now shrunk down to 17.5 miles. But it is an annual event. It's called the Ederleigh Burke Swim.

[Beckett]

We just missed it this year. It was on September 17th, and it cost you $4,500 to enter.

[Susan]

That's significant.

[Beckett]

But that gives you an official in a follow boat and I think a medical professional, and.

[Susan]

And it weeds out people that, you know, oh, that'd be fun to do. Let's do it, you know.

[Beckett]

Yeah.

[Susan]

Who aren't prepared. It's a commitment. Sure. In 2013, very near her childhood home, a rec center was named after her. The Gertrude Ederle Rec center on New York's Upper west side. And it's still there.

[Beckett]

That will bring us to the end of the life of Gertrude Ederl. And now it's time for media. And as usual, we will start with books. Classically, I bet we both have this book, the Young Woman and the Sea, How Trudy Ederly Conquered the English Channel and Inspired the World, by Glenn Stout, of which I have turned down a lot of pages. You know why? Because I bought it.

[Susan]

I know I had to buy mine, too. That one's a very linear biography, and it came out in July of 2009. And the reason I'm saying that is there is another biography about Gertrude Ederly that came out in August of 2009. It's called America's the Incredible Story of How Swimmer Gertrude Ederle Changed the Nation by Tim Dahlberg. And that one's not as much linear as it is storytelling biography. So if we were to Start. I'd start with that one just because I like a good story.

[Beckett]

There is a children's book called American Champion Swimmer Gertrude Ederly by David Adler and a mid grade book called Trudy's Big Swim How Gertrude Ederly Swam the English Channel and Took the World by Storm by Sue Macy. And then this is a biography that I have called America's the Incredible Story. It's all incredible. The incredible story of how swimmer Gertrude Ederly changed the nation. It's by Dahlberg, Ward and Green. And Ward is her niece, Mary Ederly Ward, the niece that spent the last decade of her life with her and in fact had been in possession of almost 2,000 newspaper clippings and other stories about her aunt. So that one has a lot of secrets that other things other people did.

[Susan]

I believe the Dahlberg in that is the guy that wrote that second biography because he had access to her private diaries and information from the niece in addition to public documentation. Yeah, as far as a related book that I thought was pretty interesting. It's Fighting the the Rise of American women swimming 1870-1926. Guess what happened in 1926.

[Beckett]

Right. I like the picture on the COVID of that one. It's a whole bunch of ladies in classic Victorian bathing dress. Us like, bye gentlemen, just leaping off the dock into the water. And the men are like, hey, wait, it's pretty good. There's another one called Swimming Pretty the Untold Story of Women in Water by Vicki Vasic. So all of those are a little background reading.

[Susan]

As far as moving pictures go. There is one movie and that's 2024's Disney version of Of Young Woman in the Sea produced by Jerry Bruckheimer starring Daisy Ridley, you know, from Star Wars.

[Beckett]

Yeah. Tell me how you, how did you think that that movie aligned with the story?

[Susan]

Okay. I had actually watched the movie before. I knew all the details and I thought, you know, stylistically it was a beautiful movie and it kept my attention. It made me want to learn more about her. Once I knew all the details, I rewatched it and I had some moments of, oh wait, that wasn't quite like that. Like they narrowed down the kids. You know, there was six kids in this family and when you watch the movie there's only three. And the little boy that's there was the one that was born last in like 1920. So that was different. The mother was given a bigger role. As far as the cheerleader goes. Not saying that she wasn't, but. But Pop is kind of like poo pooing. The whole thing through the movie, which I didn't think did him much of a service, but as a movie, I thought it was pretty good.

[Beckett]

Cool. Yeah. Pop got a little bit less credit for being on her side, I think.

[Susan]

Yeah. And Swarmy Javez Wolf was played by the ninth doctor, Christopher Edelson. He played him very, very well. And you just wanted to smack this man across the face.

[Beckett]

All right, well, as to links throughout the Internet, I am going to probably just list off rabbit holes I fell down. And for actual links, go to thehistorychicks.com where we can host them. But they include such things as swimsuits throughout history. Annette Kellerman. There is actually an Annette Kellerman barge in Paris right now.

[Susan]

Wait, what?

[Beckett]

Where you can enjoy a coffee. We're about to go to Paris.

[Susan]

Yeah.

[Beckett]

Where you can enjoy a coffee and a workout if you, if you so wish. It is floating in the Seine, as far as I know. So there you go. We're going to head to that. Also a biography of Anent Kellerman. The history of ticker tape parades, the history of the Aquacade, which is like, wow. Also, you know, going more along with this, the channel swim attempts, we couldn't possibly go into all of them. But if that is a rebel whole you wish to fall down the development of same, the frustrations of others, there are certainly resources we can point you to. Last but not least from me, forgotten stories of Paris Olympics 1924. That was posted on International Women's Day this year. So there are my little rabbit holes.

[Susan]

I had one that I liked. It was called Queen of the Channel. It's an award given to women who have swum the English Channel. The most time. Yeah, the most time right now is a woman named Chloe McArdle with 43 crossings. And in 2015, she did a three way. So England to France. To England to France. Nonstop 36 hours and 12 minutes. That's remarkable.

[Beckett]

What? That is so amazing, isn't it? And you know, Terry Pratchett once said something and I think this is so weird. He's like, men spend decades trying to overcome an obstacle. Like a mountain. He does it and the next thing you know, grannies with canes are walking up it with ease. It's kind of like that. Like these men spent decades and, you know, half their lives there have been, I don't know, 10, 12, 15 deaths crossing the English Channel. And then all of a sudden, the pace just quickens. Maybe it's just more people attracted to it means more odds that someone will succeed. Yeah, the rarity value has gone down, definitely. But that is an amazing accomplishment.

[Susan]

And I'm going to link you up to a article, a Popular Science article about marathon swimmin, the science behind it, as well as there's some other ones. So just go to our show notes and we'll link you up to all kinds of information.

[Beckett]

And I was reading about jellyfish, but I would say don't do it.

[Susan]

No. Well, I have actually had to swim through a school of jellyfish before. When I was a kid, we were swimming from the boat to the shore in Montauk, and there was a school of jellyfish. And I didn't realize it until I was in the middle of them. And it. It was pretty painful. I mean, I didn't have to go to the hospital or anything, but it made me very angry.

[Beckett]

But they don't actively, like, sting you, right? They don't actively, like, whip you?

[Susan]

Oh, no, it's an accident. You, like. You have. You touch their tentacles, and they're so fine that you can't. You can't avoid them. If there's one near you, even if it's like, three feet away, that tentacle could be brushing up against you.

[Beckett]

I got stung on the leg in Mexico.

[Susan]

Oh.

[Beckett]

By a Portuguese man.

[Susan]

Okay, that's bad.

[Beckett]

And this was the same time that I used tanning accelerant rather than sunblock. And we're on the equator because I'm a dum dum. And I was probably 24.

[Susan]

Oh, God.

[Beckett]

So I was bright red and streaky where I had had sun protection on some parts of my body, but it dripped. I looked awesome. I had a giant leg and a small leg. And it was real good that I was already married because. Wow.

[Susan]

Oh, my God.

[Beckett]

Kept looking at my husband like, aren't you glad?

[Susan]

Oh, my God.

[Beckett]

That we came to Mexico. And I pretty much wore a sweater the whole time because I probably should have gone to the hospital if I had that bad of a sunburn. But, yeah. Merry Christmas. I drank a lot of banana daiquiris on that trip.

[Susan]

Well, those are so bad. If there's one on the beach, you could get stung by it. And their things are way longer than the common and, you know, pink jellyfish you see up in New England. Yeah, that's bad.

[Beckett]

Did not feel great.

[Susan]

I have nothing else.

[Beckett]

And in closing, later in her life.

[Susan]

Trudi said in an interview, I have no complaints. I'm comfortable and satisfied. I'm not a person who reaches for the moon as long as I have the stars.

[Beckett]

Thanks for listening Bye. If you liked what you heard today, please tell a few friends about a specific episode you think will appeal to them them and or leave a review for us on Apple Podcasts. Also, if you think you'd like to hang out with other history enthusiasts in a very family like way, you should head on over to our Facebook page and in the middle you'll see a button that says Join Group. Simply press the button and it's like a magic portal into a group of friends who like a lot of the same things that you do. I know that during the movie the young woman and the scene me, Trudy Daisy Ridley's Trudy often sang Ain't we got Fun. But thanks to the Library of Congress, I was able to find the OG Gertrude Ederly's favorite song, the one that got her through her successful channel swim and is just now in the public domain. I it genuinely made my night to realize I could use it. Let ME CALL you sweetheart performed by the Peerless Quartet. This is a recording, believe it or not, from 1911, likely the very same audio Gertrude Ederly was so fond of and played with her sisters on their phonograph at home. I'm putting it here also as a surprise for Susan, who doesn't know that I found it. See you next time. I am dreaming, dear of you day by day Dreaming when the skies are blue when they when the silvery moon light gleam I wonder all in thee in the land of love it seems just with you Let me call you sweetheart I'm in love with you Let me hear you whisper that you love me too Keep the love light glowing in your eyes so true Let me call you sweetheart I'm in love with you Let me call you sweetheart Hide in love with you Let me hear you whisper that you love me too Deep above my glory.