Florence Chadwick - record-setting open water swimmer

Florence Chadwick (November 9, 1918 – March 15, 1995) was an American long-distance open water swimmer who became the first woman to swim across the English Channel in both directions, as well as crossing the Catalina Channel, the Straits of Gibraltar, the Bosporus, and the Dardanelles.

She'd always loved swimming, and was extremely competitive. From the age of six on, she was determined to swim in and win as many competitions as possible. Her childhood heroine was Gertrude Ederle, the first woman to swim the English Channel, and what little Florence wanted most was to follow in her wake by completing her own channel swim. When she was 10 she became the youngest person to swim across the mouth of San Diego Bay, setting a precedence that would eventually guide her swimming career.

She trained with several internationally known swim coaches, and winning cups and titles in both open water and pool events. While in high school, she traveled from San Diego to Los Angeles to swim with the LA Athletic Club swim team, where one of her teammates was Esther William. Florence cut her amateur swimming career short in order to appear in one of Esther William's films, although she didn't enjoy synchronized swimming. She preferred open water competitions.

After graduation, she attended night classes studying law while working in her family's restaurant business during the day, teaching swimming classes, and training as often as possible. Her first marriage ended when her husband became jealous of the time she spent swimming. Her second ended when she discovered her husband with another woman. Unhappy, she knew she needed to make a change. She quit night school, and began looking for a way out of the family business. In 1948, she was sure she'd finally found a way to pursue her lifelong dream to swim the English Channel when she read an article about a woman making a great deal of money working for an oil company in Saudi Arabia.

Florence knew she could train in Saudi Arabia while also making enough money to afford the otherwise prohibitively expensive quest to swim the English Channel -- she'd need a crew and boats as well as travel expenses, all of which was impossible on her restaurant salary. After taking a few business exams she was hired, and without telling anyone of her plans, she began to prepare for her new adventure.

In Saudi Arabia, she trained relentlessly while saving money. At the end of her contract, she'd managed to save $5000, which would be just enough to pay for the time spent training and for the crew to help her during her attempt. She arranged to return to the US by way of France. She trained for two months in the cold water off the north of France. She learned about an English Channel swim competition sponsored by the London Daily Mail, but when she tried to enter they gently rebuffed her, telling her the contest was for serious athletes only. Undaunted, she scheduled her attempt two days before their race.

Shortly before 3 am on August 8, 1950, she walked out into the water off the coast of France and began her trip across the channel. Unknown to her at the time, another woman would also attempt to swim across that day. Shirley May France had even brought her own film crew and had arranged for several boats to carrying reporters to record her attempt. While Shirley had to quit because of cramps and nausea, the reporters still had a fantastic story to run when they saw Florence swimming into shore on the English side of the channel, beating Gertrude Ederle's world record from decades earlier.

Overnight she became and international swimming celebrity, launching her professional swimming career. Sponsors were more than happy to finance her training and channel swims. She completed the more difficult crossing of the English Channel by swimming from England to France, becoming the first woman to have swam it in both directions. Over the course of the next few years she completed 16 other long-distance swims, becoming the first woman to swim the Catalina Channel in California, and re-crossing the English Channel twice more, besting her previous records each time.

You can read an excellent biography about her: "Against the Current: Florence Chadwick in and out of the water" published in the San Diego Reader in 1982.

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