After a seaman had floated across the Channel on a bundle of straw, Matthew Webb became the first to make the crossing without the aid of artificial buoyancy. His first attempt ended in failure, but on August 25, 1875, he started from Admiralty Pier in Dover and made the crossing 23 hours and 45 minutes, despite challenging tides and a jellyfish sting.[2]
On September 6, 1911, after 15 unsuccessful tries, Thomas William Burgess became the second person to successfully make the crossing, with a total of 80 unsuccessful crossings made before Burgess duplicated Webb's feat, making the crossing from Dover to Gris Nez in 22 hours and 35 minutes. Burgess ate a hearty meal of ham and eggs before starting his swim and had only swum for 18 hours before he made the crossing, with his longest swim being six miles.[3]
Henry Sullivan was successful in his seventh attempt. He entered the water in Dover at 4:20 on Sunday afternoon, August 5, 1923, and began his swim. Though the straight-line distance is 22.5 miles, choppy waters and capricious tides forced him to swim an estimated 56 miles. He reached shore at Calais at 8:05 in the evening of August 6, finishing in 27 hours and 45 minutes.[4] Two other swimmers completed the swim that same summer. Enrique Tirabocchi, from Argentina, completed the swim on August 13, finishing in a record time of 16 hours and 33 minutes and becoming the first person to swim the route starting from the French side of the Channel.[5] American Charles Toth of Boston completed the swim on September 9, 1923, in 16 hours and 40 minutes, missing by two days the expiration of a 1,000 Pound prize offered by the Daily Sketch for anyone who completed the swim, a prize that both Sullivan and Tirabocchi received from a representative of the Daily Sketch waiting on the shore with a check in hand.[6]
Gertrude Ederle's successful cross-channel swim began at Cap Gris Nez in France at 07:05 on the morning of August 6, 1926. Her trainer was Burgess.[7] 14 hours and 30 minutes later, coming ashore at Kingsdown, Kent, England, in a total time of 14 hours and 39 minutes, making her the first woman to complete the crossing and setting the record for the fastest time, breaking the previous mark set by Tirabocchi by almost two hours. A reporter from The New York Times who had accompanied Ederle's support team on a tugboat, recounted that Ederle was confronted by a British immigrations official, who recorded the biographical details of Ederle and the individuals on board the ship, none of whom had been carrying their passports. Ederle was finally allowed to come ashore, after promising that she would report to the authorities the following morning.[8]
L. Walter Lissberger financed the $3,000 in expenses that Amelia Gade Corson and her husband incurred in preparing for the Channel swim. Lissberger made a wager with Lloyd's of London betting that she would succeed in crossing the Channel, and received a payout of $100,000 at odds of 20–1 when she completed her swim.[9] She was one of three swimmers who were trying to make the swim across the Channel at the same time starting at 11:32 at night on August 28, 1926, leaving from Cape Gris Nez. The two men with her failed, Egyptian swimmer Ishak Helmy dropping out after three hours and an English swimmer failing one mile from Dover's Shakespeare Cliffs.[10] With her husband rowing alongside in a dory and providing her with hot chocolate, sugar lumps and crackers, she was able to complete the swim, in a time of 15 hours and 29 minutes, one hour longer than the record set by Gertrude Ederle three weeks earlier that summer.[11]
Jackie Cobell had intended to make the 21-mile crossing by a more direct route in July 2007, but inadvertently set the record for the slowest solo swim, when strong currents forced her to swim a total of 65 miles in 28 hours and 44 minutes, breaking the record set by Henry Sullivan in 1923, who had been the third person, and the first American, to make the crossing.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_successful_English_Channel_swimmers
ไม่มีความคิดเห็น:
แสดงความคิดเห็น