Taking the plunge

A century and a half ago Captain Matthew Webb became the first person to swim the English Channel, a feat that captured the imagination of a nation

- Written by Ettie Neil-Gallacher

CAPTAIN MATTHEW Webb, the first person to successfully swim the Channel, famously remarked that “nothing great is easy”. This is, surely, right up there with Captain Oates’ “I am just going outside and may be some time” in terms of quintessentially British understatement. Indeed, it’s difficult to overstate the magnitude of Webb's achievement. At a time when swimming was far from fashionable, swimming to France must have seemed impossible.

Seaman William Hoskins had crossed the Channel on a bale of straw in 1862, and five years later John MacGregor paddled across in a canoe. One JB Johnson tried to swim the Channel in 1872 and lasted a little over an hour. In 1875 Captain Paul Boyton, an American daredevil and showman known for his water stunts, donned an Indian rubber immersion suit and had a crack; he managed 15 hours in the water and covered 50 miles before the weather turned. Although he failed to make France, Boyton’s efforts captured the public imagination, which had really been his primary purpose, and did a great deal to promote open-water swimming.

But while Boyton’s effort had garnered a great deal of publicity, it was an account of Johnson's attempt that had caught the attention of Webb, the captain of the steamship Emerald, who was known to be an enthusiastic swimmer. This was unusual at the time. Indeed, at this point in the 19th century, even among those who took the plunge, breaststroke was the only acceptable stroke; front crawl was regarded as rather shocking and it would be several decades until it caught on.

Webb learned to swim at the age of seven and had grown up swimming in the waters of the mighty Severn at Coalbrookdale. Indeed, Webb was a sufficiently strong swimmer to rescue his younger brother, Henry, when he got into trouble. His background was memorably immortalised by Sir John Betjeman in his elegiac