Downstream
annual aquatic festival was conducted . . . with even more than the usual spirit, and passed off with ...
distance swim from the pier head. In the summer of 1909, the course, presumably along the length of the pier, ...
paper in the world, was offering £1,000 to any English person who could beat the time set by an American swi ...
Southend Swimming Club’s most famous member was Norman Derham. The future Channel champion trained in the Thames. Derham’s ar ...
housed in the Southend Museum where Ken Crowe, Curator of Human History, has left them out for me. I’m expecting ...
believe my luck, I’m actually going to read about him in the words of a family member. Born on the Isle ...
favourite writers. During the First World War Derham joined the Royal Flying Corps, while in the Depression he ...
for playing Tarzan, before he went to Germany to become a glider pilot. I’m entranced by Derham’s story, until I ...
Europe if not the world’. Then Penny feels the need to confess something; sounding hesitant and asking for her ...
Plymouth to assist in picking up the Jewish Refugees who had planned to join hands and jump into the wate ...
the colour of his skin’ but get in the water and try to rescue them. I refold Penny’s letter, still wondering about ...
had done . . . I could stay in the water and swim for hours if they would only let me.’ As a ...
In 1921 Derham moved to Southend, still aiming to do the Channel, and a few years later he set ‘myself the ...
A porpoise? I stop reading again, picturing Derham midway across the estuary riding for a moment on the back ...
report says his five-hour swim was from Southend to Sheerness, another that on his third attempt he ‘succes ...
Holbein’s fifty-mile Thames swim of 1908. Derham was clearly aware of the swimmers who had come before him; ...
fame like them, and, considering that he later took up the challenge from the News of the World, to ma ...
that I did not sink long before I reached Woolwich.’ He then swam twenty-one miles from Blackwall Pier ...
the Woolwich Ferry. At Barking Creek an outward- bound Belgian steamer ‘saw fit to open her bilges just as she ...
first Channel attempt, but a heavy storm meant he stopped five miles from the end. His next attempt cam ...
«
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
»
Free download pdf