Downstream

breaststroke, and magnificent
sweep of his ponderous legs,’
remembered Watson. Webb
then made his ‘first public
swim’ on 3 July 1875 from
Blackwall Pier to Gravesend,
twenty miles ‘of course with
the tide’. It was this Thames
swim that ‘greatly
encouraged me in making the
attempt to swim across the
Channel’ and so off he went
to Dover to start ‘practising’.
On 24 August, on his second