Downstream

had done . . . I could stay in
the water and swim for hours
if they would only let me.’ As
a twelve-year-old he swam a
‘few miles’ to East Cowes
from Newport, and in 1911,
when Thomas Burgess swam
from England to France, this
‘again fired my imagination
to conquer the Channel’.
Taking advantage of his
parents being away he swam
for six hours from Osborne
Bay to Calshot Point.