Downstream

that I did not sink long before
I reached Woolwich.’ He then
swam twenty-one miles from
Blackwall Pier to Gravesend
but ‘the condition of the
water [was] terrible’. The
press explained that with just
three miles to go he was
‘made to swallow more of the
odoriferous and heavily
chemical laden water of the
lower Thames than was good
for him’ when tugs and
steamers went past just after