Downstream

heightened the excitement’. A
few years later a group of
‘Maori Girls’ would swim
fifteen miles in the Thames
from Richmond, telling the
press ‘we are almost an
amphibious race’ and
dismissing the distance as
‘child’s play’.
In August 1905 a group of
seven swimmers began their
Channel attempt – among
them Kellerman, Holbein,
Wolffe and Thomas Burgess