Making a Splash

Brian Balogh: Major funding for BackStory is provided by an anonymous donor, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the University of Virginia, the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation, and the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations.
From Virginia Humanities, this is BackStory.

Joanne Freeman: Welcome to BackStory, the American history podcast. I’m Joanne Freeman.

Brian Balogh: I’m Brian Balogh.

Ed Ayers: And I’m Ed Ayers.

Joanne Freeman: Well, I want to start with a really interesting article that I have right on hand here and I want to share it with you guys.

Ed Ayers: Okay.

Brian Balogh: Yeah. I’ve read it already.

Joanne Freeman: I doubt that, Brian. I do, I have to say.

Brian Balogh: Oh, come on. Have a little faith in me.

Joanne Freeman: Have you read the August 6th, 1905 edition of the Chicago Inter Ocean?

Brian Balogh: Well, you’ve got me there, Joanne. I can’t say I’ve read …

Ed Ayers: I’ve read the week before that one, but I missed that one.

Brian Balogh: Exactly. I read the synopsis.

Joanne Freeman: Oh, dang. Well, I did not think anyone would have read it. I’ve even found someone to do a dramatic reading of it for you.

Brian Balogh: You think of everything, Joanne.

Joanne Freeman: I do.

Speaker 6: Miss Annette Kellermann, the Australian swimmer who last week made an unsuccessful but nevertheless heroic attempt to swim across the English Channel, is receiving considerable attention. The so-called athletic American girls who are visiting her have given Miss Kellermann little rest. They are constantly asking her what they should and should not do to become great swimmers. Miss Kellermann’s replay invariably is, “Practice, practice, practice, and take good care of yourself.”

Joanne Freeman: Back in 1905, Australian swimmer Annette Kellermann was the first woman to attempt to swim the English Channel.

Christine S.: Swimming the Channel is very difficult, depending on the currents.

Joanne Freeman: This is historian Christine Schmidt. She says that Kellermann was in the water for 10 1/2 hours before the weather compelled her to quit. It would be 21 years before a woman, an American, would successfully complete the swim.

Christine S.: I can’t imagine what it would be like to swim the Channel without the knowledge that we have now of what you could expect from such a swim. Apparently, according to her memoirs, the men were allowed to swim naked and they were covered in seal fat but she actually had to wear a one-piece swimsuit, which apparently chafed and made it very difficult for her to swim as well.

Joanne Freeman: There’s something I should quickly clarify here, which is that, around the turn of the century, there was a difference between bathing and swimming.

Christine S.: Bathing was really very much about either for hygiene, for therapeutic reasons, or purely recreational, whereas swimming was actually about sport and the sort of self-propulsion of the body through water.

Joanne Freeman: There were women who were competitive swimmers, but they mostly competed in indoor pools, not outside.

Christine S.: The beaches were purely for recreation, and, in these public spaces, women were expected to be covered, full top to toe. It would have been like an overdress with bloomers, stockings, bathing cap. Sometimes, they also still wore corsets and even shoes into the water. These garments were all made out of either wool, cotton, or silk, but they were very, very heavy.

Joanne Freeman: As you already know, Kellermann was a competitive swimmer, not a competitive bather, so she wore a one-piece suit that a man would have worn. That one-piece bathing suit, along with her speed, endurance, and upbeat demeanor, attracted a lot of attention, and she became a real advocate for the sport.

Christine S.: She had this, from a very early period in her life, this really strong belief in the importance of physical health and wellbeing, and the important of being fit, being physically fit. She really believed that swimming was one of the best ways to achieve this form of fitness.

Joanne Freeman: At the London Hippodrome, Kellermann entertained audiences by demonstrating swimming strokes and diving into a huge tank. She eventually took her act to the United States.

Christine S.: She’d heard great things about Vaudeville and she knew that she represented novelty and spectacle, especially packaged in a wooly one-piece swimsuit.

Speaker 8: The New York Times, Wednesday, May 1st, 1907. Among the passengers was Miss Annette Kellermann, the Australian swimmer. She was the only one who found the delay of getting in rather tedious. About the time that the stern anchor chain of the ship was being loosened yesterday morning, she had found out about how far it was to the nearest land, which somebody told her was 18 miles. She promptly went to the captain and asked if she might be permitted to swim in. The request was refused, and with pouting lips, the good-looking swimmer spoke of her chagrin when she had reached the pier. “Why, I almost swam the English Channel once,” she said, “And you know what that is.”

Joanne Freeman: Kellermann was billed as the Australian mermaid, and she amazed audiences in New York and Chicago.

Speaker 9: Springfield Journal, Thursday, May 23rd, 1907.

Speaker 8: The Los Angeles Times, Sunday, June 16th, 1907.

Speaker 9: There are no mermaids now, except in variety shows and fairy stories, but Annette Kellermann, the champion woman swimmer of the world, comes pretty near being one. She is almost as much at home in the water as on dry land.

Speaker 8: Miss Kellermann’s fancy diving so absorbs the spectators that when, as a finale, Miss Kellermann plunges from her springboard and strikes the water in a sitting position, about two tubs of water are splashed out over the sides of the tank upon the people sitting in the front row, but they invariably take it good-naturedly.

Speaker 9: She is of practically perfect physique with tapering wrists and ankles, olive complexion, and gray eyes, which light up a winsome face.

Speaker 8: No complaint has been made to the management for the trick.

Christine S.: Even though, in Vaudeville, they would be used to seeing women in states of undress, this is very different. I think this is also an important part of Kellermann’s popularization of the swimsuit, is that it was really about physical health and wellbeing and the idea of wearing a piece of clothing that was purely functional and that would actually assist you in the process of physical activities such as swimming.

Speaker 11: Swimming hints by Annette Kellermann. Wednesday, June 26th, 1907. Any woman who can walk can learn to swim. Naturally, the matter of a costume arises first in the mind of a woman. The best costume is the cheap, ordinary stockinette suit, which clings close to the figure, and the closer the better. It should be sleeveless and there should be no skirts. Skirts carry water and retard the swimmer. They are very pretty and appropriate for the seaside, but not for the swimming pool. Stockings may be worn if they fit tightly, but under no circumstances should shoes be used.

Joanne Freeman: Eventually, she and her one-piece wool suit made their way to Boston, where, according to Kellermann, the reception was much chillier.

Christine S.: When she got there, the story goes that her manager, James Sullivan, decided that she might do a few swims along the coast to attract publicity for the upcoming events at the Wonderland Amusement Park. Apparently, she stripped down to a man’s one-piece bathing suit, which was essentially sleeveless, round neck, and would have come down to the mid-thigh, so therefore were baring her legs. Then, she was surrounded by a crowd of onlookers who were either titillated or shocked by such a daring exhibitionism of a woman on a public beach. Policeman appeared and yelled at her, demanding to know why she was in such a state of undress, and Kellermann explained that she was going to undertake a three mile swim along the beach. However, apparently she was arrested instead.

Brian Balogh: That’s really hard to believe.

Ed Ayers: Yes. I’d like to offer a personal apology on behalf of the people of the United States to the Kellermann family.

Joanne Freeman: Well, that’s really nice of you, Ed, but, according to Schmidt, the story is most likely not true.

Ed Ayers: Oh, knew it.

Christine S.: There’s nothing in the papers around this time that can sort of confirm this arrest, and you would think, if this had happened, it would have made the papers because it’s fairly scandalous. The earliest records of it are really sort of much … Decades later, and they’re in personal accounts by Kellermann herself.

Joanne Freeman: So far as we can tell, America on the whole had a really positive reaction to Annette Kellermann, but I think it’s really interesting that she remembers the American beach as kind of a backwards place.

Speaker 8: Buffalo Morning Express. Friday, November 8th, 1907. With au revoirs to friends who went to the pier to see her off, Miss Annette Kellermann, the young champion swimmer of the world, sailed on the Adriatic after six months’ sojourn in this country. As to American girls, the champion declared that she was surprised to find how few of them were given to swimming. Miss Kellermann deprecated this fact very much, adding that it would be a vast good to the public generally and to women in particular if the newspapers would more persistently advocate that swimming be taught in the public schools as a compulsory lesson.

Brian Balogh: I wonder what Annette Kellermann would think of American beaches now?

Joanne Freeman: Well, she would have had some trouble finding a wool bikini.

Brian Balogh: I know just the place, Joanne.

Joanne Freeman: Oh, gosh.