On a clear day, from Heacham Beach, you can see the faint outline of Lincolnshire, far away across the Wash. If you’d been standing here on 20th June 1929, you’d have seen a tired yet triumphant young woman stepping from the sea. And you’d be shocked to discover she’d just swum to Norfolk from Lincolnshire in 13 hours 17 minutes, making her the first person to swim the Wash. It was her second attempt that month and she’d been heading for Hunstanton. Driven off course by strong currents, nevertheless she persisted. There’s a blue plaque celebrating her achievement on the Heacham sea defences.
Mercedes Gleitze was a young working class woman from a German migrant family. Born in Brighton she had a determined talent for distance swimming, eventually extending the endurance record from 26 hours to 46. She was the first person to swim the Straits of Gibraltar (8 miles) and the first British woman to swim the English Channel in 1927, matching American Gertrude Ederle in 1926 (who’s featured in the hit musical Fantastically Great Women Who Changed the World). Internationally celebrated, companies such as Rolex watches made her a brand ambassador for several decades. Yet her swimming had purpose; Mercedes set up sponsored endurance swims to raise funds for housing homeless people in the 1930s. In a male dominated world, where cross-Channel swimmers were sustained with little more than Lipton’s Tea and a ham sandwich, the successes of this female athlete are all the more remarkable.
