In the swim as Salthill event celebrates fearless pioneer

Arts Week with Judy Murphy

Vanessa Daws was training to swim the English Channel in 2019 when she came across a book about Englishwoman Mercedes Gleitze, another long-distance swimmer and a woman who had broken the mould in the early 20th century as she set new records around Ireland and Britain.

Mercedes became the first British woman to swim the English Channel, in 1927, while her other feats included swimming from Inis Meáin to An Spidéal on Sunday, August 3, 1931, the first person to do so.

In the Wake of Mercedes Gleitze, written by her daughter, Doloranda Pember, has contemporaneous accounts of that historic event, as reported by the Connacht Sentinel.

And it contains much more besides, including details of Mercedes’ endurance swimming in indoor pools in England, Ireland and further afield, where various musicians and theatre performers would provide entertainment for her, or she’d bring her own gramophone. Her longest indoor swim, a world record, was 47 hours in an English pool, but she completed other ones in Dublin and Cork, slightly shorter but still around 30 and 40 hours.

“Her story blew me away,” says Vanessa, an artist who is now based in Dublin but lived in Clonbur in the 1990s where her own aquatic achievements include swimming the 22km length of Lough Mask in 10 and a half hours.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App

Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.

Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.

Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite  HERE.

Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.