village voice 70.pub - Dersingham Parish Council

A SWIM TO REMEMBER
by Magwitch
In October 1927, Fraulein Mercedes Gleitze swam the English
Channel ... and then she swam it again! Not just to prove she could,
but because there had been some dispute over the first swim owing
to a hoax by another female swimmer.
This cross-channel swim was quite an achievement for a woman,
and as a newsworthy event throughout the country. However for the
people of Lincolnshire and Norfolk, a swim of even greater
significance was the one Fraulein Gleitze completed across the
Wash, from Lincolnshire to Norfolk. This happened in June 1929
and was the first successful swim across this stretch of water
separating the two counties.
Not much is known about Mercedes Gleitze, considering her
place in history nationally. She was born in 1900 in Brighton, but
spent a lot of time with her Bavarian grandparents in their
homeland. Her interest in long-distance swimming began when she
was in her twenties and undertook the swim across the English
Channel, which must have been exhausting. But, it would seem she
was determined to go down in history as the first woman to do it,
and if that meant she had to do it all over again, then that was what she would do, and did.
Luckily, she only had to swim across the Wash once, leaving from Butterwick Fen near Boston,
and coming ashore at Heacham, some thirteen hours later. She had intended to reach land at
Hunstanton, but the tides proved too much for her and she was slightly off her preferred course
when her feet touched the shore. She’d begun her swim early that morning, so that by the time she
arrived at Heacham at 6.30 in the evening, it’s claimed she was so exhausted that it was all she
could do to haul herself up the beach on her hands and knees, to the ecstatic welcome of the large
number of people who’d gathered there for her arrival.
Later, she was rowed round to Hunstanton in the support boat which had kept alongside her
during her long and tiring swim. It had been arranged that she would stay at the Golden Lion
Hotel, and once she was put ashore that was where she went for a well-earned rest.
One local legend has it that she came ashore at Old Hunstanton where she was met by the
Squire, the head of the local land-owning Le Strange family, who was also the Hereditary Lord
High Admiral of the Wash. According to old records, as such he was entitled to ‘claim possession
of anything on the beach or in the sea for as far as a man can ride a horse or throw a spear’.
Whether or not he was serious is not known, but he informed Fraulein Gleitze that he was claiming
her, under this archaic ruling, as his very own property. What she replied does not seem to have
been recorded!
What was recorded was her epic swim, with a commemorative plaque which was placed on one
of the beach shelters at Heacham. During the severe 1953 floods, the shelter was one of the many
buildings damaged, and nothing remained of it except
for the plaque, which was then put in the local parish
council offices for safe keeping. A new one was
unveiled during a weekend celebration in Heacham to
mark the seventy-fifth anniversary of the swim.
And as for Fraulein Gleitze herself, she died in
London in 1980 having founded a charity in her name
for ‘Destitute Men and Women’ but which became
known as the ‘Family Welfare Association’.□
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