diff --git a/recordlinkage/comparing.py b/recordlinkage/comparing.py
index <HASH>..<HASH> 100644
--- a/recordlinkage/comparing.py
+++ b/recordlinkage/comparing.py
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@ from recordlinkage.algorithms.string import (jaro_similarity,
                                              levenshtein_similarity,
                                              damerau_levenshtein_similarity,
                                              qgram_similarity,
-                                             cosine_similarity)
+                                             cosine_similarity,
+                                             smith_waterman)
 
 
 def fillna_decorator(missing_value=np.nan):
@@ -471,7 +472,7 @@ class Compare(CompareCore):
         method : str
             A approximate string comparison method. Options are ['jaro',
             'jarowinkler', 'levenshtein', 'damerau_levenshtein', 'qgram',
-            'cosine']. Default: 'levenshtein'
+            'cosine', smith_waterman]. Default: 'levenshtein'
         threshold : float, tuple of floats
             A threshold value. All approximate string comparisons higher or
             equal than this threshold are 1. Otherwise 0.
@@ -515,6 +516,8 @@ class Compare(CompareCore):
             elif method == 'cosine':
                 str_sim_alg = cosine_similarity
 
+            elif method == 'smith_waterman' or method == "smithwaterman":
+                str_sim_alg = smith_waterman
             else:
                 raise ValueError("The algorithm '{}' is not known.".format(method))
Updated parent method to have smith_waterman as an option