List of successful English Channel swimmers
Introduction This is a list of notable successful swims across the English Channel, a straight-line distance of about .
First attempts After a seaman had floated across the Channel on a bundle of straw, Matthew Webb made the crossing without the aid of artificial buoyancy. His first attempt ended in failure, but on 25 August 1875, he started from Admiralty Pier in Dover and made the crossing in 21 hours and 45 minutes, despite challenging tides (which delayed him for 5 hours) and a jellyfish sting.80 failed attempts were made by a variety of people before Thomas William Burgess, who on 6 September 1911 became the second person to successfully make the crossing. He crossed from Dover to Cap Gris Nez in 22 hours and 35 minutes at his 16th bid. Burgess ate a hearty meal of ham and eggs before starting his swim and had only trained for 18 hours before he made the crossing, with his longest practice being .Henry Sullivan was successful in his seventh attempt. He entered the water in Dover at 4:20 on Sunday afternoon, 5 August 1923.Choppy waters and capricious tides forced him to swim an estimated . He reached shore at Calais at 8:05 in the evening of 6 August, finishing in 27 hours and 45 minutes. Two other swimmers completed the swim that same summer. Enrique Tirabocchi, from Argentina, completed the swim on 13 August, finishing in a record time of 16 hours and 33 minutes and becoming the first person to swim the route starting from the French side of the Channel. American Charles Toth of Boston completed the swim on 9 September 1923, in 16 hours and 40 minutes, missing by two days the expiration of a £1,000 prize offered by the ''Daily Sketch'' for anyone who completed the swim, a prize that both Sullivan and Tirabocchi received from a representative of the ''Daily Sketch'' waiting on the shore with a cheque in hand.Gertrude Ederle's successful cross-channel swim began at Gris Nez in France at 07:05 on the morning of 6 August 1926.Her trainer was Burgess. She came ashore at Kingsdown, Kent, England, in a total time of 14 hours and 39 minutes, making her the first woman to complete the crossing and setting the record for the fastest time, breaking the previous mark set by Tirabocchi by almost two hours. A reporter from ''The New York Times,'' who had accompanied Ederle's support team on a tugboat, recounted that Ederle was confronted by a British immigrations official, who recorded the biographical details of Ederle and the individuals on board the ship, none of whom had been carrying their passports. Ederle was finally allowed to come ashore, after promising that she would report to the authorities the following morning.L. Walter Lissberger financed the $3,000 in expenses that Amelia Gade Corson and her husband incurred in preparing for the Channel swim. Lissberger made a wager with Lloyd's of London betting that she would succeed in crossing the Channel, and received a payout of $100,000 at odds of 20–1 when she completed her swim. She was one of three swimmers who were trying to make the swim across the Channel at the same time starting at 11:32 at night on 28 August 1926, leaving from Cape Gris Nez. The two men with her failed, Egyptian swimmer Ishak Helmy dropping out after three hours and an English swimmer failing one mile (1.6 km) from Dover's Shakespeare Cliffs. With her husband rowing alongside in a dory and providing her with hot chocolate, sugar lumps and crackers, she completed the swim in a time of 15 hours and 29 minutes, one hour longer than the record set by Gertrude Ederle three weeks earlier.Jackie Cobell had intended to make the crossing by a more direct route in July 2010, but inadvertently set the record for the slowest solo swim, when strong currents forced her to swim a total of  in 28 hours and 44 minutes, breaking the record set by Henry Sullivan in 1923, who had been the third person, and the first American, to make the crossing.
First swims + Direction Country of origin Swimmer Year Time NotesEngland to France  Matthew Webb 1875 21:45 First ever crossing; swam from England to France on 25 August 1875.England to France  Bill Burgess 1911 22:35 Second crossing from England to France on 6 September 1911.England to France  Henry Sullivan 192326:50 Third crossing from England to France; first American to swim across the English Channel.France to England  Enrique Tirabocchi 1923 16:33 First crossing from France to England.France to England  Gertrude Ederle 1926 14:39 First woman to cross in either direction.France to England  Mercedes Gleitze 1927 15:15 First British woman to cross the English Channel.France to England  Margaret ('Peggy') Duncan 1930 16:17 First known person from Southern Africa to swim the English Channel.France to England  Edward H. Temme 1934 15:34 First man to swim the English Channel in both directions. He swam from France to England in August 1927 and from England to France on 18 August 1934.England to France  Florence Chadwick 1953 14:42 First woman to swim the English Channel in both directions (on separate occasions).France to England  Winnie Leuszler 1951 13:25 First Canadian to swim the English Channel.France to England  Jenny James1951 13:55 First Welsh person to swim the English Channel.England to France  Damian Pizá Beltran 1953 15:23 First Mexican to swim the English Channel.France to England  Brojen Das 1958  First Asian (from Bikrampur, East Pakistan; now Bangladesh) to swim the English Channel, at the English Channel Swimming Competition in 1958.Das became a Bangladeshi citizen after the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971.England to France  Mihir Sen 1958   First Indian to swim the English Channel.France to England  Abilio Couto 1958 12:45 First South American to swim the English Channel.France to England  Dennis Pearson 1959 15:36 The second known person, and first man, from Southern Africa to swim the Channel. Pearson, from Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia, swam across on Bastille Day, 14 July 1959.Arati Saha 1959 14:20 First Indian woman and first Asian woman to swim the English Channel.France to England  Niko Nestor 1959 12:06 First Macedonian to swim the English Channel.Antonio Abertondo 1961 43:10 First person to swim the channel both ways non-stop.England to France  Peter Bales 1969 13:38 Second person, and first man, from South Africa to swim the English Channel. He was the third person from Southern Africa to complete the swim.France to England  Atina Bojadži 1969 13:20 First Macedonian woman to swim the English Channel.France to England  Ray Cossum 1970  13:41 First Irishman to swim the English Channel. (Cossum was born in Kent and moved to Derry, Northern Ireland as a teenager.) He worked as a saturation diver and claimed to be the only person to have crossed the Channel by train, boat, submarine, plane and swimming, and to have worked at its bottom.France to England   1971 15:26 First Czech (Czechoslovak at that time) to swim the channel.England to France  Teresa Zarzeczańska 1975  11:10 First Polish woman to swim the English Channel.England to France  Romuald Szopa 1978 12:49 First Polish man to swim the English Channel.England to France  Mary Yeats 1979  11:19 First Scottish woman to swim the English Channel.England to France  Charles Chapman 1981 12:30 First black swimmer to cross the Channel.England to France to England to France  Jon Erikson 1981 38:27 First person to swim the channel three ways.England to France  Nejib Belhedi 1993 16:35 First Tunisian to swim the channel, namesake of a trophy for swimming the channel at the highest tide.England to France  John Maclean 1998 12:55 First paraplegic to swim the Channel.England to France  Chris Gibbs 2003 11:30 First person from a Caribbean country to swim the English Channel. Aged 58, and member of The Merrymen Calypso band.England to France  Abdul Malik Mydin 2003 17:42 First Malaysian swimmer to cross the English Channel.England to FranceMarcos Diaz200409:56First Dominican swimmer to cross the English Channel.England to FranceThum Ping Tjin200512:24First Singaporean to swim the Channel.England to France  Petar Stoychev 2007 6:57 First swimmer to cross the English Channel under 7 hours.England to France  Philippe Croizon 2010 13:28 First quadruple amputee to swim the English Channel.England to France  Sigrún Þuríður Geirsdóttir 2015 22:34 First woman from Iceland to swim the English Channel.France to England  Amandine Toso 2017 26:03 First woman from Norway to swim the English Channel.England to France  Sara Palacios 2018 12:58 First Ecuadorian citizen and South American Woman to swim the channel.England to France  Zeina Alsharkas 2019 11:36 First Syrian woman.England to France  Bárbara Hernández 201912:13 First Chilean woman to swim the English Channel.England to France to England to France to England  Sarah Thomas 2019 54:10 First person to swim the channel four ways non-stop.England to France  Gillian Castle 2023 13:53 First person with a stoma to swim the Channel.
Records === Fastest ===RecordCountry of originSwimmerTimeDateAndreas Waschburger 06:45Sep. 2023Yvetta Hlaváčová07:252006Philip Rush16:101987Susie Maroney17:141991Philip Rush28:211987Alison Streeter34:401990Four waysSarah Thomas54:102019=== Most crossings ===RecordCountry of originSwimmerCrossingsWomenChloë McCardel44MenKevin Murphy34Women two waysCynthia Nicholas5Men two waysKevin Murphy3Stuart JohnsonWomen three waysAlison Streeter1Chloe McCardelSarah ThomasMen three waysJon Erikson1Philip RushFour waysSarah Thomas1=== Oldest swimmer ===RecordCountry of originSwimmerAgeDateReferenceWomenLinda Ashmore71 yearsAugust 21, 2018MenOtto Thaning73 yearsSeptember 6, 2014=== Youngest swimmer ===RecordCountry of originSwimmerAgeDateReferenceWomenSamantha Druce12 years, 118 days1983MenThomas Gregory11 years, 330 days1988 === Relay ===RecordCountry of originSwimmersTimeDate 9:222005 9:392011 8:222011
References
External links *  Full list of successful Channel swims, records, statistics and swimmer information*  Full list of Channel swim results, records and swimmer information*  Newsreel film of Philip Mickman's swim in a BBC Archive tweet