REDISCOVERED film footage Barry Island, believed to be the oldest in existence, has been included in a new film about the life of Mercedes Gleitze, who in 1927 made history by becoming the first British woman to swim the English Channel.
Vindication Swim stars Kirsten Callaghan as Gleitze and tells the story of her battle to overcome both the cold waters of the English Channel and the oppressive society of 1920s Britain.
On 7th October 1927, at her eighth attempt, Gleitze swam the English Channel in 15 hours and 15 minutes.
Three days later, Dr Dorothy Cochrane Logan, using the pseudonym Mona McLellan, was said to have swum the channel overnight from the French side in 13 hours and 10 minutes, beating the record set by American Gertrude Ederle by more than an hour.
The following day, Logan claimed the prize of £1,000 offered by the News of the World for any woman who could break Ederle’s record.
Logan signed an affidavit to confirm that the swim had been without assistance and that she had never left the water. But the following week she was back at the newspaper’s offices to admit that it had all been a hoax, albeit one with a noble purpose.
She and her coach, Horace Henry Carey had wanted to highlight the need for proper rules to authenticate a channel swim. Carey told reporters that “Any Tom, Dick or Harry can come along and say they have swum the Channel”. He went on to opine that he had ‘considerable doubt’ about some claimed crossings. Logan had set off swimming from France, but Carey had picked her up in his boat and brought her to within three miles of Dover.
Logan did not cash the cheque, but was fined £100 for swearing a false affidavit, and Carey was fined £50.
The incident led to unfair suspicion that Gleitze’s achievement had also been a hoax, and she set out on a ‘vindication swim’ in an attempt to prove that she had, in fact, made the crossing unassisted.
Gleitze was accompanied by a boatload of journalists, but in freezing conditions, she was forced to abandon the swim seven miles from Dover, though she had done more than enough to demonstrate she was capable of completing the feat.
A year after swimming the English Channel, Gleitze set another record when she became the first known person of either gender to swim the eight-mile Straits of Gibraltar.
Gleitze was a household name during the 1920s and 30s, but following her retirement from swimming, she shunned publicity and became increasingly reclusive, to the extent that she would hide her identity from her neighbours, and while she enjoyed a warm relationship with her three children and subsequent grandchildren, she never discussed her record-breaking achievements or earlier life with them. She died in London aged 80 on 9th February 1981.
Towards the end of the film, there is newly-unearthed footage from 1929 of Gleitze in Barry Island preparing for her Bristol Channel marathon swim.
The rare 9.5mm film was donated by the grandson of a deceased local resident, but getting the footage professionally restored proved a major challenge because the nitrate reel was considered so flammable that the production team could only find one company in the UK that would allow it into their building, but the end result was impressive and it includes footage of both the sea and the town.
The film was released in cinemas throughout the UK in early March, and recently, a special screening at the Memo Arts Centre was followed by a question-and-answer session with producer Elliott Hansen, who the previous day had returned from the Cannes Film Festival.
Elliott, who lives in Gleitze’s home city of Brighton, says he was astonished by the 95-year-old footage of Barry Island and would like to learn more about the people in it: “It took us some considerable time and effort to find a company that was willing to allow the film reel onto its premises, let alone get it restored, but the end result has been amazing.
“The footage is 95 years old so it’s possible that the youngest people in it are still with us, but I’m also on the lookout for people who live in Barry or have connections to the town who can help identify some of the faces. People may recognise their parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, former neighbours, former teachers and so on.
“It would be wonderful to put some names to those faces and learn more about their lives,” he said.
Did you recognise somebody you know in the footage? Please get in touch.
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