Clodagh Finn: Here’s to a wild swimming pioneer and women braving the waves

Open-sea swimming is an expression of solidarity and empowerment, writes Clodagh Finn

British swimmer Mercedes Gleitze (1900 - 1979) during her successful attempt to become the first woman to swim the Straits of Gibraltar, on April 6, 1928. Picture: Getty Images

When Donegal restaurant owner Finbar Rock speaks about his aunt, the first British woman to swim the English Channel, you are transported. His admiration is audible but there is something else in his voice — perhaps a sense of incomprehension that an open-sea swimming pioneer and record-breaker fell through the cracks of history.

There were reasons for that. While his mother Phoebe often spoke about her sister-in-law Mercedes Gleitze, the woman herself never told her own children she was a world-renowned swimmer.