Excerpt from Chapter 1; From Pride to Prejudice:

A milestone in British swimming history saw the successful cross channel swim by Captain Matthew Webb in 1875. As the crow flies, the distance from Dover to Calais is just less than eighteen miles, but tides and winds mean a longer distance has to be covered by the swimmer. It took Webb twenty-one hours forty-five minutes to complete the crossing. He then held on to the accolade of channel supremacy until 1911, when T W Burgess managed to swim across on his sixteenth attempt. The effect of Webb's success had a dramatic impact on the nation's youth as reported in the New York Times:

'The London baths are crowded; each village pond and running stream contains youthful worshipers at the shrine of Webb and even along the banks of the river, regardless of the terrors of the Thames police, swarms of naked urchins ply their limbs, each probably determined that he one day will be another Captain Webb.'

Cold water swimming

The history  of swimming pools

100 years of swimming history 1912 - 2012