SWIMMING.
The extent to which the power of swimming is cultivated amongst Englishmen is scarcely creditable to the citizens of a country which boasts both that it is the greatest naval power, and that it possesses infinitely the largest mercantile marine on the face of the earth. It is only within recent years that it has been anything but a rare exception for a sailor to be able to swim. Amongst old naval officers it is still remembered as a notable occurrence that some fifty years ago, Lord Ingestre, when in command of a ship on the Mediterranean station, refused to rate as an able seaman any man who could not swim, and that from time to time other captains followed his example. That this should be still recalled to mind shows how rare an accomplishment swimming was amongst sailors in past times; and if this has now been remedied in the royal navy, where, at the present day, swimming is taught, a similar improvement has by no means taken place in the mercantile marine, in which a seaman who can swim is still a curiosity. Probably the same remark would apply to our ‘long-shore’ population, to our lightermen and professional watermen, and to the inhabitants of our numerous canal-boats. And yet English people of both sexes and of the average type seem to take to the water as naturally as a duck. The difference is that they delight to disport themselves on the waves instead of in them. Every seaport, every suitable stretch of river, every lake, has its Rowing Club; Cockneys, whose ideas of rowing are original if not elegant, and whose notions of boat-management constitute a minus quantity, make summer Sundays and the August Bank Holiday hideous on the Thames in the neighbourhood of Hampton Court; and if ’Arry takes his ’Arriet for a day’s excursion to some one of the seaside resorts which they patronise, the enjoyment of both is incomplete if they do not court the woes of sea-sickness by going for a sail.
In face of this national taste for aquatic pursuits, it is a painfully suggestive reflection that comparatively few Englishmen, and still fewer Englishwomen, possess sufficient knowledge of swimming to save their own lives if they were suddenly plunged into deep water, and were called upon to support themselves for, perhaps, five minutes by their own exertions. No doubt, the power of swimming is a far more common accomplishment amongst men than it was a quarter of a century ago. Swimming has shared in the athletic revival which has marked the period, and has found its devotees amongst the practical adherents of muscular Christianity; but if, as some seem to think, there are not wanting signs that the rage for athletic pursuits has passed its meridian, and has begun its decline, swimming will probably suffer, in common with other sports, from the reaction. No doubt, too, our changeful English climate, our cold waters, are against this particular form of exercise. In the tideless, sun-warmed Mediterranean, in the coral-bound lagoons of the Southern Ocean, or by the grove-clad banks of Burmese rivers, swimming becomes both a luxury and a second nature. Let those testify who remember the untrammelled urchins flinging themselves from the bows of boats in Malta harbour to dive for and secure the coins flung from the deck of some newly arrived vessel, or disporting themselves day after day in the fetid, drain-polluted waters of the Dockyard Creek. Let travellers bear witness who, with possibly some humorous exaggeration, have told us how, in Burmah, toddling infants can swim at least as soon as they can walk; and how a mother, too busy for the time to look after her youngest born, will cheerfully and confidently place it in the river, to amuse itself with its playmates; and then, when she has leisure, will swim about among the gamboling children until she has found her own and brought it to land. In such a case as this there can be but little teaching; swimming must come almost naturally—shall we say from hereditary instinct, developed by the constant calls made upon it, and transmitted from generation to generation?
The lower temperature of the sea, or of fresh water fully exposed to the air, in our latitudes will doubtless always prevent Englishmen, as a nation, from becoming expert swimmers; but the common-sense of a people which prides itself on its possession of the quality should suffice to evade or overcome this natural obstacle so far as to release us from at least a large proportion of the grim death-tribute which we pay every year to our national ignorance. To any one who has noted the characteristic recklessness with which people intrust themselves to frail craft with whose management they are ludicrously unacquainted, it may perhaps be a matter for surprise that this tribute is not more heavy than it is; but certainly not a few of the deaths by drowning that go to swell our annual calendar of disasters can only be properly called accidents if we extend the signification of the word so as to include those misfortunes which, though unforeseen, arise from perfectly preventable causes. The climate of Paris and the north of France is not warmer than that of England, but the proportion of Parisians—perhaps even of Frenchmen in general—who can swim is certainly greater than that of Englishmen. When it was pointed out to the librarian at Boulogne-sur-Mer that the library did not possess a single work on swimming, he replied good-humouredly: ‘Ah! c’est comme ça, Monsieur—on apprend naturellement ici;’ and in Thévenot’s Art de Nager, démontré par Figures, avec des Avis pour se baigner utilement, published in Paris in or about 1696, some of the plates represent ladies swimming, and would thus seem to show that with Frenchwomen it has been a custom for centuries. In the year 1859, Miss Powers, the secretary to the Ladies’ National Association for the diffusion of sanitary knowledge, published a twopenny pamphlet entitled, Why do not Women Swim?—a Voice from many Waters; but the question thus propounded was not satisfactorily answered, and an Englishwoman who can swim still remains a rarity—how great a one, any one may easily ascertain for himself by watching the small crowd that speedily assembles to watch a lady-swimmer at any seaside resort.
In extenuation of our national ignorance of swimming, we have not even the excuse that the acquisition of the art is difficult. On the contrary, it is one of the most easily acquired of accomplishments. The one secret of it is confidence, though, like most other things, it is best learned young. There is no reason why it should not—on the contrary, on the ground both of health and of saving of life, there is every reason why it should—be made a necessary part of the education of young people of both sexes and of all classes. At Eton and in some other schools, it is systematically taught; but it would be far cheaper and more useful than many of the things for which parents cheerfully pay as ‘extras’ in private establishments; whilst in these days, when we are concerning ourselves so greatly about the education of the masses, and paying such a price for the privilege, swimming would certainly be a far more useful subject to form one of the items of Board School education than many of the things for which the long-suffering ratepayer is now compelled to put his hand in his pocket. As a certain William Woodbridge remarked in a manual published by him in 1864:
To swim with ease and confidence and grace,
Should in Great Britain have acknowledged place
Of recognition; and by law decreed,
Be taught as fully as we’re taught to read;
Forming a part in education’s rule
In every college and in every school.
This is the merest doggerel. In fact, the recommendation of the book is not its literary merit, for it possesses none, but the fact that it is what it professes to be—in itself a matter of congratulation after the nonsense which, from time to time, it has been sought to palm off upon the public by utilising the names of various prominent swimmers who were far too ignorant to have written a line of the compilations with which their names have been associated—and that the instruction conveyed in it is thoroughly sound, practical, and to the point. Woodbridge died in 1868; and the little manual has, I believe, been long out of print, so that in saying this I may be acquitted of the desire to give any one a gratuitous advertisement. I come back, however, to my point: Why, provided there be water at hand, should not every one be taught to swim during the period of his or her school career; and how can parents reconcile it to their consciences to permit their children to run a perfectly needless risk, by failing to have them taught what they ought to learn as regularly and easily as they learn to walk?