Wolverhampton (39 hours) – 18 to 19 July 1930
Municipal Pool, Bath Road
Media coverage of the eleven endurance swims so far performed was good, and as a result Mercedes received a letter from Mr Charles Bond, Superintendent of the Wolverhampton Corporation Baths Department, dated 4 July, which read:
Dear Madam, I shall be pleased if you would inform me whether you intend making any further endurance swims in the near future, if so, what possibility there may be of staging such a swim at these Baths. Excellent facilities are available, also large space for spectators. If there is any prospect of such a swim I shall be pleased to have particulars.
Mercedes replied by telegram to say that she would be happy to do so and would be free on 18 and 19 July if those dates suited them. Terms were subsequently agreed by letter, and so her next stop was Wolverhampton.
PREPARING FOR THE SWIM
In background: The Mayor (Councillor Alan Davies) the Mayoress, and Alderman F.A. Willcox (Chairman of the Parks and Baths Committee).
Reproduced courtesy of The Express & Star
Other local VIPs were present at the Municipal Pool in Bath Road on Friday morning, 18 July when, on the Mayor’s signal, Mercedes entered the water to start the swim at 8.30 a.m.
A précis of a report written by a local Times newspaper reporter, who covered the swim during the first day, describes the scene:
When I arrived shortly after she had entered the water, Miss Gleitze, who is a charming and beautiful woman, was swimming round composedly. A beautifully-toned gramophone was playing, and some spectators were grouped around the sides of the Baths. Everything looked very comfortable. At a table at one end of the Baths were seated numerous of Miss Gleitze’s assistants, two nurses from the hospital who are relieved every two hours, and the Baths Manager. Everyone seemed very cheerful and optimistic. The Baths Manager told me he didn’t expect many spectators until the evening, but there was still a fair attendance during the daytime hours.
When the reporter asked Mercedes about the differences between her sea swims and her indoor endurance swims, she told him that during open water swims her greatest enemy is the cold and having to exert herself against the fickleness of the tides; with her endurance swims she enjoys the close contact with the public, the constant temperature, and the fact that there is no rough water to combat.
Charles Bond had asked the local Express and Star newspaper for help with securing entertainment during the swim, and the paper put out an S.O.S. in its Friday night’s edition asking if any of its readers had a jazz band at their command to provide some saxophone stimulus for Mercedes, especially when her vitality was at its lowest between 2 and 4 a.m. when she would have been swimming for 18 hours. Two jazz bands immediately responded to the appeal: Billy Garnham’s Band came straight down at midnight from a dance where they had been playing and kept things on the move, and The Wultrunians took over from them at 3.00 a.m. to keep everyone’s energy levels up, in and out of the water. These musicians, together with the night-time spectators, played a vital part in helping Mercedes stave off the sleep that could otherwise have overwhelmed her.
Mercedes herself made a supreme effort to stay awake during those long night hours by constantly changing her stroke from breast to back, getting generally about 30 to the minute in each of them. Roses thrown in the pool also attracted her attention. She often picked one up as she swam by it and held it to her nose for a while. A journalist from the Express & Star (writing under the signature J,.E.S.) reported:
The size of the crowd amazed me. I certainly did not expect, when, as an official observer, I arrived at the Baths at 11.30 last night [Friday], to find the hall crowded to its utmost extent and a queue extending for 200 yards outside. If anyone was of the opinion that Wolverhampton people took little interest in swimming, last night would have proved them wrong, for not only did they turn up in hundreds, but they helped all they could by community singing and clapping while Miss Gleitze was feeling sleepy.
Mercedes continued swimming steadily through Saturday morning. Occasionally she called for Vaseline to smear on her lips, and, in an unusual incident, she asked for a needle and thread and a piece of tape so that she could mend the shoulder strap of her bathing costume, which was threatening to come asunder. She made a quick repair whilst treading water.
During the day she asked for a lobster sandwich. This had been put on the menu by the good folk attending her at the Stafford endurance swim, and she had obviously acquired a taste for it.
The swim ended at 11.32 p.m. on Saturday night and Mercedes was taken from the water by three attendants, weary but still smiling, amid scenes of unparalleled enthusiasm. The crowd, which if anything was larger than on Friday, cheered themselves hoarse. The building was packed with over 1,000 people, while twice as many were outside, unable to obtain admission. In all, 5,000 spectators visited the baths over the two days to witness her swim (an estimated distance of 64 miles).
A doctor and nurse were in attendance when Mercedes was transported to her hotel by ambulance to enjoy a good night’s sleep. When the duty doctor visited her the following morning she had, as always, fully recovered from her exhaustion.
A souvenir of the swim was sent to Mercedes later that month by the Chairman of the Parks and Baths Committee, Alderman Willcock JP.
