Wellington (42½ hours) – 31 Dec 1930 to 2 Jan 1931
Boys’ Institute Tepid Baths

The main reason for Mercedes’s journey to New Zealand was to fulfil a desire to swim across the Cook Strait. However, while she was in Wellington awaiting suitable conditions for that attempt, she arranged other aquatic events in order to remain in good physical shape for a major sea crossing, as well as to help finance her tour. The first of these events was to swim across Wellington Harbour on Christmas Day, and the second was to extend her endurance swim record. Mercedes’s open-sea feats were well known by the time she arrived in New Zealand, and she was now to be credited with introducing endurance swimming in that country.

On 22 December, she received a letter from William J. Jordan, the Director of the Wellington Boys’ Institute and S.A. Rhodes’ Home for Boys, advising her that their tepid baths in Tasman Street would be made available for the swim. The start was arranged for the last day of 1930, making it the second time that Mercedes was to swim the New Year in.  

The terms of contract were quite different to those arranged in Britain, that is, Mercedes had to hire the baths for £108; the first £15 collected from entry fees went to her outright, and thereafter 80 per cent went to her and 20 per cent to the Boys’ Institute. She also had to secure stewards and timekeepers herself, but the Institute provided staff to tend the boilers. A caveat was also included that they would have the right to eject any person whom they considered should not be admitted, or anyone disturbing the peace.

Mr Martin Luckie, the Deputy Mayor of Wellington, after introducing her to the spectators, officially started the swim at 8.35 p.m. on New Year’s Eve, and Mercedes swam all through Thursday 1 January and into Friday 2 January. Her worst battle with sleep deprivation came between 4.30 a.m. and 7.00 a.m. on Friday morning, but she came through it with help from those who stayed with her during the night. She averaged 33 strokes per minute throughout the swim, and her diet consisted of chicken broth, hot milk, bacon and eggs, egg flip, Bovril, crayfish, hot lemon and a little cake.  

She left the water at 3.05 p.m. on Friday afternoon after successfully increasing her endurance record to 42 hours 30 minutes.
Wellington’s Evening Post (10 January 1931) said that Mercedes had introduced a novel and unique performance as far as New Zealand was concerned and that attendees during her performance were not only enthusiastic but keenly interested in her display of courage and determination. 

Large numbers of people visited the baths throughout the swim, including a party from Palmerston North who travelled down especially to see her, and there was also a noticeable increase in the attendance late on Wednesday night to see her swim 1930 out and welcome in 1931. Some of the audience, apart from the officials, spent as long as thirty hours at the baths, merely going out for meals, while others attended five and six times to follow her progress.

Poolside entertainment: Mercedes swam to music provided by local pianists and singers, Mr J. Tate of Island Bay and his string band, and also by a quartet of Maori singers whose refrains and hakas (traditional posture dances) she found most inspiring. 

Illustration by Kara Campbell


There was a very large crowd present to see her finish and scenes of remarkable enthusiasm when Martin Luckie gave the time signal to finish. He commented:

If one thinks over all the things one has crowded into the hours between 8.35 on Wednesday evening and 3.05 this Friday afternoon, and then remembers that Miss Gleitze has been swimming all that time, it gives some idea of the task she had set herself.

The swim was organised and witnessed by the Deputy Major of Wellington (Mr Martin Luckie). Other officials/witnesses were the President (Mr P. Coira), the Vice-President, and other members of the Wellington Swimming Centre; the Vice-President (Mr J. McNie) of the Swimming Association, and his wife (Mrs McNie) who was on duty at Mercedes’s bedside after the finish of the swim; officials from the Lyall Bay Surf (Lifesaving) Club, and the President and members of the Wellington Ladies Club – as well as Messrs. W.J. Jordan (Director), J. Williams and F. Rollingstone from the Boys’ Institute, and two volunteer nurses. Timekeepers and other officials were conscripted from the above swimming clubs, and letters of thanks for the help and support given to her in the organisation of the swim are in the archives.
During the swim, Boys’ Institute Pool, Tasman Street, Wellington
Photographer: A.W. Schaef (1867-1940) 
Gleitze archives


Finish of the swim
Photographer: A.W. Schaef (1867–1940) 
Ibid

A lecture and demonstration week followed the endurance swim, after which Mercedes and her husband travelled to Auckland for her next aquatic event.

Two weeks prior to the Wellington endurance swim, Lily Copplestone, the New Zealand champion swimmer, had written to Mercedes:

My name is probably familiar to you in connection with an attempt on Cook Strait. As the New Zealand long-distance champion swimmer I am extending an invitation to you to accompany me on a long-distance swim down the Waikato river on January 2nd. I propose starting at Cambridge and to cover at least thirty miles. This river is fairly swift having approximately a four knot current. 

This swim has already been accomplished by a man and my object is to break the distance record. All arrangements are complete, including a launch to follow.

I hope you can see your way clear to accept this invitation. It will probably add to the publicity for your attempt on Cook Strait, for which I wish you every success. Will you let me know your decision as soon as possible.

The Evening Post (20 December 1930) reported that when the invitation was shown to Mercedes she said she felt very honoured and grateful for Miss Copplestone’s offer and would have been glad to accept, but unfortunately she would be finishing her endurance swim at the Tepid Baths in Wellington about 4 a.m. on 2 January and this made any consideration of the offer impossible. However, she and Lily were eventually to meet up at the Manly International Endurance Competition in Sydney, Australia, later that month.