Oddlet: Captain Matthew Webb · 1 min read
Nov 5, 2026
The Flower Show
Matthew Webb, the first man to swim the English Channel, once raced a Newfoundland dog in open sea; after an hour the dog, a breed bred to pull drowning people from the water, had to be pulled from the water.
In August 1875, Matthew Webb became the first person to swim the English Channel: 21 hours 45 minutes, sustained by beef tea and brandy passed down on a line, greased head to toe in porpoise oil.
He never really got out.
He put his own face on Bryant & May matchboxes, striped costume against the White Cliffs. He raced a Newfoundland dog in rough seas. After an hour, the dog had to be pulled from the water. Newfoundlands, incidentally, are the breed bred to pull people from the water.
Then, in 1882, one of the most famous men in the English-speaking world climbed into a tank of water at the Boston Horticultural Hall and lay in it.
He lay in it for 128 hours and 30 minutes. He took one 94-minute break.
A year later, thin from tuberculosis, he was rowed into the Niagara River wearing the same red silk trunks he'd worn across the Channel. He lasted about ten minutes.
Nobody else swam the Channel for thirty-six years.
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- Wikipedia — Matthew Webb — Comprehensive biography with sourced dates, times, distances, Cunard Russia rescue, Channel-swim logistics, Boston 128.5-hour float, marriage, Niagara attempt and death, and Dawley memorial.
- Royal Museums Greenwich — Captain Matthew Webb — Curatorial biography from the National Maritime Museum: confirms birth in Dawley, HMS Conway apprenticeship, 1873 rescue from the Cunard Russia, Channel swim times, Burgess follow-up in 1911.
- British Newspaper Archive Blog — Drowning of Captain Webb at Niagara — Round-up of contemporary press coverage of the Niagara death (Chelmsford Chronicle, Nottingham Evening Post, The Graphic).
- Niagara Falls Info — Daredevils: Captain Matthew Webb — Local Niagara history site: rowed out 4:00 pm, entered water 4:25 pm, $2,000 purse, Maid of the Mist launch, burial at Oakwood Cemetery.
- Dawley Heritage — Biography by M. Peel — Confirms April 1873 Russia rescue, Channel-swim clock times (12:56 pm start, 10:41 am finish, 39 miles), 1879 Lambeth six-day 74-mile race, 27 April 1880 marriage at St Andrew's West Kensington, Niagara entry at 4:25 pm in red trunks, body with 'large gash on his head', Dawley fountain unveiling on 23 October 1909.
Room for God
By 1962, Raymond Isidore had covered every surface of his house in fifteen tonnes of broken crockery — the beds, the flower pots, the carriage clock, the radio, his wife's sewing machine — and she sighed that she had better be careful, or he would tile her too.
Obdurate
Sir George Sitwell invented a musical toothbrush and a wasp-shooting revolver, but what defeated him was the colour of his dairy cows.
Both Feet
Jean-Baptiste Lully invented French opera and conducted by pounding a heavy staff on the floor, until, mid-Te Deum for Louis XIV's recovered anal fistula, he drove the staff into his own foot.
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