Stop 91 of 109 · Swim the Channel
1927 · English Channel, Dover Strait
The Swim That Didn't Finish, and the Watch That Did
In 1927 Mercedes Gleitze swam for over ten hours in the freezing Channel to defend her reputation, with a small screwed-shut watch tied around her neck.
On 7 October 1927, Mercedes Gleitze became the first British woman to swim the English Channel. Days later, another swimmer's claim to have gone faster turned out to be a hoax, but it cast doubt on Gleitze's own achievement.
To settle the question, on 21 October she swam again, in water she later described as "not more than 58 and often as low as 51" degrees Fahrenheit. She carried a gold Rolex Oyster tied on a ribbon around her neck. After more than ten hours in the sea, she was pulled out short of the English coast: the vindication swim itself went unfinished.
The watch, though, had kept good time throughout, and her endurance was enough to convince people her Channel record stood. Rolex announced the feat on the front page of the Daily Mail that November. The Oyster's innovation was simple: a case and crown, both patented in 1926, that screwed shut at the glass, the back and the crown, sealing the movement against water for the first time in a wristwatch.
It's worth being precise about what actually happened: the watch rode on the later, unfinished vindication swim, not the record-setting crossing itself. Its engraved case back even reads "Vindication Channel Swim, October 21st, 1927."