You probably haven't noticed this if you live outside of the UK, but British celebrity David Walliams - one half of the
Little Britain double act has just completed a swim across the English Channel in order to raise money for charity. Walliams (who changed his named from "Williams" because there was already another David Williams in his drama union) raised over £400,000 for various good causes. That's getting close to a million dollars.
Walliams joins a very, very small group of people who have successfully made swam the twenty-one miles between England and France. It's a tough challenge, not least because of tides and currents which force the swimmer to actually cover around thirty miles. There are other hazards, including oil slicks and jellyfish, not to mention the fact that the Channel is notoriously rough, and the single busiest shipping lane in the whole world.
It's a strange fact, but fewer people have swum the Channel than have climbed Mount Everest. The feat was first achieved by Captain William Webb in 1875. Webb, who eventually died while trying to swim the Niagara Falls rapids, had to swim a total of thirty-nine miles to make the crossing. It is a challenge that requires a strange type of physical preparation, because endurance sea swimmers cannot afford to be too lean - as well as being superfit, they have to have reasonable fat deposits in order to insulate muscles against the deep chill that the ocean has even in the summer months.
The Channel itself is a very historic body of water. Known as La Manche ("the sleeve") in French, it hasn't been around that long in geological terms, appearing only at the end of the last ice age around ten thousand years ago. Since then it has more than made for its relative youth by the sheer number of events it has seen: the invasions of Britain by the Romans and the Normans, the Spanish Armada of 1588 and the wars against Napoleon and Hitler, during which it protected the UK from invasion. It was also the scene of a battle in the US Civil War, when the Confederate CSS Alabama was sunk by the Union USS Kearsarge. In short, this is one historic body of water. The funny thing is, you can now cross from England to France and back again without even setting eyes on it - by the simple expedient of using the Channel Tunnel.
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The Crossing: The Curious Story of the First Man to Swim the English Channel
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The English Channel: An Original Play About Shakespeare
NAVAL WARFARE IN THE ENGLISH CHANNEL 1939 - 1945