SWIMMING.

Globe, Volume XXI, Issue 1807, 5 December 1879, Page 3

SWIMMING.

Captain Webb has been beaten at Gravesend Bay, New York, by Von Schoening, an American swimming master, and also in the same contest by Woerhan, a butcher ; two other competitors having succumbed before Webb, who left the water after swimming six miles and one lap in five hours and twenty minutes. Woerhan seems to be well adapted by physical formation for swimming, if corpulence is an advantage. The reporter, with more directness than delicacy, describes Woerhan as more like an inflated bladder than a respectable tradesman, and, after a more elaborate calculation, figured out that if the more protuberant portion of Woerhan hit against a wall in the dark, it would be near upon eight minutes before his nose caught up. With the disappearance of Webb interest ceased to some extent. The other two men swam on for twenty minutes, when Woerhan paused and said he should not swim any further for nothing. If anybody would give him 500 dollars ho would consent to stay in the water for five hours more. As everyone wanted to go home, nobody produced the dollars, and after violent efforts on the part of all concerned, he was hauled on board the boat. Von. Schoening stayed a few minutes longer and then retired. He had gone seven miles one lap in five minutes less than six hours. Why Webb gave in is not clear, but it was supposed that he did not feel well.