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What's in a Name?

When Flying Gull winged past Tobacco, swimming the length of a 130-foot pool in thirty seconds, Londoners were flabbergasted.

The year was 1844, and swimming was already established as a popular competitive sport in England. But British athletes generally relied on the sedate breaststroke for traveling in the water, and were rather shocked at the exhibition staged by this group of North American Indians that had been invited to London by the Swimming Society in England.

"Totally un-European"
One observer found their swimming "totally un-European," declaring that the Indians "thrashed the water violently with their arms, like sails of a windmill, and beat downward with their feet, blowing with force and forming grotesque antics." Even though the style of Flying Gull and Tobacco was considerably faster, it was not copied, and British swimmers continued paddling along in their accustomed manner. It was not until some forty years later that the Indians' "totally un-European" style was reintroduced as the crawl, a stroke so rapid that it revolutionized competitive swimming.

(Reprinted with permission by the International Swimming Hall of Fame from "Weissmuller to Spitz;" The History of Swimming, which was edited from "The World of Sports," Mexico XIX, Olympiad 8)