swimming book, The Swimmer or A Dialogue on the Art of Swimming Der Schwimmer oder ein Zweigespräch über die Schwimmkunst. Competitive swimming as we know it today started in the United States around 1800, mostly using breaststroke. Many Americans often used swimming competitions to settle differences in the frontier, such as property rights. In 1873, John Arthur Trudgen introduced the trudgen to Western swimming competitions, after copying the front crawl used by Native Americans and African-Americans. Due to a British dislike of splashing, Trudgen employed a scissor kick instead of the front crawl's flutter kick