At the age of eighteen, Gertrude Ederle became the first woman to swim the English Channel. She covered the distance from Cape Gris-Nex in France to the English coast in fourteen hours, thirty-one minutes. Four years earlier, in 1922, Ederle had captured the American women's long distance swimming championship. Although other attempts were made to swim the Channel, Ederle's time remained a record for twenty-four years.