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 smim the Channel,Ederle's time remained a record for twenty-four years.