Gertrude Ederle sponsored by a newspaper, the "Baltimore Post", which tried to create a rivalry between her and Ederle in the weeks spent training off the French coast. In addition to Cannon, several other swimmers, including two other American women – Clarabelle Barrett and Amelia Gade Corson – were training in England with the goal of becoming the first woman to swim the Channel. Barrett and Cannon were unsuccessful but three weeks after Ederle's feat, Corson crossed in a time that was 50 minutes slower than Ederle. For her second attempt at the Channel, Ederle had an entourage aboard the tug (the
Gertrude Hermes Gertrude Hermes Gertrude Anna Bertha Hermes (18 August 1901 – 9 May 1983) was an English wood engraver, printmaker and sculptor. Gertrude Anna Bertha Hermes was born on 18 August 1901 in Bickley, Kent. Her parents, Louis August Hermes and Helene, "née" Gerdes, were from Altena, near Dortmund, Germany. In about 1921 she attended the Beckenham School of Art, and in 1922 enrolled at Leon Underwood's Brook Green School of Painting and Sculpture, where other students included Eileen Agar, Raymond Coxon, Henry Moore and Blair Hughes-Stanton, whom she married in 1926; they separated in 1931, and were divorced in 1933.