Ivy Hawke

Ivy Hawke grew up in Surbiton, Surrey, where her mother ran the Spread Eagle Coffee Tavern. Born on 12 April 1903, she developed her endurance in the Thames and won the 1917 Thames Race at fourteen. She represented Surrey Ladies Swimming Club, combining her swimming with work in the family business before becoming a swimming instructor and superintendent at the local baths.

The English Channel became a longer project. Attempts in 1922 and 1927 ended without a crossing, but in August 1928 she completed the France-to-England route. The Channel Swimming Association records 19 hours 16 minutes. A contemporary Eugene Guard report also gives that duration and describes her as twenty-five. The selected performance is dated 19 August in the later historical attempt table.

Hawke subsequently tried the opposite direction in 1929, but that attempt was abandoned and is not counted as another success. Her story links the women’s Thames swimming clubs with the interwar Channel pioneers: substantial river experience preceded the successful sea crossing. She married Edward Crocker in 1931 and died at Kingston upon Thames in 1970.