Shirley May Setters, 1932–2012

When Shirley May France, then a pretty 17-year-old Massachusetts schoolgirl, dove into the water off Cap Gris Nez in France in 1949, she hoped to become the youngest person ever to swim the 21-mile English Channel. Ten and a half hours later, freezing and in danger of drowning, she had to be pulled, protesting, from the water six miles from her goal. It didn’t matter, though, because she had already captured hearts on both sides of the Atlantic.

Growing up in Somerset, Mass., Setters began swimming competitively at an early age with the encouragement of her father, himself a former amateur swimming champion, said the London Telegraph. She swam 33 miles across Michigan’s Lake St. Clair at 14, and fared well as the only woman in a 1948 competition across Lake George in New York. The idea of swimming the Channel was the product of “her father’s ambitions” and a clever press agent. Soon photos of her clad in a swimsuit appeared in newspapers across the U.S. and Europe. The promotional frenzy was driven in part by rumors that she intended to swim in the nude, but what captivated readers in the end was her valiant attempt to stay in the water and keep swimming.

Despite the failed attempt, she was greeted at home with bags of fan mail, dozens of marriage proposals, and ticker-tape parades, said The Washington Post. She attempted the strait on two subsequent occasions but didn’t succeed. A promised Hollywood contract never materialized, but she socialized with famous figures of the era, including Frank Sinatra, Jackie Robinson, and Clark Gable.

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Setters’s later years bore little resemblance to her early brush with celebrity, said the Fall River, Mass., Herald News. She lived in Somerset much of her life, marrying, raising children, and working at her family’s pork pie restaurant. She discouraged her children from swimming, her son Donald said, because she regretted not having a normal childhood. “My mother was a very determined person and was very confident that she could do anything,” he said, calling her life “truly an inspiring story about trying.”