Adam Lucason powerfully strode through the waters off of South Boston, Massachusetts with one goal in mind – winning. A member of the Worcester Boys’ Club of Worcester, Massachusetts, he was competing in the New England A.A.U. Swimming Championships. Almost as soon as they had all jumped into the water, Lucason could almost sense the other men nipping at his heels as he quickly took a breath between his strides. Reaching the end of the course, Lucason prevailed and regained his one-mile record. Other races would prove more arduous for the amateur swimmer who dared to push the limits in the watery environs. The following year, a more difficult race was announced. Lucason was once again in the water with his fellow competitors.
On August 16, 1925, a year after his win in the one-mile race, Lucason and fifteen other swimmers leaped off Warren Street Wharf in Charleston bound for the Boston Light. Lucason, who had also garnered the title of three-mile champion utilizing the double trudgen technique, quickly began to outpace his competitors. By Castle Island, he was nearly five hundred yards ahead of the other swimmers. By the Narrows, only Lucason and six others remained charging through the water toward their elusive goal. Though the swimmers took different routes to the Boston Light, Lucason arrived at Bug Light with the closest swimmer, Walter Patterson, twenty-five minutes behind him. After passing the Spindle Buoy though, Lucason bowled over in horrible pain. Suffering from terrible cramps, he was fished from the water by a nearby rowboat. Lucason was only half a mile away from his goal of reaching the Boston Light. Patterson, who had been trailing him the entire race, took the prize.
A month later, in September 1925, the A.A.U. Long-Distance Swimming Championships were held on Long Island, New York. The course would be from Matinecock Point to Ferry Beach, Bayville. Keeping close to the shoreline, twelve swimmers battled through the water in hopes of victory. Clarence Ross of the New York Athletic Club, however, was victorious in the North Shore contest. Lucason, one of only eight other swimmers who finished the race, was disheartened but ultimately undeterred by the loss. More races were on the horizon.
On September 11, 1926, Lucason and twenty-three other amateur swimmers from five different states of the union limbered up in preparation for leaping into the Indian summer waters of the Long Island Sound for the first-ever Eagle Cross-Sound Swim sponsored by The Brooklyn Daily Eagle newspaper. Lucason, standing along the strand in Greenwich, Connecticut, stared across the waters to the far shore of Long Island, New York. The event, sponsored by the Bayville Aquatic Club, would test his and the other swimmers’ mettle. The competitors were ushered into the water when it was nearly time to start. Several newspapermen inquired if the swimmers had seen Walter Spence, of the Brooklyn Central Y.M.C.A. Spence, the A.A.U. all-around swimming champion and with whom many who followed the various swimming competitions knew had been touted in the papers as the apparent man to beat, was nowhere to be found. No one, not even his fellow Y.M.C.A. member, Fred Kothe, had seen him. Despite the absence of the proposed frontrunner, the swimmers had no time to lose as they rendezvoused at the red buoy off the Indian Harbor Yacht Club and prepared to begin. At fifteen minutes past noon, the crew of a United States Coast Guard cutter rang out a shot from its deck gun. The crowd that had amassed cheered and clapped. The first modified channel swim across the Long Island Sound race had officially begun.
The first two miles of the race were the most difficult concerning the conditions of the water. A stiff southeasterly breeze buffeted the hearty souls as they trudged forward in the mixed waters. Once through the rough, the waters of the Long Island Sound calmed, and the swimmers strode on toward the shores of Long Island. As the swimmers kept plowing ahead, Walter Spence finally arrived at the Indian Harbor Yacht Club. He related to the remaining newspaper reporters that he was late due to missing his train as he quickly disrobed into his swimming regalia and ran toward the water. Despite being forty-five minutes late, he plunged into the water and took off in the wake of the other competitors. The man to beat, he would later learn, was Harold Langner of Yale. A member of the Milford Sporting Club of Milford, Connecticut, he had outpaced the others for the first hour. Spence had a lot of catching up to do if he was to be considered a contender. While Spence battled through the water, Langner began to slow and was passed by Fred Kothe of the Brooklyn Central Y.M.C.A. Lucason though was proving to begin to show that he was true to his championship stock. Kothe and Lucason began a stroke-by-stroke challenge while Langner was forced to pull out of the race due to saltwater blindness.
Now nearly three-quarters of the way to their goal, the race for first was clearly between the forty-five minute late starting Spence, Kothe, and Lucason. Though others were managing a good fight in their wake, it was these three men who were vying for victory. Kothe however was no match, stride for stride, for the champion from Worcester, Massachusetts. Kothe began to slow down and Spence overtook him. As Lucason reached Ferry Beach in Bayville, amidst applause and shouting by the large crowd gathered, he had completed the race in five hours, forty-eight minutes and twenty-eight seconds. Two miles behind the leader and only twenty-five minutes behind him, Spence, despite his efforts, was forced to withdraw from the race when he became violently ill. Kothe, forever a competitor, saw the race through and finished second with a time of six hours, thirty-four minutes, and eight seconds. Charles Jensen rounded out third place with a total time of seven hours, forty-eight minutes, and twenty-eight seconds. A fellow Bostonian, Thomas Kenny, was the only other competitor to complete the eight-mile race across the Long Island Sound.
While Lucason was victorious, sportswriters of the era poured cold water on the state of the nation’s amateur swimmers in a weekly sports editorial in the wake of the event. With average per-mile times of the victors ranging from the low forty minutes to mid-fifty minutes per mile range, the editorial staff writers were concerned about the ability of the nation’s amateurs being able to compete with their European rivals in races in the eight-hundred and fifteen-hundred-meter ranges. Referring to the race’s believed front-runner Walter Spence’s one-mile race a few weeks earlier that had placed him at a twenty-three-minute pace, the writers called for an increase in the number of long-distance competitions so that the amateurs could increase their ability to tackle the longer races. While the writers did commend the American amateurs for their mastery of distances up to a quarter mile, it was clear, with the race across the Long Island Sound, that the Americans had a lot of catching up to do if they wanted to be able to garner attention in internationacircles.
Despite the misgivings and observations of those sitting idle behind typewriters and filling up pages of newspaper print, the hearty swimmers had gotten their feet wet and had forged on through the first-ever modified channel swim across the Long Island Sound. While a missed train may have provided Lucason a head start against the favorite swimmer Walter Spence in the first-ever Brooklyn Daily Eagle Cross-Sound Swim, on September 11, 1926, it was Lucason who rose the Brooklyn Daily Eagle Trophy to signify his victory, in our waters.
Adam M. Grohman is the researcher and author of over thirty-six books that capture the rich history of our maritime environs and United States Coast Guard history. For more information about scheduling a lecture or to purchase any of his available titles, please visit www.lulu.com/spotlight/adamgrohman or email grohmandive@hotmail.com.