Page 83 - Celebrating 50 Years of the International swimming Hall of Fame

Ben Franklin The Swimmer
Four months later, in January of 1712, the Franklin’s moved from the tiny house on Milk Street into a new house on the corner
of Union and Hanover Streets. It was just a hundred feet from Mill Pond, just the kind of location Thevenot suggested as a safe
place to learn to swim.

Now while Franklin wrote very little about his mother, according to his French friend Pierre Cabanis, she was a much greater
influence in his life than he disclosed in his writings. Franklin told Cabanis that she let him play outside the house in the snow
during the winter and summer months. She encouraged him to swim and he swam several hours at a time, sometimes twice a
day.

Perhaps his mother, one of his older siblings or his father went with him to act as a lifeguard at first - as recommended by
Thevenot. This would have probably taken place when he was between the ages of six and ten - before he began working as an
apprentice for his father and certainly before he moved into his brother James’ printing shop at the age of 12.

How he obtained a copy of Thevenot’s book we don’t know. Possibly he got it from one of the British soldiers, sailors, colonial
seaman or perhaps it was obtained by his mother - for she had several reasons for wanting to ensure that he was water safe. She
had been born and raised on Nantucket Island and her family was involved in the whaling and fishing industry - where knowing
how to swim was a necessity. In 1669, her older sister Bethia had drowned along with her husband in a boating accident. In 1703,
her 18-month old son, Ebenezer had drowned in a tub; and the year before Benny was born her oldest son, Josiah, Jr. had run
off to sea and was presumed drowned. She also would have observed the swimming skills of the native populations that lived on
Nantucket - for as the preface to Thevenot says, the Indians excelled all others in the arts of swimming and diving.

With his inclination to go to sea - it would certainly make sense that his mother would have wanted to ensure that he knew how
to swim.

81