Page 85 - Celebrating 50 Years of the International swimming Hall of Fame

Ben Franklin The Swimmer
Years earlier he had read the
following in Thévenot: “Thus
quicksilver being above thirteen
times as heavy as water, it would
be impossible for a man, cast into
a vessel or lake of that, to sink; on
the contrary, the air being 800 times
at least lighter than water, it would
be very difficult for a man to mount
or fly in that, though perhaps not
impossible.”

In another famous observation,
he explained in a letter to William
Brownrigg, 7 November 1773,
how he was able to calm the waves
by pouring oil onto the water. He
no doubt first read about this in
Thévenot’: “Pliny tells us in the
Second Book of his Natural History,
that they had a method of using oil...”

As Franklin has told us, swimming
was an exercise he thoroughly
enjoyed his entire life. He swam
in the rivers and lakes of North
America and Europe and even in
the middle of the ocean when his
ship was becalmed. He taught his
son William and his grandsons
Temple Franklin and Benny Bache
to swim while they were with him
in Europe. Before he retuned to
Philadelphia from London for
the last time, he enjoyed floating
on his back and falling asleep in
Martin’s Saltwater Baths, something
he had never done before. Most
importantly, swimming introduced
him to science - and is responsible
for his development as a prodigy
whose career as a scientist was
interrupted by the need to learn a
trade. He used the same skill set he
learned from teaching himself how
to swim, to learn to write and be a
great typesetter before returning to
his interest in science.

Author’s note: Spoiler! Actually, as remarkable and fascinating as Melchisédech Thévenot was, he did not write The Art of
Swimming and did not even know how to swim. The credit for the book belongs to Englishman Everard Digby, who published
his treatise in Latin in 1587. What Thévenot did was to translate the book into French in 1696. The story of how Thévenot came
into possession of the book and helped to popularize swimming is a story for another time.

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