Adam Riches’ The Captain revisits Captain Matthew Webb’s Channel swim
In a lecture theatre this August, comedian Adam Riches presented The Captain, a one-man show that tells Captain Matthew Webb’s 19th-century Channel swim through the voice of promoter Fred Beckwith. During the performance the audience chanted “Pull. Breathe. Kick. Glide.” as they matched the words to the actions.
Riches narrates Webb’s story in the person of Fred Beckwith, the promoter who helped Webb train for his feat at Lambeth Baths, and the production never shows Webb directly. Riches previously turned Jimmy Connors’ 1991 US Open run into a one-man show, and The Captain is built around Webb’s status as the first man to swim the Channel unaided. Webb’s crossing was intended as a 21-mile effort but became nearly 39 miles as tides and weather threw him off course; he struggled for 21 hours and 45 minutes between Dover and Calais.
The show frames Webb against a broader history of European swimming that, Riches suggests through Beckwith, was limited before Webb’s era; Leonardo da Vinci is quoted in the piece for questioning how humans learn to swim compared with other animals. In Beckwith’s narration the line “swimming, pre-Captain Webb, wasn’t an act in itself – it was merely a counterpoint to drowning” is delivered directly. The production also recalls Lord Byron’s 1810 crossing of the Hellespont (the Dardanelles), a four-mile stretch he completed in just over an hour despite a club foot and then celebrated in a poem.
The Captain places Webb amid the gradual formalisation of the sport in the 19th century, citing how informal wagers and lake races were organised into events by the National Swimming Society and how artificial pools opened in London. Webb’s adventure significantly increased public interest in swimming and inspired others, including Agnes Beckwith, Fred’s daughter, who swam 20 miles of the Thames from Westminster to Richmond and back to Mortlake. The show presents these episodes as part of a shift in recreational habits among the burgeoning middle classes.
Riches’ narrative connects Webb’s legacy to later endurance achievements: it notes that the first modern Olympic swimming races in 1896 were held in the Mediterranean Sea, where athletes faced frigid temperatures and 13ft waves, and cites 18-year-old Alfréd Hajós after winning gold in the 1200m saying “my will to live completely overcame my desire to win.” The Captain also references Gertrude Ederle’s 1926 Channel crossing as the fastest in its day and the first by a woman, and it links Ederle to Lynne Cox, whose record-breaking swims included the Cook Strait and the Bering Strait, the latter described as waters that literally froze around her.
The piece draws a line from Webb to contemporary swimmers, noting that Adam Ramsay-Peaty typically races 100m at a time and that those races usually take him under a minute, while Webb’s Channel effort lasted 21 hours and 45 minutes; the narrative also points out the 30 miles separating their Shropshire and Staffordshire birthplaces. The author records Webb’s later fate, stating he died at 35 chasing the fame and fortune that did not endure, and reflects that in a content-driven age sport is often consumed as fleeting entertainment.
The Captain, which evokes a less explosive kind of sporting endurance, runs through August.