3-070-579 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Death of Captain Webb: the Whirlpool Rapids, Niagara, 1883. 'Horse-Shoe Falls; Rapids above the Fall...Captain Matthew Webb, incomparably the greatest swimmer ever known in the world,...perished...in his madly wild attempt to swim down the terrific rapids and through the whirlpool...It is impossible to describe the wild fury of the waters at this place, but our Illustration will give some notion of it...on the day of his death...having left his wife and two children at Boston, and made his will...[he] walked out to look at the Falls and Rapids...He knew he was too fat for swimming a race, but this was not like racing...Four or five hundred spectators were assembled on the banks and on the bridges...At one moment he was lifted high on the crest of a wave, and the next he sank into the awful hollow...At a quarter of a mile from the Whirlpool...the waves strike the American shore with terrific force, and a perfect hell of waters is created. It is at this point that...he sank, and a cry of despair went up from the spectators...Webb swept into the neck of the Whirlpool. Rising on the crest of the highest wave, his face towards the Canadian shore, he lifted his hands once, and then was precipitated into the yawning gulf'. From "Illustrated London News", 1883