3-070-584 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Map of the Rapids and Whirlpool below the Falls of Niagara, 1883. 'Captain Matthew Webb, incomparably the greatest swimmer ever known,...perished...in his madly wild attempt to swim down the terrific rapids and through the whirlpool…The aggregate quantity of water that pours over these Falls every minute is about one hundred and seventy millions of gallons. A hundred million tons weight passes over in an hour...Immediately below the Falls, the water is 100 ft. deep; then come sunken rocks, half filling up the channel; and below these are the Rapids, beginning nearly a mile from the Falls...on the day of his death [Webb] arrived at the Falls, at one o'clock in the afternoon, having left his wife and two children at Boston, and made his will. He walked out to look at the...Rapids, and was met by some newspaper reporters, to whom he talked about it. He said that he could do it; he would be carried under water by the current; but that he could hold his breath a minute and a half, and he would rise to the surface again, and fight it out...The dead body of Captain Webb has been discovered and taken ashore at Lewiston, four miles below the Rapids. There is a fracture of the skull, but it seems to have been caused after death, by striking the rocks'. From "Illustrated London News", 1883.