Diving into… the history of swimming

Nearly a decade after his historic attempt to swim the Atlantic Ocean, endurance swimmer Ben Hooper reflects on humanity’s long, complicated relationship with water — and why swimming has always been about far more than sport

This November will be the 10th anniversary of my Atlantic Ocean attempt —a world-first verified bid to swim the 1,864 miles From Africa to Brazil. Or, put less heroically, a prolonged exercise in putting one arm in front of the other while the ocean repeatedly suggested I reconsider my life choices.

A decade on, it feels close enough to still sit in the shoulders, but distant enough to look almost historical itself. That is the strange thing about swimming. Even your own swims begin to gather folklore the moment they are over. The ocean gets larger. The nights get longer. The jellyfish become more numerous, more tactical and, in memory at least, slightly more vindictive.

But my own swim history did not begin in the Atlantic. It began in a swimming pool in Belgium in 1984, when I was five years old and nearly drowned. Perhaps that is why I have always understood that the history of swimming is never simply a story of medals, records and determined people in goggles and budgie smugglers. 

It is also a story of fear, survival, rescue, class, culture, belonging and our stubborn human habit of underestimating water, seas and the mighty oceans that govern our everyday lives and every breath we take.

That is what makes swimming history so fascinating: it is one of the oldest things people have done, yet it still feels oddly modern.

For most of human history, people swam because they had to. They crossed rivers, escaped danger, fished, washed, worked and fought. Long before swimming became something timed, coached and posted online with split times and inspirational captions, it was practical. If you could swim, that was useful. If you could not, the consequences could be final.

Over time, though, swimming changed. It became leisure, then status, then spectacle. Ancient civilisations built baths around ritual, hygiene and social life. Later, swimming became wrapped up in discipline, health and morality. By the 19^th century, Britain had begun doing what Britain does best: organising something once natural until it required rules, timetables and proper changing facilities.

Then came the civic baths, the swimming clubs and eventually the lido — perhaps the finest and most baffling British contribution to aquatic history. A lido is, essentially, a beautifully designed outdoor place in which to be cold on purpose. It is not always easy to explain to other nations, but there is something undeniably noble in standing in drizzle beside turquoise water, insisting this counts as pleasure.

That, though, is part of the charm of swim history: it is never only about speed but, instead, about place. You can tell a great deal about a society by how it swims. In some places, water is ritual. In others it is competition, labour, travel or escape. In Britain it is often all of those things at once, plus a flask of tea, a changing robe and, as one open-water enthusiast from Bristol told me cheerfully,, “It’s lovely once you’re in,” which remains one of the country’s more enduring falsehoods.

Our own swim story is tied not just to the sea but to outdoor pools, river bathing, seaside holidays and the slow, sensible realisation that teaching people to swim might be a very good idea on an island. The rise of the lido in the early 20^th century was not just about recreation. It reflected public health, civic pride and a more democratic idea of leisure. Swimming was no longer reserved for the wealthy, the naval or the naturally amphibious. It was becoming public, shared and part of ordinary life.

That question of access matters, because swimming has always reflected wider society. It shows who gets lessons, who gets encouraged, who gets left out and who grows up feeling the water is for them. History has not always been equal in that regard. Class, race, geography and opportunity have all shaped who swims and who does not. Some communities inherit confidence in water; others inherit caution, exclusion or simply the absence of opportunity.

And yet swimming also has an extraordinary ability to heal. Water strips away some of the noise of land. It can soothe, steady and reset. For many people, especially in open water, swimming is less about sport than survival of another kind — mental, emotional, sometimes even spiritual. In periods of stress and conflict, people have turned to water for relief as well as recreation. There is something deeply human in seeking calm by entering an element that can, under other circumstances, terrify us.

Of course, swim history does not glide along in a neat line of progress and cheerful postcards. Water has always carried danger. It does not care whether you are fit, rich, local, experienced or full of confidence after half an hour on social media. For every triumph — the great crossings, the Olympic medals and the improbable endurance feats — there is another story of misjudgement, poor access, bad conditions or utter tragedy.

This remains true in the UK today, with over 14 million adults still swimming regularly, whether in pools, lakes, rivers or the sea. It remains one of the nation’s most popular activities. But drowning figures — more than 500 drowning incidents in the UK reported in 2025; globally, over 300,000 annually — are a sobering reminder that familiarity is not safety. Many deaths occur not in dramatic oceans but in ordinary inland waters, involving ordinary people in ordinary situations. The risk is not always extremity. More often, it is assumption.

That tension between joy and danger may be the oldest theme in all of swim history. We are drawn to water, but we misread it. We love its freedom but forget its force. We seek peace in it and are surprised to discover that water itself is gloriously indifferent to our search for peace.

Then there is controversy, because no sport is ever as pure as it likes to think it is, even one permanently soaked in chlorine. Swimming has had its rows over technology, fairness, access and governance. The ‘supersuit’ era, performance-enhancing drugs too, showed how quickly a sport built on the ideal of pure human effort can find itself arguing over what, exactly, counts as a ‘body’ and what counts as ‘equipment’. Even in its clean blue lanes, swimming carries the same messiness as the rest of the world.

Conflict has shaped it too. Water has divided borders, served as an escape route, swallowed lives in war and become a place of remembrance. Yet it has also done the opposite.

Swimming has rebuilt confidence after trauma, brought communities together and given people a way back into their bodies after fear. It can be battlefield and balm, hazard and healing, history and hope. This is why swimming history matters now.

It is not just a nostalgic wander through bathing costumes, old pools and famous races. It is a living history. It tells us who feels welcome in water, who has been kept from it, how we understand risk, and whether we treat swimming as luxury, life skill or public good.

And 10 years on from the Atlantic, that feels more important to me than ever. I still love the grand, ridiculous endurance stories. I’d be a hypocrite not to. After all, I have spent enough of my life voluntarily swimming in places where a perfectly rational person would have remained dressed and ashore. 

But the bigger question now is not only who swam furthest, fastest or first but who feels able to enter the water at all, and who does not — and whether they can do it safely and climb ashore after.

Which is precisely why a forthcoming documentary, No Lifeguard,  by Ed Accura, co-founder of the Black Swimming Association (BSA), feels so timely. Because the next chapter in swimming may not be about going further, colder or more extreme but rather be about something far more important: culture, access, responsibility and safety. Swim history has always been about more than the swim itself, and No Lifeguard understands that. It asks who gets to feel safe in water, who gets taught, who gets seen and what happens when they don’t. 

Water has a long memory. It holds our triumphs, our blind spots, our freedoms and our failures. And if swimming history tells us anything, it’s this: The story does not end when we get in the water; it begins before we even arrive. 

Ben Hooper made global headlines with his bid to swim every mile of the Atlantic Ocean — a challenge Sir Ranulph Fiennes OBE called “the last great bastion to be conquered.” His four-month, 2,000-mile route from Senegal to Brazil, known as Swim the Big Blue, was derailed mid-Atlantic after his support vessel was damaged by storms, despite him surviving a near-fatal encounter with thousands of Portuguese Man O’War. He remains the only person with a WOWSA-verified attempt at the feat. Follow him on Instagram and X @TheBenHooper or via www.thebenhooper.com

READ MORE: ‘Diving into… Fuerteventura‘. Volcanic shores, Atlantic winds and secret turquoise lagoons. In Europe’s sunniest archipelago, surfers may rule the waves, but those willing to rise early will find some of the Atlantic’s most spectacular open-water swimming. Ben Hooper returns to Fuerteventura, an island he once called home, in the latest instalment of his popular Diving Into… series for The European.

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