Record, Fred

Born Frederick Edwin Record in 1871 in Rotherhithe, Surrey, son of Fred Record and Emma Budden. The family moved around a lot but ended up at Chatham in the 1880s, where Fred became a fitter in the Chatham Dockyards. On his marriage to Alice Watts in 1896 he moved to Rochester where he became an insurance agent. Champion long-distance swimmer Southern Counties. President of the Medway Swimming Club. From 1915 to 1918 he was a Red Cross Section Leader, undertaking orderly work in Fort Pitt Military & Strood & Frindsbury VAD Hospitals. Died Rochester 1938

Frederick Record of Rochester won the annual long-distance swimming race, the Medway Challenge Cup its first 3 years, 3 times in a row. The 3rd year, 23/8/1906, he swam 23 miles in 9 hrs 17mins and announced he would now swim the Channel in the 1907 season but a bad bicycle crash in February 1907 left him seriously injured and recovering. Consequently he did not make his first attempt until 1910, although he was pacemaker on many of his friend Monty Holbein’s swims from 1904 to 1913 (and Holbein coached Record for his own Channel swims)