Annette watched the other children playing. How she wished she could join them! But she couldn’t run or skip or kick a ball. Her legs were too weak and crooked.Born in Sydney, Australia, in 1886, Annette Kellerman suffered from a crippling bone disease, probably rickets. As a toddler she had to wear heavy iron braces on her legs. The braces hurt, and Annette hated how she had to walk in slow, stiff, staggering steps. She often stayed by herself, where others couldn’t see her.Annettes years as a disabled child began to change when she was six years old. Her doctor thought exercise would help strengthen her legs and urged her parents to enroll Annette in swimming classes. “I was awfully scared and did not learn quickly,” Annette later wrote. But soon she was swimming every chance she got. “I was like a fish in the water,” Annette recalled. Little by little, her legs grew stronger and straightened out. Finally, the horrible braces could be set aside.By fifteen, Annette had mastered all the swimming strokes. She was a fearless diver and began putting on diving displays. She swam in races and won, even competing against men. In 1903 the family moved to Melbourne, where her mother had taken a job as a music teacher in a school. But Annette was more interested in swimming and theatricals than studying. She developed a mermaid act as part of her swimming performances and put on two shows a day swimming with fish at the Exhibition Aquarium, then the world’s largest glass tank. Her artistic mother did not approve of her job “swimming around with eels and seals,” Annette remembered. But Annette’s family needed the money she earned. By 1905 Annette was a local celebrity and Australia’s best female swimmer, having set records in the 100-yard and mile swims. In 1905 Annette moved to London with her father to further her career as a swimmer and performer of water acrobatics. At first, no one in England was interested in a female athlete who put on shows in aquariums.To attract attention, Annette decided on a thirteen-mile swim down the Thames River, through the heart of London. It was a feat no man had ever accomplished. Soon Annette was front-page news. Newspapers dubbed her the Australian Mermaid.A newspaper paid Annette to swim from one seaside resort to another—about forty-five miles each week—to attract publicity in preparation for an attempt on the English Channel. The treacherous Channel, twenty-two miles wide, had been swum only once before, and that was by a man, thirty years earlier. The public was astounded that a woman would even think of attempting the amazing feat.Indeed, Annette had to abandon her Channel swim after nine hours in the cold, rough water. “I had the endurance but not the brute strength,” she admitted. Still, Londoners were impressed by her courage and athletic ability.But they were shocked by her swimsuit! In Australia, Annette was used to swimming races in one-piece suits very much like the suits men wore. But her abbreviated costume—exposing her arms and legs—caused a stir in England. When she was about to perform before royalty at London’s exclusive Bath Club, Annette was told her bare legs were unacceptable. Thinking quickly, she sewed black stockings onto her suit—and her display of swimming, diving, and female athleticism wowed the audience.Annette continued to make long-distance swims, including a race against seventeen men (she came in third) down the Seine River in France and a twenty-eight-mile swim down the Danube in Germany. Soon she was invited to America, where she became one of the highest paid performers on the vaudeville1 circuit, showcasing her water ballet and acrobatics.In 1907 Annette again made headlines when she was arrested for indecency2 on Revere Beach near Boston. People were aghast when they saw her in a black body suit that bared her arms although it otherwise covered her from neck to feet. Where was her top with sleeves and ruffles and her floppy pantaloons? At the time, women were expected only to dip into the water, or bathe, not to swim. The heavy costumes they wore for modesty made swimming impossible anyhow. Swimming as an exercise for women, much less a sport in which women might compete as Annette had, was nearly unknown. The first modern Olympics in 1896 did not even include female athletes.At her Boston trial, Annette told the judge that if she had to swim in a customary swimming suit, “I may as well be swimming in chains.” She won her case—which gave Annette another idea. She started her own line of women’s swimwear. Soon women swimmers everywhere wanted a Kellerman suit.Annette went on to become a silent-movie star, famed for portraying mermaids in underwater spectaculars. Audiences flocked to see her aquatic adventures in movies such as Neptune’s Daughter and Daughter of the Gods. Not only did Annette design and make her own mermaid costumes for all her acts,
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