Before the Lightning, Benjamin Franklin Tried to Improve Swimming

Benjamin Franklin is often introduced through lightning, printing, diplomacy, and the long list of civic projects attached to his name. His own autobiography offers a more playful opening. Before he became the public Franklin, he was a boy who loved the water, read about swimming, built equipment, tested it, and discovered that a clever idea could still leave him with tired wrists.

The episode survives because Franklin remembered the objects as well as the ambition. He described oval wooden “pallets” for his hands, sandals fitted to his feet, and an experiment with a kite. Later, in London, he demonstrated his skill by swimming from near Chelsea to Blackfriars while an audience watched. The story is not a modern product launch or a legend about a perfect inventor. It is a firsthand recollection of curiosity, trial, and revision.

That distinction matters. Franklin’s account was written decades after the events and never completed as a single finished book. The Library of Congress notes that the Autobiography was drafted in several periods, with different sections varying in tone and focus. So the safest way to tell this story is to keep its source visible: these are things Franklin said about his own youth, not a complete contemporaneous laboratory record.

A boy who treated swimming as a subject to study

Franklin wrote that he learned to swim early and was often around boats and water. In the surviving account, he presents swimming as more than a pastime. He had read Thevenot’s work on swimming and practised its motions and positions, trying to make them graceful and useful. The wording reveals a characteristic habit: he watched an ordinary activity, looked for a principle, and then tried to alter the equipment.

His first idea was wonderfully literal. He made two oval wooden paddles, each about ten inches long and six inches wide, with a hole for the thumb so that each one would stay in his palm. In the water, he pushed the edges forward and struck with the flat surfaces as he drew his hands back. He remembered that the paddles made him swim faster. He also remembered their drawback: they fatigued his wrists.

That small qualification is the part a family storyteller might be tempted to remove. It makes the invention less heroic, but the story more believable. The paddles were useful in one way and uncomfortable in another. Franklin did not need to claim a perfect design. He kept the result of the test, including the inconvenience.

He also tried a version for his feet. He fitted sandals to the soles, then decided that the arrangement was unsatisfactory because the stroke depended partly on the insides of the feet and the ankles, not solely on the soles. Again, the interesting detail is not simply that he invented an early form of swimming aid. It is that he noticed how the body actually moved and abandoned an explanation that seemed too simple.

Franklin later described another experiment involving a kite. In his recollection, he had a kite draw him along while he swam. The account is brief, and it does not give us enough information to reconstruct every practical detail or judge how repeatable the experiment was. We should not turn a remembered passage into a modern technical claim. What we can say is that Franklin remembered trying to use wind as part of the problem of moving through water.

The river performance in London

The most theatrical part of the story happened years later, when Franklin was working at Watts’s printing house in London. He wrote that he became acquainted with a young man named Wygate and taught Wygate and another friend to swim after only two visits to the river. Those new swimmers introduced Franklin to a group of gentlemen visiting Chelsea by water.

On the return journey, the company asked Franklin to demonstrate. He stripped and leaped into the river, then swam from near Chelsea to Blackfriars. He recalled performing feats both above and below the water that surprised and pleased the onlookers. Wygate’s enthusiasm helped spread Franklin’s reputation as a swimmer. Franklin even wrote that, just before leaving England, he received an offer to teach swimming professionally. He says he might have accepted it if the offer had come sooner.

There is a pleasing reversal in that ending. The future printer, scientist, and statesman briefly had another possible occupation: swimming teacher. The anecdote does not prove that he could have built a successful school, nor does it tell us exactly how the proposed business would have worked. It preserves something more modest and more human: a skill he enjoyed had become visible to other people, and their admiration opened an unexpected door.

The river scene also shows why an object can be a powerful memory anchor. “Franklin was an excellent swimmer” is a summary. The wooden hand paddles, the tired wrists, the unsatisfactory foot sandals, the river route, and the watching passengers are particulars. They give the reader a sequence of actions rather than a polished reputation.

What the story does—and does not—prove

It is tempting to call Franklin the inventor of modern swim fins. A more careful version is better. His autobiographical writing records experiments with hand paddles and foot equipment. Those experiments resemble ideas used in later swimming aids, but a resemblance is not the same as a direct line of invention, and Franklin’s own description includes the limitations he noticed.

It is also important not to confuse the dates of the writing with the dates of the events. The Library of Congress describes Part One of the Autobiography as written in 1771 and other sections as drafted later, in 1784 and 1788–89, with a final short section near the end of his life. The story of the swimming experiments belongs to Franklin’s retrospective life writing. That makes it valuable evidence of what he chose to remember and how he wanted to present his formative years, while leaving room for uncertainty about small details.

This is a useful habit for family memoirs. A memory can be vivid without pretending to be a court transcript. Write “I remember making…” if the account is yours. If a detail comes from a letter, label it as a letter. If a relative’s story was recorded many years later, preserve the date of the recording and explain the distance between the event and the recollection. A reader can handle uncertainty; what weakens trust is false precision.

For a practical way to separate remembered actions from inference and unknown details, see MemoryShare’s guide to writing a truthful memoir scene from partial memory. Franklin’s swimming episode would fit neatly into that exercise. “Made wooden paddles” belongs with the physical actions. “Wanted to become a famous inventor” would be an interpretation unless he said so. “The audience thought he was extraordinary” should be narrowed to what he actually reported: he remembered that they were surprised and pleased.

The details worth saving in your own stories

Franklin’s account offers a simple prompt for anyone recording family history. Ask about a time someone tried to improve an ordinary activity. What did they make or modify? What did they expect to happen? What worked? What became uncomfortable, awkward, or unexpectedly useful? Who saw the attempt, and what did they do next?

The answers may lead to a homemade fishing tool, a repaired bicycle, a shortcut through a neighbourhood, a recipe adjusted by instinct, or a child’s unsuccessful way of carrying too many things at once. The point is not to manufacture a family inventor. It is to preserve the experiment, including the part that did not work.

Franklin’s young swimmer remains memorable because the story contains an object, a body, a test, a limitation, and an audience. It lets us meet a famous person before the familiar portrait has settled into place. He is not only the man reaching toward lightning. He is also the person wondering whether a pair of wooden paddles might make the next length of water easier—and then admitting that his wrists disagreed.

What did someone in your family try to improve, repair, or invent when they were young? Your story matters to us.

Sources and further reading

• Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography, primary text hosted by Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/20203/20203-h/20203-h.htm
• Library of Congress, “Franklin’s Autobiography,” Finding Benjamin Franklin: A Resource Guide: https://guides.loc.gov/finding-benjamin-franklin/autobiography