The Swimming Pool

[Tammy Markwick]

I read once that the Titanic's pool was the first one on a ship. Is that true? I would of thought that the Olympic had one also.

 

[Dave Gittins]

Actually the first liner to have a so-called swimming pool was Adriatic, in 1907.

I say so-called because these pools were very small and hardly suitable for real swimming. They looked like something built by a town council on a tight budget. They were often referred to as plunge baths. Titanic's was only 30' long (9.1 metres). In my opinion, the first real swimming pool to go to sea was the one on Imperator (launched 1912). It was 20 metres long, almost as long as is used for short course racing today. It was very elaborately decorated in the Roman manner.

 

[Samuel Halpern]

To answer Tammy's question directly, the Olympic had it too. It was actually referred to as a Swimming Bath in the First Class Accommodation Plan, and you needed to schedule time to use it, as also the electric baths on the other side of the watertight bulkhead aft. Ladies hours from 10 AM to 1 PM, Gentlemen hours from 2 PM to 6 PM. Tickets were $1 each. Gentlemen could have access to these baths free of charge from 6 AM to 9 AM.

 

[Jeremy Aufderheide]

Why the segregated hours?

 

[Bob Godfrey]

We're talking about the Edwardian era here, when mixed bathing even in the sea was still a novelty. Many resorts still had separate beaches for men and women, and male bathers in particular often swam without costumes. By 1912 mixed bathing (with costumes!) was generally regarded as respectable, but not with strangers in the confines of a tiny pool.

 

[Ana Florencia Pinton]

Gentlemen could have access to these baths free of charge from 6 AM to 9 AM.

I didn't know that! Why is it that gentlemen could swim free of charge and ladies couldn't? I also read that the hours in-between men and women's time was used by children, is this true?