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[page 2, column 2, continued:]
GOOD SWIMMER. — When Edgar A. Poe was fifteen years old he swam from Ludlow's wharf on James River, at Richmond, to Warwick, a distance of seven miles and a half, in a hot June day, and against a tide running probably from two to three miles an hour. He walked back to Richmond immediately afterward. Dr. Cabell and others accompanied the swimmer in boats.
So says a New York paper. Now, in the first place, the tide never sets up the James River three miles an hour, nor two either, only under the influence of a strong and protracted easterly wind — next, no boy of fifteen ever swam seven miles against a current of that strength at one heat — “Lastly, and to conclude,” we don’t believe Poe ever swam seven miles in his life.
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Notes:
The New York paper that might have been the source noted has not been located, but essentially the same description of the swim was printed in the Boston Evening Transcript for September 29, 1849, before Poe's untimely death a little more than a week later. There is no indication there that the story was reprinted from somewhere else, although that is certainly possible. Poe had already promoted the story in the biographical article on him in the Philadelphia Saturday Museum in 1843, but there he does not mention Dr. Cabell. Although most likely somewhat exaggerated, the basic story appears to have been true. The story was repeated in Griswold's “Memoir” of Poe, but not until 1850. The correct name of the wharf was Ludlam' not Ludlow's. As noted in The Poe Log (p. 60), Dr. Cabell was Robert Gamble Cabell (1809-1889) rather than the better known Dr. Robert Henry Cabell (1799-1876).
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[S:0 - BME, 1849] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - Bookshelf - A Swimming Poet (Anonymous, 1849)