Avuncular American

Calling from Rota: What's a Legation?

At the end of last week's Andalusian triangle trip (Arcos de la Frontera, Jerez, and Cadiz), I spent a half day from my vacation at the US Naval Station (within the Spanish Navy base) of Rota, across the bay from Cadiz.  I came equipped with Legation posters, which I hope are now beckoning Rota R&R travelers to come our way. 

The Navy leadership on base was very welcoming, and Captain Greg Pekari and XO Tim McGarvey invited me to speak to their assembled department heads on the Tangier American Legation and its museum.

Prior to my visit, during the initial arrangements for base access ("no, I don't have a CD car or diplomatic passport anymore," and while a legation used to be headed by a minister, well, now it's just a director... of a nonprofit institution), I realized that some explanations were in order when I spread the word about TALIM.  A common question - "What's a legation?" - resulted in a pretty concise soundbite from me: "an old word for embassy."

There was also an interview with The Coastline, the base newspaper (article forthcoming), and an impromptu live on-air interview on Armed Forces Network (AFN) Radio, with budding historian and host MC2 James Cellini (studio photo, above). The interview is in the two podcast links below; for inexplicable technical reasons, Part 2 is crystal clear, whereas Part 1 sounds like ship-to-shore radio of the 1950s.  Oh well, we're a bit retro at the Legation...

Be sure to turn on your computer's sound button.

AFN Interview Part 1

AFN Interview Part 2

Thanks especially to Mr. Roberto Fuertes (photo, right), the perfectly bilingual English/Spanish speaking Protocol Officer at Rota, a retired US Navy man now a civilian. Rob has hosted a long list of visitors much more VIP than me, showing up as I did in the best wardrobe that I could muster from my suitcase selection of clean jeans.

In a perfect use of his time and mine, the "windshield tour" (I had almost forgotten this favorite expression among the military) combined briefing, amazing vistas across the sprawling base, and a chance for Rob to conduct business in what is very clearly a busy and wide-ranging portfolio.

Rota, located as it is on the bay of Cadiz, commands a strategic position on the Atlantic approaches to the Strait of Gibraltar.  Moroccan commandos have taken advantage of the training opportunities offered by FAST Marines at Rota, and now we're trying to show that Rota personnel might enjoy traveling in the opposite direction and discover America's only National Historic Landmark in a foreign country, in the surprising location of the Tangier medina.

And they live in a place intimately linked with that history.  After all, it was the just-seeing-if-you-care Moroccan corsair capture of the American brigantine Betsey in 1784 off the coast of Cadiz that eventually led to those same historically friendly relations between the two countries.

Thanks to the men and women of US Naval Station Rota who made this visit a worthwhile investment of my time.  Hope to see you in Tangier!

Text and photos: Gerald Loftus

Down to the Sea in Tugboats

For a moment, clear your mental picture of tugboat toys for toddlers in bathtubs.

We are talking serious, strong, adult-strength vessels, those that can withstand Force 10 gales and deploy to sea in minutes to save supertankers in distress.  Moroccans were just reminded of the dangers at sea, with the loss of life following a collision between two fishing boats off the southern port of Dakhla two days ago.

That's the world of Christophe Bommelaer, who has sailed the rough seas from his native Dunkirk on the English Channel, via the Breton coast and its legendary "Abeille" series rescue tugs, to the port of Tangier Med, where he heads Boluda's fleet of intra-port tugs on the Strait of Gibraltar.

Thanks to Yves Gomez of Rotary Détroit for conceiving and presenting this informative session with M. Bommelaer.

As we've seen from anthropologist Janell Rothenberg's logistics presentation last year, and from our 2011 April Seminar on the socio-economic impact of Tangier's ports (two-part report: Day One, and Day Two), the topic of Tangier as an important Atlantic-Mediterranean port city continues to captivate our audience.  With considerable investments to foster both commercial shipping and tourism, Morocco has ambitions for Tangier as a major hub, connected to the world.

It always helps to show pictures, and the work of a tugboat captain, especially during dramatic rescues in mountainous waves, is very photogenic.  Christophe Bommelaer did not disappoint, and his spectacular footage, through YouTube, of the work that he and his colleagues do had the audience of Tangier students, Rotarians, and the interested public holding its breath.

The stats in this business are impressive: a $35 million tug (of the heavy duty Abeille class) to save a container ship worth $350 million; traffic in the Strait of Gibraltar: 300 ships per day (in the English Channel, it's twice that).  Bommelaer's pièce de résistance was a look at a real time website showing maritime movements, www.marinetraffic.com.

The glimpse we had, on a Thursday evening, circa 9:00 PM, revealed a snapshot of Tangier Med with roughly three ships versus rival Algeciras in Spain, where numerous vessels were lining up.

The above real time screen shot from Sunday morning illustrates either (a) that Algeciras appears to be (literally) eating Tangier Med's breakfast, or (b) that Tangier Med's super efficiency means ships roll in and roll right out again, after transshipments.  I'll leave it to the Tangier Med (TMSA, renamed TMPA) marketing department to clarify this, but, oops, their website appears to have disappeared.

Listening to Christophe Bommelaer, I get the impression that, like Horatio Clare's recent book on the container industry - "I thought I went to sea to find out about ships and oceans, but though I saw something of those, I saw much more of men" - there's a book on tugboat people and their dangerous and romantic profession that has yet to be written... perhaps "Down To The Sea In Tugboats."

But wait, they made a film:

Can't get more romantic than that.

Gerald Loftus

USS Elrod in Tangier & the "Mohammed VI" in Brest

When the noncombatant USNS Grapple called into Tangier last year, it was the first time in a decade and a half that a Navy ship had come to town.  So I guess that their reports were generally positive, since we now have a year later a warship, the frigate USS Elrod.  This morning, students from the American School of Tangier (AST) visited the ship, and this evening "le tout Tanger" will be aboard for a reception.

Frigates are on our minds these days - American and Moroccan.  The Moroccan Navy (and Prince Moulay Rachid) accepted delivery of Morocco's newest frigate, the Mohammed VI, in the French naval port of Brest in Brittany last week.  What a sleek, futuristic vessel, said to be Africa's most modern.  Check this French-language article for a couple of videos showing the ship under construction and during sea trials.

With its 1,835 kilometers of coastline on the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, and the strategic Strait of Gibraltar, it is entirely normal that Morocco would want the best for its Navy.  The new naval base at Ksar Seghir, between Tangier and the Tangier-Med port, was designed with modern ships like the Mohammed VI in mind.

And this week's port visit by the USS Elrod also shows that the security pillar of the Morocco-US relationship is on course.  That's how relations all started back in the 18th century: it was Morocco's outward-looking view across the Atlantic that led its Sultan to be the first foreign head of state to recognize "the Americans," before the new country was even called the United States.

Text: Gerald Loftus; photos: Mohammed Jadidi and Allan MacArthur

When Tangier & Gibraltar Were "Tan-Gib"

With the current diplomatic fray between the UK and Spain over the British enclave of Gibraltar, thoughts go back to the time when there was yet another enclave on the Strait of Gibraltar - Tangier, International Zone - and ties were much stronger between the two outposts.

And of course you can't talk enclaves without mentioning Ceuta, that bit of Spain on African soil, just across from Gibraltar.  Now that their respective military or geo-strategic importance has withered, all three share a "free zone" or mercantilist attitude.

When Westerners first ventured south to Africa, their Orientalist travelogues often took them from Gibraltar to Tangier, the gateway to Morocco and the rest of North Africa.  19th century American travel writer Dr. Henry Field ("The Barbary Coast," 1893) wrote

... the sky was without a cloud, and the atmosphere so clear that we heard distinctly the guns of Gibraltar, though it was more than thirty miles away.

Today's background noise of bustling Tangier would probably drown out the cannon fire, and to get to Gibraltar directly from Tangier (perhaps a good idea if Spanish authorities continue their slowdown with border crossings), you have to trek some 30 km east to the port of Tangier Med, which has a couple of ferry crossings per week to Gibraltar.

We also might want to revisit the days of the heliograph.  From "Our Mission to the Court of Morocco" (1881) by Captain Philip Trotter, 93rd Highlanders, from the British Minister's residence in Tangier:

Before sunset we tried from the roof of the house to communicate with the signal station at Gibraltar by means of the heliograph, but a slight haze rested upon the rock, and there were, unfortunately, no means of replying to us.

Gone are the days - celebrated in the 1953 film "Captain's Paradise" - when steamers linked "Tan-Gib" on a daily basis.  Up to 1988, there were even direct "Gibair" Viscount flights across the Strait between the two cities.

Taxis to the airport and taxiing on the ground probably took three times as long as the actual flight - reader Graeme Steel recalls "The flight publicized itself as the shortest international flight in the world - 15 minutes!."

John Blake, who grew up at the Legation in the Thirties when his father Maxwell was the Minister of the Legation, remembers "the particularly close ties between Tangier and Gib from the twenties to the mid fifties. It was a time when Gib was Tangier's PX where the diplomatic and consular corps could stock up with Pinch bottle whiskey and Dom Perignon from Saccone & Speed  at about $ 2.50 a bottle. Unfortunately the Bland Line daily ferries between Gib and Tangier weren't destined to last forever."

Regular TALIMblog reader and former Tangier American Marge King remembers this from her postwar childhood in Tangier:

Transatlantic passenger ships stopped in Gibraltar in the 40s and 50s, hence we traveled by way of Gib, with overnights at the Rock Hotel, every two years for our summer vacation in the USA. Usually we crossed the straits by ferry but I do recall one trip on Gibair. Thanks to a longshoremen's strike in late '49 or '50 which delayed Christmas packages, my Dad took the ferry to Gib several days before Christmas and returned by ferry with 2 fully assembled Raleigh bicycles. I've always wondered how he got on and off the ferry and through customs with those bikes!

During World War II, Legation-based OSS agents regularly nipped over to Gib to get a spot of demolition or sabotage training from their friends in the British Commandos or the SOE.  That's where anthropologist Carleton Coon and his OSS buddy Gordon Browne developed their famous donkey turd mine to blow up German tank treads.

At the Legation, we have lots of images of Gibraltar, especially maps detailing the Rock, that bastion of British imperial might for three centuries.  In fact, were it not for the row over concrete reefs and unhappy fishermen, we might be hearing more about the Tri-Centennial of the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht and the beginnings of British rule.

Then again, maybe it's the anniversary that has prompted all the noise about artificial reefs and border controls.

Gerald Loftus

Re-Mapping Tangier: National Geographic Workshop

 

 

1924 Map of Tangier (TALIM library)

Under the direction of Dr. Luiza Bialasiewicz, University of Amsterdam, scholars from Europe, the United States, and Morocco joined the inter-disciplinary workshop "Re-Mapping Tangier: Fractured Mobilities, New Borders," held at TALIM on May 31.

 

Sponsored by the National Geographic Society under its Global Exploration Fund, the Nederlands Instituut Marokko (NIMAR) also provided support.

From the project précis:

"This research project will look to the ways in which Tangier is being re-positioned with an emerging Euro-Mediterranean space as a cosmopolitan border city 'at the gates of Europe'. Adopting a range of innovative methodologies including mobile ethnographies and multi-site interviews, it will attempt to map the complex geography of 'mobilities' that are currently transforming this metropolis, from labour migration to domestic and international tourism, to a range of other cultural, ideational and material flows that extend far beyond the immediate border region and connect Tangier to other European cities. In thus 're-mapping' Tangier and its multiple connections, the project can hopefully shed important light on the changing nature of Europe's borders, no longer a neat demarcation line between a European inside and a non-European exterior. What is more, by examining the diverse 'mobilities' that make Tangier what it is today -- and connect it to other places -- it can hopefully also yield important lessons for understanding the shifting geographies of identity and belonging in today's Europe."

Well, as Xavier Ferrer-Gallardo of the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona showed in his presentation on Europe's southernmost point, Punta Tarifa, just opposite Tangier, there is a demarcation very visible to all who approach Tarifa by sea: the Las Palomas migrant detention center.

Crossing what Ferrer-Gallardo calls the "limboscape" of the Strait of Gibraltar, those lucky enough to survive might make it to this bit of Europe jutting out towards Africa.  There's no Statue of Liberty to mask the immigrant quarantines of Ellis Island; instead of a lookout point to make the most of the site's tourism potential, there's just a locked gateway to the old fortress at the end of the causeway.  Who would have known that there are rescued migrants incarcerated behind the wall?

Others presented their research on Tangier's rapidly-changing landscape, which has moved so quickly that it defies cartographers and demographers to define the outlines of the city and its true size.  Attempts by authorities to channel growth to certain areas and by applying some norms are overtaken by neighborhoods mushrooming like replicas of the medina across the hills of the city, but with muddier "streets."  People just can't wait for the planners.

 

Brussels Metro by Luiza Bialasiewicz

The hype about Tangier - many overseas Moroccans or "MREs" living in Europe are enticed by real-estate ads in Brussels and Amsterdam - has led to speculation, further squeezing the low-income Moroccan families looking for shelter.  MREs might see a second home in Tangier as a symbol of their success, but the sight of block after block of unlit apartment buildings (except for the summer vacation influx of Belgian, Dutch, and other European licence plates) are a source of friction.

Dr. Lauren Wagner of Wageningen University in the Netherlands is working on a multi-year project to analyze the impact of such "semi-citizen" populations, and the nature of migrants with footholds in Europe and Morocco. 

Participants voiced concern about the impact of large infrastructure projects, with "Gucci" shops slated to welcome tourists arriving at the new port currently under construction.  While the real Gucci might have some tough competition with the fake reproductions currently on sale in the souk, the question is how this big-ticket Casablanca-style glitz will sit with a population that strives to deal with a galloping cost of living.

This workshop provided scholars with similar areas of interest to meet each other for the first time, and may result in a special issue in a scholarly journal like JNAS, the Journal of North African Studies, the publication of AIMS, the American Institute for Maghrib Studies.  Several of the participants will again collaborate in a panel at this year's MESA (Middle East Studies Association) conference, initiated by workshop participant and longtime TALIM researcher, Janell Rothenberg of UCLA.

Gerald Loftus

Merja Zerga: Pilgrims of the Blue Lagoon

This guest post by house guest Christiane Delongueville is in the realm of "singing for your supper," or, to put it more genteely, making the most of our limited resources here at TALIM.  We could have asked our talented Brussels friend Christiane to share with specialists her extensive knowledge of molluscs in the Strait of Gibraltar and Mediterranean, or suggested an illustrated talk on her wonderful collection of nature photography in the Arctic.  But the easiest (for us!) was simply to ask her to share with our readers her great photos from a day on the Merja Zerga lagoon at Moulay Bousselham, a couple of hours' drive south of Tangier.  For Moroccan birdwatchers keen for such detail, the photos were taken in late February.  Click on photos to see full-size.

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Recently I had the privilege of being a guest at the Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies (TALIM).  A lot of my time was devoted to admiring all the magnificent paintings and documents exposed in the museum rooms open to the public.

When the question arose - “What can we do this weekend in the vicinity of Tangier?” - inspiration came when looking at the painting: “L’espoir” (1994 by Mouh El Hachimi) showing a dove perched in an open window. The choice was made; we would travel south to look at Moroccan birds.

Examination of the old maps at the Legation was of limited help; only the river Loukkos was mentioned. We headed for Moulay Bousselham, a quiet fishing village (when not filled with 200,000 pilgrims during the annual moussem of Sidi Moulay Bousselham) 30 km south of Larache, where the lagoon is renowned for its migratory birds. Some birds spend the winter; others use this body of water as a stop during their migrations. This is also a great spot for fishing.  Eels are caught in special nets and clams are taken by hand from the bottom of the lagoon at low tide.

The Merja Zerga (blue lagoon) is composed of brackish waters and contains anywhere from 50% to 90 % salt water depending on the season.

With the help of a guide and his boat we explored different areas of the lagoon, including a stop on a sand bank. We were lucky with the weather, and the sunshine and our binoculars helped us spot a lot of birds. Of course the easiest to see are the bigger ones like flamingoes, grey herons, egrets and even a spoonbill.

This place is a paradise for sea birds like different types of gulls, terns, oystercatchers and cormorants.

We could see different species and looked at beak, leg, and tail colors for hints: were we looking at adults or juveniles? The rare Andouins gull and the Sandwich tern were very close to us.

Further we came across the waders, birds eating small invertebrates in the mud in a coastal environment.

Here we looked at differences between males and female, behavior… We saw plovers, turnstones, curlew with their nicely curved beaks.

The climax was an osprey back from fishing, peacefully eating its big fish on a half-submerged boat, with a slender billed gull waiting for some remains.

On our way back we saw a big group of cormorants drying their wings and a mix of different types of sea birds (photo at top of page). The tide from the nearby Atlantic was coming in and the birds were on the point of leaving the deepening lagoon for more comfortable places to await the next tide.

We finished this idyllic morning with a fish lunch in a peaceful restaurant of Moulay Bousselham.  I hope to have given you a taste of how wonderful this place is and which is worth a visit… at low tide.

Photos and text by Christiane Delongueville.

Madrid 10, Tangier 0: Victory for All

If skydiving in a hijab presents no problems to certain intrepid Muslim women, then why should kicking a football around while wearing a headscarf make some European referees lose their cool?

These were not, however, the concerns behind the organizers of Saturday's friendly match between the women's teams of Atletico Madrid (10) and (0, ouch!)Tangier's Gazelles du Detroit.  No, the whole point - the gool, as the Spanish would say - was to serve as the backdrop for a film on Tangier's soccer madness - for Spanish football, that is.  Just try to rouse anyone away from the TV screens of Tangier's cafes when Barca and Madrid are facing off.

Spanish film maker Juan Gautier is making Tanger Gool, and what better star to choose than Tangier's own Soufia Issami, who made such an impression in the 2011 On the Edge (Sur la Planche), also shot in Tangier.

Bravo to Spain's Cervantes Institute for (a) organizing Gautier's film and the women's match and (b), for mounting a great digital photography course, which went on a Saturday field trip to cover the match.  The Legation's budding photojournalist Mohammed Jadidi (below, in a great picture by photography teacher Paco Rodriguez) was part of the scene.

Gerald Loftus

The Navy Is Back: USNS Grapple in Tangier

USNS Grapple departs Tangier - photo by Gerald Loftus from atop the American Legation

"Military Sealift Command (MSC) operates approximately 110 noncombatant, civilian-crewed ships that replenish U.S. Navy ships, conduct specialized missions, strategically preposition combat cargo at sea around the world and move military cargo and supplies used by deployed U.S. forces and coalition partners."

One of the specialized missions of the USNS Grapple, which sailed into Tangier on an R&R and goodwill visit last weekend, is sending divers down to wrecks of US warplanes shot down during World War II.

Captain Curtis Smith, Master of the Grapple since 2006, told us about missions in the Mediterranean which have recovered the remains of downed American flight crews and pilots, sometimes still encased in their cockpits.

Other missions have included recovery of commercial airplanes crashed at sea, including TWA, Egypt Air, and Swissair accidents off the East Coast of the US and Canada. This powerhouse of a ship can lift a huge multi-ton battle tank from the sea floor.

"Grapple," a pretty vivid name for a ship that can tow a battleship, was first given to a ship commissioned in 1943 (the current USNS Grapple dates back to 1986).

In Tangier, the visit was very well-received.  No wonder: as far as we can determine, this is the first US Navy visit to the port city on the Strait of Gibraltar in some sixteen years.  Tangier used to be a regular port of call for US Navy ships, and we have B&W photos of some big ones gracing Tangier Bay.

So we were happy to take part in activities relating to their visit, including a Sunday morning "COMREL" or community relations event at Borj El Hajoui (aka Bab Marsa), the former Portuguese fort that, thanks to restoration work funded by Morocco's INDH and executed by Tangier NGO FTAM, has become home to a number of medina-based community cultural groups.

One of those was the Hammich family troupe of acrobats Taoub (Mohamed Hammich is a veteran of Ringling Bros. Barnum Bailey in the US, and spent some three years in Las Vegas - of whom more in a forthcoming post).  The "junior division" put on a show (see photo below) that the sailors - mostly divers - really enjoyed, a fitting tribute to a welcome ship visit.

A moonlit shipboard reception for Moroccan Navy, civil authorities, NGOs involved in the community event, and local Americans topped off the visit.  The Grapple sailed off into the Strait of Gibraltar sunrise first thing this morning.

 

Photo courtesy Ali Abijou, "L'Economiste"

 Gerald Loftus

Logistics' Human Side: "Deep Hanging Out"

Janell Rothenberg may wince when she hears me refer to her as our "trucker anthropologist," but her first slide in yesterday's presentation confirms this rather unique nomenclature:

Longtime Tangier-based researcher Janell Rothenberg of UCLA, with Fulbright Morocco (MACECE) Executive Director Dr. James Miller as discussant, presented her work to an audience of fellow academics, Legation regulars, and interested citizens on January 23 at TALIM.

Janell Rothenberg completed 18 months of dissertation research during the summers of 2008 and 2009 and March 2011-June 2012. Her doctoral research is supported by the American Institute for Maghrib Studies (AIMS, for which TALIM is the research center in Morocco), the Fulbright-Hays Program, the National Science Foundation and the UCLA Department of Anthropology (Janell's advisor is longtime Maghrib specialist Dr. Susan Slyomovics). Ms. Rothenberg is certified as a Global Logistics Specialist from the Center for International Trade and Transportation in Long Beach, California.

This is how we pitched the event:

Please join us for a presentation by PhD student Janell Rothenberg from University of California, Los Angeles about her past two years of dissertation research on the logistics and transportation industry in the Tangier region. Using qualitative methods from cultural anthropology, Janell examines the perspectives and experiences of the men and women participating in the rapid expansion of this industry and traces the local dimensions of these very global developments in Northern Morocco. Join us as Janell explains her particular methodology to the study of globalization and offers a social and cultural lens on our rapidly changing regional landscape.

Janell Rothenberg has already presented results of her Tangier research, including at the MESA conference of 2009, and at TALIM's own April Seminar of 2011, which was focused on the impact of Tangier's ambitious port development projects on the surrounding populations.

Through discussion of her dissertation - "Moving Things: The Material Mobilities of Transportation Logistics in the Tangier Region" - the audience, which contained a fair number of people at various stages of higher education, was able to gain an insight into research methodologies that normally are the subject of specialized dissertation workshops.  Not only did they get a free look into Janell's modus operandi, and the added benefit of Dr. Miller's long experience, but joined both for a fireside reception afterwards.  The civilized way to deconstruct dissertation research.

 

Dr. James Miller and Janell Rothenberg at TALIM 23 January 2013

"Mobilities" - also the title of a scholary journal - provided Rothenberg the cultural anthropologist and Miller the cultural geographer a common interdisciplinary ground.  Humanities and social science, hard and soft, thin and thick research... a number of us could better visualize this qualitative approach in Janell's vivid description of her "deep hanging out" with the human subjects of her study.  The truckers, the dispatchers, the port chandlers, the shipping executives, all the human parts of the system which puts mega-ports like Tangier Med at the crux of globalization.

And Janell's choice of Tangier as the focus of her research puts her in a small group of scholars knowledgeable about one of the world's most promising transportation hubs - Tangier's two modern ports, high-speed train line under construction, and world-class free trade industrial zones.

Ever the avuncular advisor, Jim Miller challenged Janell Rothenberg, with her baseline work in Tangier in 2013, to imagine herself as a senior scholar in, say, 2050.  Would this North African logistics study be an episode in her career, or, he asked, "are you a scholar of Morocco?"  We have heard Jim before expound with great erudition on his concern about ensuring that Janell's generation provide the relief force for the baby boomer generation of American Maghrib specialists.

With her mastery of Moroccan and modern standard Arabic, French, and logistics-speak, and with years of field work in northern Morocco at this critical stage of her career, we think that in Janell Rothenberg, we have a Maghrib scholar of some duration.

Gerald Loftus

First Across the Strait: Mercedes Gleitze 1928

The personnel of the American Legation must have been as excited as the rest of Tangier on April 5, 1928.  The swimmer herself would have been out of sight, a tiny figure among the waves and treacherous currents of the Strait of Gibraltar, though her flotilla of witnesses, onlookers, and supporters may have been visible.

But there was no doubt that English typist and marathon swimming champion Mercedes Gleitze was the first person - man or woman - to successfully swim the Strait of Gibraltar. (Photo from Open Water Swimming).

From the Daily Express of April 7, 1928:

"Before God, and on my honour, Miss Gleitze, unassisted, swam from the lighthouse at Tarifa Point, landing at Punta Leona on the Moroccan coast."  

Don Francisco Martin Bueno, Military Commandant of Tarifa

The Strait of Gibraltar Swimming Association (ACNEG) keeps a roster of successful swimmers, starting with Mercedes Gleitze, who took 12 hours 50 minutes.  The latest entry - just last weekend - did it in 3 hours 46 minutes.

So what is the link between the Legation and this swimming exploit?  None, really, except that Northern Ireland based filmmaker Clare Delargy (photo, in the middle) used our "timeless backdrop" for her forthcoming documentary on Mercedes Gleitze.  There was even a young Irish swimmer with a Mercedes Gleitze hairdo on hand.

Delargy has enlisted Marllyn Morgan of Harvard's Radcliffe Institute, who has studied women swimmers from the 1920s:

While researching, Morgan was scouring newspapers when she noticed something peculiar: front-page articles devoted to women swimmers.  “This was in the mid-1920s,” she recalled. “So these women swimmers had Babe Ruth to contend against, and the boxer Jack Dempsey, and yet there were more front-page articles on women swimmers than on Babe Ruth.”

Rolex, associated with Gleitze since she swam the English Channel, is a sponsor.  According to filmmaker Delargy, Mercedes Gleitze was an early pioneer in product placement.

We are happy that our collection of the Tangier Gazette provided plenty of period detail, including maps, and that the Legation will evoke the 1920s for viewers of Delargy's documentary.

Now, Hollywood: when are you going to make the Legation the setting for a big budget film?

Gerald Loftus