Brenda Fisher obituary

Brenda Fisher, who has died aged 95, was a world record-breaking English Channel swimmer. She achieved global fame during the 1950s for her long-distance challenges, becoming the first woman home in two cross-Channel races, and breaking records for the 29-mile River Nile race and the 32-mile Lake Ontario race. She was only the third person to complete the latter route.

In later years, she taught hundreds of children to swim in her hometown of Grimsby, Lincolnshire. The publication of Brenda’s biography in 2015 saw a resurgence in interest in her achievements, and three years later she was awarded a British Empire Medal. Ever modest, Brenda said: “I enjoyed myself, but other people have done more important things.”

She was born in the family home in Grimsby where she would live for her entire life, the youngest daughter of Enid (nee Winship) and Albert Fisher, a trawler skipper. Aged nine, Brenda suffered from such severe sunstroke that it paralysed one side of her body. Determined not to let it affect her, she learned to swim – taking up a sport her older brother, Buster, and sister, Jessie, were hooked on.

Under their coach, Herbert McNally – known as Mr Mac, and himself a champion swimmer – Brenda initially trained in speed, not distance. Private lessons cost one guinea. “He was very strict,” she recalled. “I wasn’t allowed to go to the cinema; I had to train.”

This involved spending hours in the cold water of Grimsby docks. It was when Buster, at 16, and Jessie, 15, swam the River Humber in 1938 that breaking records entered the Fishers’ lives; Buster became the youngest male to complete the crossing and Jessie the first female. Soon afterwards, Brenda began distance training.

She took part in more races, and won the