Tuna

by Hunter Charlton

“I first heard about Charles “The Tuna” Chapman when surfing YouTube late one evening while looking for inspiring stories about channel swimming. At the time, I was mentally preparing for my own English Channel swim, only a few weeks away by that point. The story I stumbled across astounded me:

By swimming the English Channel in 1981 Chapman  undisputedly destroyed the most pernicious myth which haunts the swimming world, that due to a “genetic predisposition” relating to bone density black people are “by nature” poor swimmers.

This documentary tells the story of the first African American to swim the English Channel, a lost hero who’s yet to earn the full recognition he deserves.”

Hunter is an audio producer and wild swimmer. He co-presents The SwimOut Podcast along with Sequins at Noon, a radio show about queer nightlife and culture. In 2019 he became the 2004th person to swim the English Channel. Inspired by this challenge, he hopes to be the first person to swim the Inner Sound - a 6 mile gap between the island of Raasay and mainland Scotland in the Inner Hebridesthe which happens to also be the deepest range of water in the UK.