'HIS sister, Bertha, was in the sports shop business with him, and she was on holiday on the south coast when she read in the paper that he'd been selected as England captain for the first Empire Games," says Jack Hatfield of his father, "so she had to pack her bags pretty sharpish and come home."

The 18th Commonwealth Games end this weekend; the first British Empire Games were in 1930 in Canada - an absolute lifetime ago.

England's captain was the legendary Teessider Jack Hatfield (pictured below), probably the greatest swimmer this country has ever produced.

For Jack, the 1930 Games were a swansong, his last international appearance.

He was born in 1893 in Great Ayton - prematurely, because his mother had ventured into Yorkshire from Middlesbrough for her summer holiday but the journey had jiggled her up a bit. His father, Tom, a fruitier at Coatham Pier at Redcar, had to rush to her side, leaving his stall unattended.

Needless to say, the good folks of Redcar feasted on free fruit that night - which was a little mean of them as only a couple of months earlier Tom had been awarded a bravery medal for diving off the pier and saving two lives from the sea.

Young Jack's first taste of international swimming was the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm. Aged 19, he was taken over to Sweden to make up the numbers and gain some experience.

But he returned with two silver medals - 400m freestyle and 1,500m freestyle - and a bronze in the 4x200m relay. These would be the last Olympic swimming medals that Britain would win for 50 years.

That August he won the first of his 40 English titles, and he began breaking world records for fun, using a new stroke: the Trudgeon Crawl.

In the early days of swimming, breaststroke was all the rage. Then in the 1870s J Arthur Trudgeon travelled to South America where he saw natives crawling through the water, each arm alternately swinging over their heads. Their leg movement was a scissor kick, and so a new stroke was born.

For Jack Hatfield, the First World War came at the wrong time. Physically, he was at his peak, but rather than spend it in the swimming pool, he was in the trenches in France with the Royal Artillery.

"The war took away the best swimming years of his life," says his son Jack.

"He went to the Olympics in 1920, 1924 and 1928, and played in the European water polo tournament in Hungary in 1929. Then, in 1930, he got this call-up. There were no young swimmers that had surpassed his times, so even though he was 37, they took him out there."

With Bertha minding the shop, Jack sailed to Canada in a "tourist third cabin" on the Empress of France.

"I think he just missed out on a medal," says his son, who lives at Ingelby Greenhow in North Yorkshire. "He was fourth in one of his swims, and fifth in the other.

"But he either carried the flag or walked in front of the team as their captain - he was very proud of that."

Published: 25/03/2006