The Sixth President of the United States of America, John Quincy Adams, was the son of a President. Generally quiet he was seized by bouts of depression. He married Louisa Catherine Johnson who was frail and sickly.

To bolster his health and spirit, each morning he would trot down to the Potomac River, strip naked and wade into the usually cold waters leaving his clothes on the bank.

He wasn’t entirely naked though. Stratford Canning, the British Ambassador to Washington noted in 1821:

“The Secretary of State was seen one morning at an early hour floating down the Potomac, with a black cap on his head and a pair of green goggles on his eyes.”

His wife and doctor tried to talk him out of it but he persisted, frequently swimming further out and for longer times which saw him swimming against the strong tides and leaving him weary. He wrote:

“… the remonstrances of my friends against the continuance of this practice will induce me to abandon it, perhaps altogether.”

In 1825 he headed out with his valet, Antoine, accompanying him in a canoe to try and swim across the river.

“I jumped overboard, and Antoine did the same, and lost hold of the boat, which filled with water and drifted away. We were as near as possible to the middle of the river, and swam to the opposite shore. Antoine, who was naked, reached it with little difficulty. I had much more, and while struggling for life and gasping for breath, had ample leisure to reflect upon my own discretion. My principal difficulty was in the loose sleeves of my shirt, which filled with water and hung like two fifty-six pound weights upon my arms.

Despite almost drowning, he did not stop. Again in 1825 he experienced an entirely new kind of river adventure:

I walked as usual to my ordinary bathing-place, and came to the rock where I leave my clothes a few minutes before sunrise. I found several persons there, besides three or four who were bathing; and at the shore under the tree a boat with four men in it, and a drag-net. … I enquired if any one had been drowned, and the man told me it was old Mr. Shoemaker, a clerk in the post-office, a man upwards of sixty years of age, who last evening, between five and six o’clock, went in to bathe with four other persons; that he was drowned in full sight of them, and without a suspicion by them that he was even in danger. They had observed him struggling in the water, but, as he was an excellent swimmer, had supposed he was merely diving, until after coming out they found he was missing. They then commenced an ineffectual search for him, which was continued late into the night. The man said to me that he had never seen a more distressed person than Mrs. Shoemaker last evening. … I stripped and went into the river. I had not been more than ten minutes swimming, when the drag-boat started, and they were not five minutes from the shore when the body floated immediately opposite the rock, less than one hundred yards from the shore, at the very edge of the channel, and where there could not be seven feet deep of water. I returned immediately to the shore and dressed.

Death and almost drowning would have stopped most but the worst was yet to come.

After many attempts to be granted an interview with the President, news reporter Anne Royall hid in the bushes watching the president strip naked and frolic in the water. Seeing an opportunity she scooped up his clothes and held them ransom until he agreed to do an interview.

The interview went well and Anne kept his secret as they agreed but he was soon found out by other members of the press. Despite the embarrassment John Quincy would continue to swim in the Potomac every chance he had until his death at age 80 in 1848. His last words were “This is the last of Earth. I am content!“.

Anne was one of America’s first newspaperwomen and was known in Washington as an eccentric who never held her tongue when given the chance to aie her often controversial views.. John Quincy Adams would later call her a “virago errant in enchanted armor”.