How Hard Would It Be To Swim From Alcatraz To Freedom? We Asked People Who’ve Done It.
By Virginia Kruta
“No way you’d survive in colder months.”
When President Donald Trump announced on Sunday that he planned to reopen Alcatraz — the notorious island prison located just a little over a mile off the California coast near San Francisco — critics began to question just how “inescapable” it really was.
From 1934 to 1963, there were 14 documented escape attempts from Alcatraz involving 36 inmates. Not all of those who attempted to escape even made it to the shoreline. Some who did make it into the water gave up and turned back after encountering the strong currents and frigid temperatures. Two were confirmed to have drowned, and another five were officially declared “missing and presumed drowned.”
The only prisoner known to have survived the swim was John Paul Scott, who made it to Fort Point under the Golden Gate Bridge in 1962 before he collapsed from hypothermia and exhaustion. He was found there, unconscious, and returned to the island prison after being treated at a nearby hospital.
But following Trump’s announcement, some noted that people now swim from Alcatraz to San Francisco on a fairly regular basis. There are even annually scheduled triathlons that include a swim from The Rock to shore, suggesting that maybe escaping the prison through the San Francisco Bay wouldn’t be as formidable to prisoners in the 21st century as it had been in years past.
Any prisoner who attempted to make that swim to freedom would have to survive about a mile and a half — or more, if the currents pushed them off course — of choppy water that typically registers between 50-60 degrees Fahrenheit, and they’d have to do it without the benefit of a wetsuit. With water at those temperatures, hypothermia can begin to set in within 30-60 minutes.