How Hard Would It Be To Swim From Alcatraz To Freedom? We Asked People Who’ve Done It.

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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.

But as the critics say, people do it every year: people who have the luxury of weeks or even months of in-water training and coaching to learn how to maximize each movement and breathe efficiently. And, more importantly, people who have access to wetsuits and even a quick rescue if things go sideways.
An average swimmer can complete a one-mile swim in about 30 minutes, about two-thirds of the distance from Alcatraz to the shore. But that’s with regular training, and prisoners on the island would have no ability to train in the water. People who have made that swim assured The Daily Wire that it was not something to be undertaken lightly.
Former collegiate swimmer Riley Gaines swam from Alcatraz to shore with a group of Navy SEALs in July of 2024, and she told The Daily Wire that she prepared by swimming in the bay the day before without a wetsuit.

“FREEZING. And this was in the middle of July. No way you’d survive in the colder months.”
Gaines said that in addition to the cold — even with a wetsuit for the full swim — she had to contend with “swimming directly into massive waves, major currents that change (sometimes they help, sometimes you’re swimming in place).”

“I had lots of seals and sea lions who were basically playing with me the entire time,” Gaines added. “They were so curious what I was doing they’d come up and nudge me. I swam with a pod of dolphins, maybe 15 to 20 or so. It was a good sign no sharks were around.”
Avid triathlete and fitness trainer Daniela Lavender participated in the “Escape from Alcatraz” triathlon in 2018, and she too mentioned the water temperature and the lengths to which athletes prepare for the experience. “Besides the wetsuits, we had neoprene caps and booties,” she said.
But one of the most important things, Lavender told The Daily Wire, was the fact that participants had kayakers with them to help guide them through the choppy waters — and redirect them if they started to stray from the best course to shore.
“You have to hit the current just right to have it shoot you in toward the shore,” she explained. “If you don’t hit it just right, it will sweep you out into the bay. It’s a hard thing to do because you really do have to hit that tide just right. They show you a building on the shore to aim for, but if the water is rough and the waves are big, that building is hard to see.”
“The depth of the water is a little bit stressful too,” Lavender added. “And of course the great whites are there. Not so much when we were there because they try to schedule the events around seasonal surges in the shark population, but they are there so you don’t want to get separated from the crowd. Don’t be first or last, I guess.”
Tarrant County Republican Party Chairman Bo French completed two triathlons at Alcatraz in the early 2000s, and he agreed that the water was frigid. Beyond that, he questioned whether anyone would be able to complete such a swim without the benefit of training.
“I was swimming maybe 5,000 to 7,000 yards, three times a week at the time,” he said. “[Without training] I don’t think it could be done. Swimming is 90% technique. You have to have that feel from training. It’s something you have to develop.”
French also noted that swimming in a large group with nearly 1,000 others competing in the triathlon actually eased any anxiety he might have had about running into the great white sharks that frequent the area: “In terms of the sharks, I figured if I was one of a thousand, my odds were pretty good.”
On a general note, French said that he was in favor of reopening the notorious prison. “I’m old enough to remember when Alcatraz had this mystique about it,” he explained.
“Love this. I actually swam Alcatraz twice (with a wetsuit of course). That place has an eerie feel to it. This will strike fear into criminals. More winning,” he posted on X.
“For me, I was like, this is amazing, this American institution is coming back — I think it is really going to send a message,” he said.
Rep. John McGuire (R-VA) also lauded Trump’s plan to reopen Alcatraz, calling it “a symbol of tough American justice” and a throwback to a “Golden Age” where criminals were met with swift justice and accountability rather than being sent right back to the streets by progressive prosecutors and judges.
That message hit home for him, and he referenced one criminal illegal alien who was released from jail four times in Virginia, after which he raped a teenage girl. “I’m a small government guy, but we have to keep our people safe,” he said.
McGuire, a veteran Navy SEAL (the sixth in Congress), swam from Alcatraz to shore with a group of SEALs for a charity several years ago, and he said that even for those in the best physical shape and whose training was “water-centric,” the support they got from kayakers in the water with them was of the utmost importance.
Photo courtesy of Rep. John McGuire
“We had experts helping us to predict the currents and kayakers in the water who got updates over radios,” he said, noting that there were times when they had to change course in ways that seemed counterintuitive to avoid dangerous currents that could have swept them out to sea. “We had to swim in the opposite direction of where we wanted to go.”
“You can be super fit, but if you don’t have the right information [about the currents], you still won’t make it,” McGuire said. “If you swim at the wrong angle for even five minutes, you won’t make it.”
McGuire stressed the mental, emotional, and physical toughness that is ingrained into Navy SEALs during training, saying that all of those things were employed as they worked to combat the rough water, the freezing temperatures, and the grueling physical stress of the swim. He noted that the pace changed with the currents, and they had to know when to go all out and when they could back off in order to hit those currents just right.
The realization of how dangerous the swim was didn’t truly hit McGuire until he got out of the water, when he said a local approached and asked whether they were aware of just how many great white shark attacks happened in the area.
“They were local, so I figured they would know better about that than I would, coming from the east coast,” he said, and then he added the real kicker: “When we got to the beach, one of the kayakers told us that the biggest great white dorsal fin he’d ever seen went right by us right when we started the swim. Of course, we didn’t know that until we got out of the water, but it definitely added a little excitement.”