A group of women set two world records as they took part in a rowing challenge.
The five female rowers, from Putney, have become the first five-woman team to row any ocean in the world and have broken the record for rowing The Atlantic in the fastest time by an all-female crew.
The group were taking part in the Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge when they broke the records. They took part in the challenge to raise awareness of the issue of child slavery and human trafficking.
The Row for Freedom team was made up of Julia Immonen, Debbie Beadle, Helen Leigh, Kate Richardson and Katie Pattison-Hart. Four of the team only began rowing last year with the help of the Putney Town Rowing Club.
Debbie Beadle, 31, said: “Putney Town were such a support since the beginning.
“Four out of six of us couldn’t row, so Julia and I approached the club and they said they’d help. Two of their veteran team offered to train us. We learned to row from July.
“The cause is what keeps us going though, it is such a massive issue we thought we are going to do something massive and get attention and raise as much awareness as we could.
“It’s been extremely difficult doing this challenge, at the beginning we lost our skipper so we went down from six crew members to five and even in the first two weeks everything broke.”
The team came fifth overall in the race, which they completed in 45 days 15 hours and 26 minutes.