Surf and Rescue: George Freeth and the Birth of California Beach Culture

by Patrick Moser

Overview

The mixed-race Hawaiian athlete George Freeth brought surfing to Venice, California, in 1907. Over the next twelve years, Freeth taught Southern Californians to surf and swim while creating a modern lifeguard service that transformed the beach into a destination for fun, leisure, and excitement. Patrick Moser places Freeth’s inspiring life story against the rise of the Southern California beach culture he helped shape and define. Freeth made headlines with his rescue of seven fishermen, an act of heroism that highlighted his innovative lifeguarding techniques. But he also founded California's first surf club and coached both male and female athletes, including Olympic swimming champion and “father of modern surfing” Duke Kahanamoku. Often in financial straits, Freeth persevered as a teacher and lifeguarding pioneer—building a legacy that endured long after his death during the 1919 influenza pandemic.

A compelling merger of biography and sports history, Surf and Rescue brings to light the forgotten figure whose novel way of seeing the beach sparked the imaginations of people around the world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780252086526
Publisher:	University of Illinois Press
Publication date:	06/28/2022
Series:	Sport and Society
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	248
Sales rank:	1,096,707
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Patrick Moser is a professor of French at Drury University and editor of Pacific Passages: An Anthology of Surf Writing.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments xi

A Note on Hawaiian Language xv

Introduction 1

1 A Pacific Ocean Childhood 7

2 Renewing a Royal Sport at Waikiki 25

3 A Waterman in Los Angeles 41

4 The Rescue 62

5 Amateur Troubles 73

6 A Gold Life-Saving Medal 84

7 Return to the Islands 102

8 From Competitor to Mentor 112

9 Coaching Duke 129

10 A New Beginning in San Diego 143

11 Chief Lifeguard 155

12 Last Breath 170

Notes 177

Bibliography 205

Index 213

Editorial Reviews

★ 05/01/2022

Now that beach property is the ne plus ultra of luxury, it's easy to forget that American waterfronts were once undesirable, neglected landscapes and the ocean was considered more menacing than salubrious. In this deeply researched history, Moser (French literature, Drury Univ.; The Surfer's Code) tells the fascinating story of an aquatic polymath whose abbreviated life was devoted to establishing lifeguards and surfers as legitimate professionals. Born on Oahu in 1883 to an Englishman and an Indigenous Hawaiian mother, George Freeth was a fixture at early U.S. bathing resorts, like Venice Beach and San Francisco's Sutro Baths, and eked out a meager living as a performer of daredevil aquatic feats. One promotional stunt was a "fire dive" from a barnstorming airplane down into Venice lagoon while wearing a flaming, kerosene-drenched costume. Freeth was also a swim coach to Jack London and to Olympic swimming champ and "father of modern surfing" Duke Kahanamoku (paid gigs that made Freeth himself Olympics-ineligible). As a lifeguard, he pioneered open-ocean lifesaving techniques and rescued some 300 people. The quintessential athlete's own premature death, in the 1919 influenza pandemic, is a poignant coda to Moser's otherwise joyfully buoyant narrative. VERDICT A valuable and absorbing biography, starring a forgotten founder of California beach culture.—Douglas F. Smith

Library Journal

"A valuable and absorbing biography, starring a forgotten founder of California beach culture." —Library Journal, starred review

"It’s terrific to have such substantial research collected in a single volume with many falsehoods corrected. The fascinating part is that, despite the research that Moser has amassed, after so many years of low-flying fame, Freeth himself remains a smooth enigma." —Los Angeles Review of Books

"Moser’s book will bring renewed attention to Freeth, whose contributions to surf and beach culture in California have typically been overshadowed by those of his fellow Hawaiian waterman and protege Duke Kahanamoku." —San Francisco Chronicle

​"It is difficult to think of the California lifestyle today without appreciating the legacies left by George Freeth. We can thank Patrick Moser for bringing this somewhat enigmatic figure to life in his excellent new book." —Southern California Quarterly

"Surf and Rescue is an informative, engaging, and fascinating account of the way one man forever changed the world for the better." —Kelp Journal

"That this nothing-if-not authoritative treatise on the understudied George Freeth is shockingly well researched comes as little surprise. That is what Patrick Moser is known for. Yet as rigorous as Surf and Rescue might be, the clarity of the language and the knowledge of topic—surfing—lifts this book into sheer page-turner territory."—Scott Hulet, The Surfer's Journal

"Moser's book offers a well-written biography of Freeth that will be exciting and engaging to those deeply invested in the history of surfing and lifeguarding." —H-Net Reviews

“Patrick Moser is an excellent historian, surf or otherwise, and with Surf and Rescue we get Moser at his very best: clear-eyed and knowledgeable, a detail man who can nimbly pull back to present the big picture. George Freeth is an undeservedly forgotten figure in American cultural history, and Patrick Moser is the right person to bring him forward.”—Matt Warshaw, author of The History of Surfing

From the Publisher