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Bertlemann, Larry

Colonizing surfer from Honolulu, Hawaii; referred to in his time as the first expert Caucasian surfer, and long regarded as the original American surfer after his 1907 wave-riding demonstrations in Southern California. Although it was later proven that Mainland waves had in fact been ridden as far back as 1885, it was Freeth, with help from fellow Hawaiian surfer Duke Kahanamoku, who established the sport in the continental United States.

Freeth was born (1883) in Honolulu to an Irish sea captain father and a half-Polynesian mother. Although one-quarter Hawaiian, Freeth was blue-eyed and relatively fair-skinned, and regarded as 

, or white. He began surfing at age 19, just after a decades-long period of repressive Calvinist missionary influence in Hawaii that had greatly reduced the number of surfers there. Freeth's roll in developing the sport began early, as he was one of the first of the new generation to consistently ride standing, rather than prone."The native boys laughed at me when I made my first efforts [at standing]," Freeth later wrote. "Now they hailed me as the reviver of the lost art."

Around 1905, Freeth was the first—or among the first—to reintroduce angling across the wave as opposed to heading straight for shore.

In the summer of 1907, Freeth gave a surf lesson to visiting American novelist Jack London. Writing for 

 magazine, London described his instructor as a "sea-god . . .a brown Mercury. . . calm and superb." Later that year, the near-silent Freeth packed up his eight-foot redwood board and sailed to San Francisco, with the idea of popularizing the sport on the mainland. (It was long believed that Freeth was brought to California by hotelier-railroad magnate Henry Huntington and hired to ride waves at Redondo Beach as an attraction for Huntington's new southbound Red Car trolley line. Recent studies suggest that Freeth sailed to the mainland on his own accord.)

The earliest printed reference to Freeth surfing in California came in October 1907, when he took to the waves at Venice Beach. In July of the following year he gave a well-attended surfing demonstration at the Venice breakwater; in the summer of 1909 he gave demonstrations at Redondo Beach for the opening of the Henry Huntington-owned Redondo Plunge. Freeth's performances often drew hundreds of spectators. More important for American surfing, he taught dozens of school-age boys how to ride waves and make solid-wood plank surfboards, and charted new surf breaks in Ventura, Palos Verdes, Huntington Beach, and San Diego. He also helped bring the Hawaiian swim team to California for the first time; one of the visiting swimmers was Olympian and surfing patriarch Duke Kahanamoku, who was likely introduced to the California waves by Freeth.

Freeth became the state's first professional lifeguard in 1907, and was lauded in the 

 the following year for helping to rescue 11 Japanese fishermen in Venice Beach during heavy surf; at one point he climbed aboard a small fishing boat and, as the

 reported, "guided the boat as if it was a surf-board through the giant breakers." Freeth later trained Olympic-bound swimmers and divers.

Little is known about Freeth's character or personality, but he seemed to have lived a quiet and isolated life, and in 1919—unmarried, rooming in a San Diego hotel—he died in the great flu pandemic that swept across much of the world. He was 35.

Freeth was nominated to the International Surfing Hall of Fame in 1991; a bronze bust of Freeth is located at the foot of the Redondo Pier.

Freeth, George

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