The Science of Beach Lifeguarding

Mike Tipton, Adam Wooler, Mike Tipton, Adam Wooler

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781315360171
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medizin
• Subtopic: Notfallmedizin & Intensivmedizin

The World Health Organization's recently published Global Report on Drowning found that drowning is the third leading cause of unintentional injury death worldwide—making the information presented in this new book an important part of the global effort to reduce this health risk.Written by leading researchers and academics from around the world, The Science of Beach Lifeguarding focuses on the scientific evidence that underpins what is taught to and practised by beach lifeguards. It is the first book to pull together all the different areas involved in beach lifeguarding and evaluate their evidence base.An accessible and informative reference underpinned by the best current research, the book's key themes cover the context of beach lifeguarding, the physical environment in which lifeguards work, medical aspects, practical lifeguarding techniques, physiological standards for lifeguards, safety education, and future developments in beach lifeguarding.The book presents groundbreaking work quantifying the scientific rationale behind a universally accepted fitness standard. It supplies an in-depth examination of the risks and hazards associated with the beach environment, including rip currents and cold water immersion.The book includes a state-of-the-art review of drowning and a comprehensive chapter on first aid. Detailing the recently announced 2015 European Resuscitation Council Guidelines, this book is a must-have for beach lifeguards, beach lifeguard managers, search and rescue personnel, paramedics, sports scientists, health and safety practitioners, and occupational health practitioners.

PART 1
History and Context

1 History of beach lifeguarding

Chris Brewster

2 Lifeguard effectivenes

Julie Gilchrist and Christine Branche

3 Data, risk analysis and evaluation: Their role in advancing the science of beach lifeguarding

Michael Wright

1 History of beach lifeguarding

CHRIS BREWSTER

Introduction

Bathing and swimming

The first lifesavers

The first beach lifesavers to protect swimmers

The evolution of beach lifesaving equipment

Medical response

Standards

Expanded services

Women in lifesaving

Nippers and junior lifeguards

International lifesaving

Volunteerism and professionalism

Current data

Conclusion

References

LIFESAVER/LIFEGUARD

This chapter uses the terms lifesaver and lifeguard. The term lifesaver is used to refer to all people who rescue others in peril in the water, whether acting as volunteers or as compensated employees, under the premise that lifesaving is an act which they both perform. The term lifeguard is used to refer to people compensated for that role. This chapter also uses the term professional to refer to those who practise lifesaving as a profession. Volunteers can, of course, perform at a highly professional level as well.

INTRODUCTION

Beaches have not always been a popular destination. They were once shunned by most people. That has changed, of course, but the intense popularity of beaches we know today is something very new in an historical sense. It has developed over just the past 100 years or so. With that popularity has come a new role – the beach lifesaver.

In the 1800s, the beach wasn’t seen as an attraction, but a dangerous place. The population of many countries was mostly spread out in rural areas [1]. There were no cars or paved roads. Water was important to the founders of cities like London, New York and Sydney as a medium for moving people and goods aboard ships. Such cities were understandably positioned around harbours, with protected anchorage and docks. For most of the population, a trip to the beach was a journey, an adventure few chose and perhaps fewer could consider with the limited time available for recreation. That changed over a surprisingly short period of time, with beachfront property going from being undesirable to being prized, and beach recreation went from being an oddity to a passion. This current reality will not come as a surprise to the reader.

The dynamics that brought about such rapid change in the perceived desirability of the beach varied somewhat from place to place. The manner in which those visiting the beaches and swimming in their waters came to be protected also varied. Here are some stories of that evolution of the beach into a highly sought destination and domicile, and why lifesavers have come to be so essential.

BATHING AND SWIMMING

Lifesavers are not needed if few people choose to enter the water, and for much of human history few did so intentionally. Open-water bathing came first. Bathing (the recreational sort) might be described as passive enjoyment of the water – sitting or wading in it, for example. Without the skill to propel oneself through water (swimming), bathing was the way one might enjoy a pond or lake. Of course, the threat of drowning was ever present, particularly at an ocean beach with waves and currents.

One of the most interesting inventions that helped popularize ocean bathing was the bathing machine. Scarborough, on the Yorkshire coast of England, has a record of the earliest bathing machines in 1735 [2]. These machines were actually cabins on wheels which could be pulled by horses or men to the water’s edge. The bather would then descend some steps straight into the sea in something resembling a private ocean pool. Women often enjoyed total privacy thanks to a refinement which allowed a canvas hood to cover the area of sea around the steps [3]. Obviously this was not ocean bathing for the masses, but dunking for the elite.

Some of the fisher folk of Brighton, a town which was transformed in the 1700s from a small village into a thriving resort through the popularity of sea bathing, found new and profitable employment as ‘dippers’ and ‘bathers’. Dippers were for the ladies and bathers for the gentlemen, but their task was the same: to plunge their subject vigorously into and out of the water. By 1790, there were some 20 locals offering this strenuous service to the rich, titled and even royal visitors who flocked to the town [4]. These were not lifeguards per se, but attendants.

George, Prince of Wales, started to frequent his beloved Brighton in 1783 and his father, King George III, adopted Weymouth in Dorset as his pet resort after his first of many visits and dips in the sea there in 1789. Sea bathing had now received the royal seal of approval and had become, if not compulsory, at least very difficult to resist among the fashionable of the age. In Australia, there were no bathing machines, but as early as 1850 there were plenty of bathhouses in Sydney harbour, which were quite popular [5].

Over time, some people naturally became interested in swimming as a distinct skill that allowed the practitioner to move forward in the water and, in fact, prevent drowning [5]. This text, though, is not a history of bathing or swimming. It is a history of beach lifesaving, by volunteers and professionals. We now turn our attention to the reasons that lifesavers were needed, which of course meant that more than just the elite would need to favour the water.

THE FIRST LIFESAVERS

The beaches of the East Coast of the United States were lightly inhabited in the early 1800s. Those who lived near the shore were well aware of its hazards, though. Shipwrecks were common. Volunteer efforts to mount shore-based rescues of imperilled sailors were first initiated by the Massachusetts Humane Society in 1807. In 1848, the US Congress approved $10,000 to pay for ‘surfboats, rockets, carronades (line throwing mortars), and other necessary apparatus for the better preservation of life and property from shipwrecks along the coast of New Jersey’ [6]. They were positioned in eight stations, to be staffed by volunteers in case of shipwrecks. In 1850 for example, using this gear, at least 201 shipwrecked people were saved by beach-based rescuers, but many still died [6].

In Great Britain, similar efforts took place. The Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) was founded in 1824 as the National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck [7]. The first RNLI Gold Medal was awarded to Charles Fremantle of the Lymington Coastguard in 1824 for swimming with a line from a beach to rescue the crew of the Swedish brigantine Carl Jean, which was in difficulty close to the shore near Christchurch [7].

In the United States, the volume of problems related to shipwrecks along the shoreline brought about the creation of the US Life-Saving Service in 1878 (which would later, in 1915, merge with the Revenue Cutter Service to become the US Coast Guard) [6]. It appears to be the first in the world to use the term life-saving to apply to the effort to rescue people from drowning [5]. They used tools such as double-ended surfboats, launched from shore with six rowers and a man at a tiller oar, and lines fired from shore to vessels in distress, along with a variety of other devices to bring people to safety (Figures 1.1 and 1.2). There ultimately came to be 279 lifesaving stations, whose lifesavers had rescued over 150,000 from drowning by 1915 [6].

Figure 1.1 US Life-Saving Service crew (Wallis Sands station) beside their surfboat wearing storm suits with cork life vests. (U.S. Coast Guard; http://www.uscg.mil/history/CG)

This is not a history of the beach-based rescue of mariners, which took place in other countries as well, but a history of beach lifesaving would be incomplete without mention of those first beach-based rescuers who were engaged in the rescue of shipwrecked people. Their work, methods and equipment set the stage for, and perhaps inspired, what came later.

THE FIRST BEACH LIFESAVERS TO PROTECT SWIMMERS

United States bathing resorts and lifeguards

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is known as the birthplace of democracy in the United States. It is where the first US Congress met, and it also offered inspiration that eventually brought about creation of the first professional beach lifeguard corps – ironic, since Philadelphia is some 50 miles from the Atlantic coast and from any ocean beaches.

Figure 1.2 US Life-Saving Service surfboat drill (Orleans station), with crew wearing summer working suits and keeper in the standard uniform, with cork vests, 1908. (U.S. Coast Guard; http://www.uscg.mil/history/CG)

In summer, Philadelphia can swelter in heat and humidity. Before air conditioning, it was a hot summertime stew of humanity. Some entrepreneurs had an idea. What if we were to build a railroad to the coast, where the cool sea breezes would temper the heat of summer, and a dip in the ocean all the more so? What if we were to build a resort by the sea? They attracted investors, convinced the Camden and Amboy Railroad to build a line to Abescon Island and constructed the United States Hotel on a ‘deserted pile of sand’ [8]. The name of the ‘resort’: Atlantic City.

Atlantic City opened for business with 600 guests taking the train there on 1 June 1854. The entrepreneurs were the first in the United States by 10 years to establish direct train service to an ocean resort, but many were to duplicate their concept elsewhere [8]. The ocean resort, accessible by train, had arrived. It was ‘the first planned city by the sea’ [8]. They promoted the resort as beneficial to health, much as had the promoters of bathing machines in England. The author Gay Talese relates their exaggerated claims, bolstered by doctors, that the cool breezes, ‘had a salubrious effect upon those suffering from asthma, consumption, laryngitis, pneumonia, diabetes, digestive disorders and other maladies, including insanity’ [9]. They also promoted the healthiness of the salt water, but there was a particular problem unmentioned in that regard – drowning.

Atlantic City soon became popular. As the volume of visitors grew there and at other resorts that came to be built elsewhere along th...