Duke Kahanamoku, the 1912 Olympic winner in the 100-meter freestyle swim, had much to do with the revival of surfing. He showed the versatility of the surfboard by performing a dramatic sea rescue of eight persons in 1925 when heavy seas overturned a yacht off Newport Beach, California. He made three trips from the shore on his surfboard through the churning seas to the survivors bobbing in the water. His sixteen-foot surfboard is preserved on display at the Hawaiian Wax Museum in Honolulu.
Duke Kahanamoku visited Australia in 1915 and at Freshwater Beach, Sydney, put on a dramatic exhibition of surfboard riding that gave surfing a start there. A few years earlier, before World War I, surfing was introduced to California shores. The Pacific Electric Rail road, in an effort to increase ticket sales, hired George Freeth, an Irish-Hawaiian, to demonstrate surfing at Redondo Beach. This drew thousands of spectators to California beaches, which helped the ticket sales and at the same time gave surfing its start in that part of the world.
For a long time surfing was concentrated around beaches of Hawaii, California and Australia, but recently it has spread around the globe, to practically everywhere that there are surfable beaches. However, Hawaii remains the surfers' mecca.