Eighty-one years ago Lewis Rosenberg and a group of friends saw a newsreel showing Australians surfing standing up on their surfboards – it was a moment of inspiration that changed their lives.
This close-knit group of Jewish immigrants, who lived in London and Hove, had been riding their four-foot long wooden bodyboards in the West Country and Channel Islands for almost a decade.
But in 1929 they set about building their own longboard, wrapped it in linen sheets, and took it on a steam train from London to Newquay.
Not only did they try to teach themselves how to surf standing on their board, they also filmed their exploits and now this rare footage has been brought back to life after lying untouched in a Cambridgeshire loft for many years.
“When Sue Clamp visited one of our exhibitions and told us she had film of her father’s surfing exploits on a wooden longboard in 1929 we were totally blown away,” said Peter Robinson, founder of the Museum of British Surfing. “We took the reels of fragile 9.5mm stock to the local film archive for them to be preserved and transferred to digital tape – it’s a national treasure.”
It was then that the full beauty of the film became apparent, as this group of friends enjoyed a surfing life on deserted British beaches – sometimes riding the waves naked, and dancing the Hula wearing costumes made from seaweed.
A small segment of the film appeared in a BBC4 documentary ‘Sea Fever’ in May (2010), and the North Devon based surf museum is releasing the full film and a book next year to coincide with one of its exhibitions ‘British Surf Riders: Surfing before WW2’.
“We interviewed three of the old boys who were part of the surfing gang, and they were totally stoked on what they were doing,” said Peter. “They were in their mid 90s when we filmed them, but as soon as we spoke about surfing and their beach lives, their eyes lit up and their memories came flooding back. It was truly emotional.”
