Wilbert E. Longfellow at Jones Beach, Wantagh, NY, August 28, 1946

Americans swimming at pools, lakes and beaches across the country owe a great debt to a true pioneer in the field of water safety, Wilbert E. Longfellow. Longfellow was among the first to recognize that the rapidly mounting death toll from drowning in the early 1900s would assume the proportions of a national tragedy unless new safety initiatives were soon introduced. His vision of a nationwide program for swimming and lifesaving instruction combined with his aquatic skills, teaching abilities, showmanship, and enthusiasm, made him the natural leader for the enterprise.

From 1900 to 1913, Commodore Longfellow engaged in a virtual one-man crusade for water safety. In 1914 he enlisted the full participation of the American Red Cross to ensure the success of his aim, "the waterproofing of America."

During the next 33 years—until the time of his retirement and his death three months later, on March 18, 1947—Longfellow worked with devotion and enthusiasm in the nationwide water safety program of the Red Cross. The results were astonishing: He saw the nation's drowning rate cut in half—from 10.4 per 100,000 people to 5.2—and witnessed a tremendous upsurge in the popularity of swimming, boating and other water activities, to the point where an estimated 80 million Americans were participating in some form of aquatic recreation.

After more than 90 years, the American Red Cross water safety program, whose early history is largely the story of the Commodore's contribution through the Red Cross, can point to a proud record. Water safety instruction authorizations have been issued to thousands of trained and qualified persons who, in turn, have taught courses enabling the Red Cross to issue millions of certificates in swimming and lifesaving to individuals successfully completing its courses.

A Remarkable Man
The life story of the Commodore is just as remarkable as the results he helped the Red Cross achieve in so short a time.

Wilbert E. Longfellow poses with some members of his swimming instructors during his "learn to swim" tour, circa 1923.

At the turn of the century, "Bert" Longfellow, a husky teenager just out of high school, was covering the waterfront as a staff member of the Providence, Rhode Island, Telegram. Many of his news stories were tragic accounts of drownings that, he felt, were not so much the fault of the swimming areas as of the swimmers, faults stemming from a lack of swimming ability, lifesaving knowledge, and adequate supervision.

Anxious to do what he could to prevent needless loss of life, Longfellow carefully studied available literature on aquatic trends, activities, and safety procedures, wrote features on water safety, and reported on waterfront rescues and steps taken to safeguard swimmers. He became highly proficient in the various swimming styles and lifesaving skills of his day. He also offered his spare-time services to the U.S. Volunteer Life Saving Corps, a young organization with headquarters in New York City, and began sharing his aquatic knowledge and skills with other swimmers.

Soon he was organizing his more outstanding pupils into volunteer crews for safeguarding the lives of swimmers. The work gradually spread, under his direction, to nearby towns and cities. In 1905, in recognition of his already noteworthy achievements, Longfellow was awarded the title of "Commodore" by the U.S. Volunteer Life Saving Corps and was appointed state superintendent of the organization in Rhode Island.

Through the efforts of interested friends in the state legislature, which he covered for the Providence News and the Providence Journal in succession, he received a grant of $2,000 to purchase equipment for staging lifesaving demonstrations throughout Rhode Island. The result of the demonstrations was a 50 percent reduction in the number of drownings in the state.

Personal Tragedy and Courageous Comeback
In the spring of 1907, just as his work was beginning to show concrete results, the Commodore was stricken with tuberculosis of the spine. Immobilized and in a plaster cast from hips to armpits, he was obliged to resign from the Journal but, by means of bedside conferences, telephone calls, and correspondence, he managed to continue his lifesaving work. His condition deteriorated rapidly, however, and by the end of the year medical opinion allowed him less than a month to live.

Wilbert E. Longfellow gives a demonstration of a rescue technique in a canal circa 1915.

It was then that Longfellow decided to take matters into his own hands. Convinced that he was not going to improve while bedridden, he obtained permission to get out into the sunshine, where he reclined for hours in a big armchair. By an effort of will borne of desperation, he dismissed thoughts of his condition and hopeless future and kept himself occupied with ambitious plans for what he termed "the waterproofing of Rhode Island." The month allotted him went by, and more months followed. To the amazement of his physicians, he began to show a slight, and then a gradually marked, improvement in his condition.

By early spring 1908, though still wearing a plaster cast, the Commodore occasionally was walking to his doctor's office and now and then was giving an aquatic lecture. By early summer he was touring the Narragansett Bay area in a specially outfitted lifesaving launch and was staging lifesaving demonstrations with the aid of an assistant. By the end of the summer he had hinges on the cast and was able to remove it for brief intervals to enter the water, where he took mild swimming exercises to restore strength to atrophied muscles. In the winter he devised a substitute for the cast—two wide leather belts supported and held in place by four upright rods—that he wore for the next 4 years.

Now on the way to recovery, Longfellow devoted his time to his lifesaving crusade. As part of his plan for the waterproofing of Rhode Island, he began to teach a new method of artificial respiration that he considered superior to all other methods then in use in the United States. The new method had been devised by Edward Sharpey Schafer, an anatomist at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, who later was knighted for his contribution to lifesaving. The Schafer method called for placing the victim in a prone position and applying pressure to his back, just below the diaphragm. With modifications, this method became known as the prone-pressure method and, because of its simplicity and ease of application, was readily accepted by the public.

The Waterproofing of America
In 1910, the U.S. Volunteer Life Saving Corps appointed Longfellow to the salaried post of Commodore in Chief and designated him as general superintendent of the organization in further recognition of his abilities and achievements. The Commodore then began planning his most ambitious program, "the waterproofing of America." However, the Life Saving Corps decided against a nationwide expansion of its activities because it would require the raising of large amounts of additional funds.

Looking for a way to accomplish his great goal, Longfellow presented his plan to the American Red Cross in 1912. A committee representing a number of national organizations was established to prepare and submit a nationwide program for consideration by the Red Cross. The committee's plan was adopted by the Red Cross in January 1914, and the following month the Red Cross Life Saving Corps, forerunner of the present-day Red Cross water safety program, came into being. Longfellow was appointed to organize the lifesaving program and was awarded Red Cross Lifesaving Certificate Number One and the lifesaving emblem that has since been worn by millions.

In the succeeding months of 1914, at beaches and swimming pools all over the country, this portly man with the Red Cross emblem on his swimsuit began to appear. At every stop he was recognized as a man experienced and well versed in aquatic arts and lifesaving skills.

The evolution of the bathing suit from 1900 to the present is demonstrated in a water pageant titled 'Swimming Sheds Its Shackles' performed in Minneapolis under supervision of Commodore Wilbert E. Longfellow, center, assistant director of the American Red Cross Water Safety service and pioneer life saver, during a tour of the Midwest. Minneapolis, Minn., July, 1946.

The Commodore's first step in putting the lifesaving plan into operation was simplicity itself. In each community, he gathered a group of good swimmers, trained them in the methods of lifesaving and resuscitation, organized them into a volunteer corps, and asked them to accept responsibility for supervision of swimming activities in the community. He then persuaded owners and operators of swimming facilities to staff their beaches and pools with trained lifeguards.

The next step—more difficult and perhaps more important—was to provide sound, large-scale instruction in swimming. Longfellow accomplished this by selecting outstanding swimmers from each corps, giving them additional training, and authorizing them to teach swimming on a voluntary basis. In this way, sound swimming instruction was multiplied many times over.

The final task was to consolidate public interest and support. The Commodore did this with amazing success. He gave talks and demonstrations, wrote for newspapers and periodicals, created and produced water pageants, and, with the advent of radio in the 1920s, put his message on the air. The water pageants perhaps best illustrate the Commodore's philosophy of teaching, which was to entertain the public hugely while educating them gently. Under Longfellow's guidance, a pleasurable activity for participants and spectators alike became a solid educational experience.

As public demand for swimming and lifesaving instruction spread, the Commodore was joined by other highly trained men who were added to the Red Cross staff as public demand for swimming and lifesaving instruction spread. Meanwhile, other organizations, awakened to a sense of water safety responsibility, began to participate in the undertaking. The toll of lives lost through drowning began to recede, even as the number of participants in aquatic activities increased.

By the time the country entered World War I, in April 1917, the groundwork for the program was in place and training was gathering momentum. The Commodore and his co-workers then moved into army camps and naval stations. The setting was different, but the challenge was the same: to teach fighting men to swim and men who were already good swimmers to save lives.

After World War I and before the next World War, the Red Cross water safety program was extended, through hundreds of Red Cross chapters, to every part of the nation. Water safety consciousness gradually became a part of American life.

Under Longfellow's leadership, innovations were made to the he program and in 1922 two Red Cross national aquatic schools, for the training and qualifying of water safety and first aid instructors, were started. During World War II, the Red Cross developed a new kind of swimming, called functional or combat swimming, for the protection and efficiency of the armed forces. Functional swimming was in full use throughout the country in the months following Pearl Harbor and was used extensively in the he United States and overseas all through the conflict.

A Lifetime of Service
Until the day he retired, the Commodore continued to play a vital and active role in all aspects of the Red Cross water safety program and in the closely allied fields of first aid and accident prevention. He traveled an average of 25,000 miles a year to visit Red Cross chapters, national aquatic schools, and training conferences and give lectures, radio talks, interviews, and demonstrations, reaching an estimated 100,000 persons annually.

He was always the cheerful crusader, the self-styled "amiable whale," the man whose terrestrial mission was luring Americans into the water to teach them how to be at home in it, how to have fun in it, and how not to drown.

"Water is a good friend or a deadly enemy," the Commodore would tell his pupils. "After you have been properly introduced to it, keep on good terms with it. Don't slap it, try hugging it—an armful at a time!"

Top of Page