httpss://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LTTo6ZjPDQ
Recently they’d brought death and chaos to the very waters Kahanamoku, and coastal thunderstorms had come up suddenly during preceding months and his friends were planning to surf.
So the fears of Kahanamoku mounted as he noticed the hapless Thelma battle to stay afloat.
The sinking, said the newspaper, “Resulted in the drowning of five passengers. Twelve others were yanked in the sea in a dramatic rescue staged by Duke Kahanamoku, renowned Hawaiian swimmer, yet others who endured the heavy seas on surfboards.”
“In another first person description of his job during the Thelma tragedy, Kahanamoku was quoted in an Honolulu newspaper several weeks later as saying,”Neither I or my buddies were thinking heroics … we were just running … me with my board as well as others to get their boards … and hoping to save lives.
Of the 17 aboard the Thelma, Kahanamoku is credited with saving eight, all of whom were taken to area hospitals with serious injuries that contained broken arms and legs.
Kahanamoku, who had won countless surfing decorations and five Olympic medals in swimming between 1912 and 1922, received international acclaim for his heroics in the Corona del Mar tragedy, and was given the nicknames “The Great American Hero” and “The Great Human Fish.”.
As for Jerry Vultee, Kahanamoku’s closest friend and longtime surfing companion who joined in the saving of the Thelma fishermen, he was a Caltech alumnus and creator of the Vultee Aircraft Corp.