British surfing legend dies

Bill Bailey responsible for popularising the sport

The 'Father of UK Surfing', Bill Bailey, has died aged 75. Bailey, who had cancer, had a long and eventful career developing the first surf boards accessible to the British public.

Born John Michael Bailey, he grew up in Somerset before training as an engineer with the Royal Air Force. Over the next decade he was stationed in Sri Lanka, where he worked with the air-rescue team and grew to love both the sea and watersports. He became familiar with Jacques Cousteau, a scientist whose studies on sea life had inspired him to develop the first aqualung.

In the 1950s Bailey left the RAF and settled in Newquay, where he took up a position as a full-time lifeguard. His background in engineering prompted him to contemplate the hollowed out life-saving rafts that he had come across in Australia, known as a surf-skis, and propelled by paddles. Bailey adapted the designs for use on the British coast and tested them in waves "more than two men high", but with little success. With some help, he created a hollow 12ft wooden board, which enabled the lifeguards to experiment standing while riding waves - a development Bailey thought could be used for recreational purposes. 

While he was modifying his designs in 1962, Bailey encountered a Californian tourist, Doug McDonald, and bought the Bragg foam-and-fibreglass surfboard that he had brought with him to Newquay. After mastering basic surfing, he began to build his own boards to a similar design. In 1965 his factory went into business with the European Surfing Company. Working alongside Australian surfer Bob Head, Bailey created the brand name Bilbo by merging both of their names.

The Newquay factory found immediate success, and Bailey was soon selling up to 60 boards a week to aspiring British surfers. Bob Head gave frequent surfing demonstrations in Watergate Bay and Tolcarne beach. Before long the brand had branched out to include skateboards and in 1967, Britain's first surf shop opened on Newquay Station Forecourt. A second shop in south Wales followed, stocked with products designed by Bilbo and manufactured across the United Kingdom.

As surfing became well established in Britain, and Bilbo became one of the leading surf brands in Europe, Bailey stepped out of the limelight, returning briefly to the RAF to repair jet bombers, before moving to France with his family. Once across the Channel, he set up a factory producing polyurethane foam to form the core of windsurfing boards.

Bailey also had a passion for firearms: He acquired a sailing boat in Corsica, and his family spent the following eight years sailing the Mediterranean on the Punch Coco, supplied with enough missiles to defend themselves should they stumble across any pirates.

Bill Bailey continued to explore the world until his death; in his seventies, he embarked upon a three month gold-hunting expedition in Canada, to the incredulity of his friends and family. He followed this excursion with a road trip along the west coast of North America, before he developed symptoms of liver cancer; a diagnosis that he accepted as "the next great adventure".