A Look Back:

Surfing was still a novelty at local beaches when Olympic swimming champion and surfing pioneer Duke Kahanamoku single-handedly saved eight men from drowning after a mountainous wave took out a 40-foot yacht off Newport Beach in 1925.

“The Duke’s performance was the most superhuman rescue act and the finest display of surfboard riding that has ever been,� Newport Beach Police Capt. James Porter told the Los Angeles Times after the rescue in June 1925.

Kahanamoku was a regular in Newport Beach. He fell in love with the waves that would built up on a long sandbar off what is now Corona del Mar State Beach in the early 1920s, wrote late Daily Pilot columnist and former judge Robert Gardner in 1999. Gardner, who used to work at the old Corona del Mar bath house, remembered Kahanamoku giving him rides on his shoulders as thanks for taking care of his 250-pound mahogany surf board in 1927.

June 14, 1925, was a good day to surf off Newport Beach. Heavy swells broke into massive waves, smashing into the 40-foot fishing yacht “Thelma,� according to the Los Angeles Times.

A giant wave crashed over the bow and broke through the heavy plate glass that encased the engine room, flooding the vessel and stopping the engine. Most of the passengers aboard “Thelma� were washed overboard. A second wave swallowed the boat and pitched it on its side.

“Before the fishermen could put on life preservers or assistance could reach them, the small boat was caught broadside in the teeth of three tremendous breakers and rolled completely over three times from starboard to port on the sand of the shallow bar,� the Times reported.

Kahanamoku was surfing nearby and was the first to reach the drowning fishermen. He made three trips to the beach and back, carrying four victims on his surf board on the first trip, three the second and one the third, according to the Times.

Five men aboard “Thelma,� died and four others were rescued by a lifeguard, the captain of the Corona del Mar Swimming Club and three other beachgoers.