Sea bathing

Sea bathing in mid Wales c.1800. Several bathing machines can be seen.

Sea bathing at Boulogne in the 1840s

Bathing machine and woman's swimwear style of Germany, 1893

Man and woman in swimsuits, c. 1910; she is exiting a bathing machine.

With Buchan's recommendations, people suddenly flocked to the coasts, especially to Great Britain and France. The public and authorities were concerned with the morality of general sea bathing. Scarborough was the first resort to introduce bathing machines, with a John Setterington engraving showing machines in 1735.[2] They were soon adopted in most of the aspiring English seaside resorts. Women would wear "bathing gowns" in the water while the men would wear long swimsuits. Some resorts such as Margate had modesty hoods or tilts which were canvas awnings attached to bathing machines. These could be let down to allow a woman to enter and leave the water in privacy. If desired, the woman could also be dipped in privacy under the shelter of the hood.[3]

By the end of the 18th century, sea bathing became highly fashionable with George III visiting Weymouth for the first time with the bathing machines showing God Save the King. Fanny Burney recorded a humorous incident in her diaries.

"Nor is this all. Think but of the surprise of His Majesty when, the first time of his bathing, he had no sooner popped his royal head under water than a band of music, concealed in a neighbouring machine, struck up "God save great George our King".[3][4]

During this period, resorts sprang up along the English coast, such as Weymouth, Bournemouth, Blackpool and Scarborough. In 1771, Tobias Smollett recorded the use of bathing machines in The Expedition of Humphry Clinker. Jane Austen regularly visited seaside resorts and in her uncompleted novel Sanditon stated "The Sea air and Sea Bathing together were nearly infallible, one or the other of them being a match for every Disorder..."[3][5]

The invention of the railway, and the proliferation of rail travel in the mid-19th century made it possible for large numbers of people to visit coastal regions. The railways, seaside towns and resorts promoted the purported health benefits of sea water; and resort towns grew enormously.[6] Resorts were set up throughout Europe in the late 18th century and early 19th century as far north as Scandinavia. In the United States, resorts such as Atlantic City became very popular while the French Riviera became popular not only amongst the French but with English visitors.

Dippers or guides were used with the bathing machines and they escorted visitors into the water.[3]

St Kilda Sea Baths established in the 1850s, rebuilt in the 1920s and recently restored

Surf Bathing at Brighton-Le-Sands Australia (early 20th century)

In 1903, Australian bathers were allowed to use public beaches in daylight hours. Then the prohibition to Sunday, Christmas and Easter bathing was revoked in the 1920s,[7] and mixed bathing was permitted from the 1940s. Restrictions on swimsuits also eased over time, with the designation of some beaches as topless and others as nude.

As public bathing became more popular, more inexperienced swimmers going out into unfamiliar waters put themselves at risk. In the US, lifeguards were often paid employees of local governments employed when bathing was most popular. In Australia, the Surf Bathing Association of NSW formed in 1907 to coordinate voluntary surf lifesaving on beaches throughout Sydney. This organisation became the Surf Lifesaving Association of Australia in 1923. The Association proved its worth on February 6, 1938, on Bondi Beach when hundreds of bathers were saved when they were taken out to sea in a freak rip on what became known as Black Sunday. Lifesaving organisations also started in other countries – such as Canada and the United Kingdom. As a result of the development of such organisations, lifesaving techniques became standardised and competitions between competing clubs were established and have become popular.

In New South Wales and other parts of Australia, bathing in the sea was banned during daylight between 1838 and 1902, because women's swimming costumes were considered indecent despite being neck to knee and men often swam nude, as was mixed swimming. Bathing was segregated in the United Kingdom until 1901.

Annette Kellerman, an Australian swimmer championed the use of a one-piece swimsuit and toured throughout the world as the "Australian mermaid" and the "diving Venus". Kellerman was arrested on a Boston beach for public indecency for wearing her trademark one-piece swimsuit but by the 1910s the style was becoming widely acceptable.

In the 1940s, women’s magazines started using advertisements that encouraged sun bathing, with greater emphasis on sun tanning than swimming. A tan became a sign of wealth, indicating that the individual was wealthy enough to go on holidays to a warmer climate. To gain an "all over tan", women's swimsuits became as abbreviated as the wearer was daring enough to wear, with bikinis increasingly displacing the one-piece swimsuit as the most common swimwear after the 1950s, and with even briefer monokinis, string bikinis and G-strings also being seen. This fashion was met with considerable resistance from more conservative groups. In the 1950s, beach inspectors would harass women wearing shortish bikinis on Bondi Beach, Sydney; and G-strings continue to be banned on many beaches in the United States.