Captain Gus A Dane Who Founded Cowboys Of The Sea To Aid Swimmers

Q: Who was “Captain Gus?”

A: Gus Jordahn, tough as nails, was a former officer in the Danish army who came to America in 1904. As a Coney Island lifeguard, he once was credited with 28 rescues in a day. Asked how many people he’d saved over the years, he answered in his Scandinavian growl, “All I could get, keed.”

In 1910, he founded Gus’ Baths, a swimming complex with two pools and steam cabinets near Worth Avenue that was connected to the beach by a tunnel. Muscular and tanned, “Capt. Gus” was rarely seen in anything except swim trunks. His motto became the world-known motto of Palm Beach: “Come to Our Ocean.” In 1924, Jordahn founded Cowboys of the Sea, which would rescue hundreds of ocean swimmers.

Jordahn was the first policeman ever on Palm Beach and made the department’s first arrest – two men who were bathing nude. He also erected a flagpole outside his baths in 1908, and every day, he raised the American flag. As a ship passed, he would dip it in salute.

In 1928, Jordahn and 38 others, plus four pets, rode out the great hurricane that would kill as many as 3,000. As they huddled in a cellar behind one of the pools, the ocean roared in on them, sweeping over the building.

Jordahn went on to serve as a commissioner in both Palm Beach and Palm Beach County. On his 50th birthday, he swam from Palm Beach to the mainland and back. Only six years later, in February 1938, he died of pneumonia. In 1991, a plaque mounted on a Palm Beach seawall to honor the Cowboys of the Sea
was smashed in a fall storm. It was replaced.

Gus Jordahn with a large sea turtle (Photo courtesy of the Historical Society of Palm Beach County)