The Rescue Can: History of the Lifeguard's Most Iconic Tool

Picture a lifeguard tower on a Southern California beach and you probably picture a bright red, torpedo-shaped float hanging from the railing. That is the rescue can, and it is so tied to the job that we named our company after it. Its story runs from a pointed metal cylinder in 1897 to the molded plastic buoy guards still swim out with today. Along the way it picked up several names, a softer cousin called the rescue tube, and a starring role on television. A few details depend on which history you read, so we'll flag those as we go.

What is a rescue can, exactly?

A rescue can is a hard, hollow, very buoyant float that a lifeguard tows on a short line clipped to a shoulder strap. Molded handles along its sides and tail give a struggling swimmer something solid to hold.

It goes by a lot of names. Rescue can and rescue buoy are the most common. Torpedo buoy describes the shape. Burnside buoy honors one of the people credited with the modern plastic design. Equipment standards often use a broader term, rescue flotation device, or RFD, which covers both hard cans and soft foam rescue tubes.

Whatever you call it, it is not optional gear. The United States Lifesaving Association (USLA) lists at least one RFD for every lifeguard on duty in its minimum equipment standards for open water beaches. The International Life Saving Federation is just as direct: it says rescues without equipment put the lifeguard at significant risk.

Where did the rescue can come from?

Most lifesaving histories trace the rescue can to 1897 and a Captain Sheffield. The details get fuzzy quickly.

• His first name. Several American accounts call him Henry. At least one lifeguard history calls him Harry and describes him as South African.
• Where it happened. Life Saving KZN, the lifesaving organization in South Africa's KwaZulu-Natal province, says the device was born at the Breakwater Club near Vetch's Pier in Durban. Its history describes Sheffield experimenting with a towable buoy attached to a swimmer, then moving to the United States and developing it further around 1915.
• What it looked like. The common description is thin sheet metal, pointed at both ends. One equipment supplier's history specifies galvanized steel joined with silver solder.

The pointed shape slid through the water with little drag. The downside: hard metal tips and seams could hurt the swimmer and the lifeguard alike.

The Walters torpedo buoy

In 1919, Henry Walters, a lifeguard at Pablo Beach, Florida (the town later became Jacksonville Beach), built a torpedo buoy for the volunteer lifesaving corps there. Descriptions of his design list a steel shell about a yard long and 10 inches wide, weighing around six pounds, that could keep six people afloat. The ring-style float it replaced held two or three. Popular Mechanics featured it in 1921, and the Volunteer Life Saving Corps says the American Red Cross formally adopted it as standard in 1935.

From steel to aluminum, cork and balsa

Cork and balsa wood versions appeared, and one supplier's 1946 catalog listed a four-foot balsa torpedo buoy. By the mid-1940s, aluminum cans with rounded ends began replacing steel, which cut weight and some of the injury risk. Rounded aluminum was better, but it was still hard metal, and injuries didn't go away.

When did the lifeguard rescue tube appear?

The lifeguard rescue tube grew up in Santa Monica. Preston "Pete" Peterson, a champion surfer who was part of the city's first lifeguard crew, is widely credited with the Peterson tube in the mid-1930s. Surf Life Saving Queensland says he had a working prototype ready for production by 1935. The early version was a yellow inflatable tube with a snap hook on one end and a harness strap on the other.

Credit for the idea is not unanimous. A 2005 profile of Peterson in The Surfer's Journal, quoted on Openwaterswimming.com, says Peterson helped test and later manufactured a flexible rescue tube pioneered by his friend and fellow guard, Lieutenant Wally Burton. Either way, the tube came out of Santa Monica lifeguarding in that era, and Peterson's name stuck to it.

The inflatable design had one serious flaw. It could deflate in the middle of a rescue. The fix was closed-cell foam rubber, which doesn't depend on holding air. Sources disagree slightly on timing: one dates the foam tube to 1964, others to the late 1960s.

California's gear also traveled. USLA's own history says that when California lifeguards competed at an international lifesaving carnival held in Australia around the 1956 Olympics, they introduced the Australians to the rescue tube, which had been designed in California, and to the rescue buoy, which California guards had perfected.

Who invented the Burnside buoy?

The plastic rescue can most lifeguards use today came out of Los Angeles County, and the credit is shared.

Bob Burnside joined LA County as an ocean lifeguard in 1951 and later became the county's chief lifeguard. He was also the founding president of the organization that grew into USLA. The International Swimming Hall of Fame says he set out to replace metal cans because they were injuring lifeguards, and that his plastic buoy is still used in a form very close to the original.

The design and manufacturing side is credited to Ron Rezek, then an industrial design graduate student at UCLA. He had been experimenting with rotational molding, a process that makes a hollow, seamless plastic shell, using tough cross-linked orange polyethylene. After meeting Burnside at a Zuma Beach lifeguard station, he settled on a torpedo shape with large side handles and a solid rear handle for towing. He founded a company, Surf-Saving International, to make it, and the can was accepted into the 1971 California Design exhibition.

The dates don't line up neatly:

• Some biographies say Burnside developed the plastic can in 1967.
• One history says a wooden prototype was approved by the board of the National Surf Life Saving Association in 1968.
• Equipment histories, a South Bay lifeguard awards history and Rezek's biography put the plastic can in 1970, with the exhibition following in 1971.

It may have been a multi-year project, but we'd rather show you the conflict than pick a winner.

What does a modern rescue can look like?

Today's cans are rotationally molded polyethylene: hollow, air-filled, hard to break and buoyant enough to hold up more than one person. Three parts do most of the work.

• Handles. Molded grips along the sides and tail let a swimmer hold on without grabbing the lifeguard. Multiple handles mean multiple people can hang on at once.
• Tow line. A rope connects the can to the strap. One major supplier cites about seven feet on its cans, enough distance to keep a panicked swimmer from climbing onto the rescuer.
• Shoulder strap. A nylon harness loops under one arm and over the opposite shoulder, so the guard can run and swim freestyle with the can trailing behind.

Rescue can vs. lifeguard rescue tube: when do guards use each?

Both are RFDs, and both trail behind the guard on a line. The real difference is how the victim connects to them.

In the surf, the can's handles let a guard keep an active, frightened swimmer at a distance. That separation matters, because a person in trouble will grab whatever is closest, and the can gives them a better option than the lifeguard. Fire Engineering's open water rescue guide notes that with a buoy, the rescuer doesn't need to touch the victim at all.

When a victim can't hold on, the tube is the better tool. The guard can secure it around the person and keep them face up during the tow. The same guide notes a standard tube supports about one average-size adult, while larger cans can support several conscious people.

Either way, the lifeguard is usually wearing fins in open water. The International Life Saving Federation recommends fins whenever a guard uses a tube or buoy, for extra propulsion. For the rest of a lifeguard's kit, from whistles to first aid supplies, see our guide to what lifeguards carry.

Why is the rescue can red?

Visibility. A rescue device only helps if the swimmer, the lifeguard and everyone backing them up can spot it in moving water, foam and glare.

The same logic shows up in maritime rules. The International Maritime Organization's Life-Saving Appliances Code calls for lifesaving gear on ships to be international or vivid reddish orange, or a comparably high-visibility color, wherever that helps people find it at sea.

Lifeguard gear has never been one single shade, though. Rezek's experiments that led to the plastic can used orange polyethylene. Peterson's first tube was yellow. A 2017 Civil Beat column on public-access rescue tubes placed at unguarded Hawaii beaches quotes organizers who switched from red to yellow because yellow is easier to see. Today's cans are most often described as bright red, and that is the version most beachgoers picture, thanks in large part to one TV show.

How did Baywatch make the red can famous?

Baywatch premiered on NBC in 1989, was canceled after one season, then came back in first-run syndication in 1991 and ran until 2001, becoming one of the most widely watched shows in the world. It followed Los Angeles County lifeguards, and its title came from the name of the rescue boats that patrol Santa Monica Bay. LA County itself notes that its Baywatch rescue boats inspired a hit show in the early 1990s.

The red can became part of the show's identity. The International Swimming Hall of Fame describes the Burnside can as the symbol of the series, and one major lifeguard equipment supplier traces most of the public's awareness of the rescue can to Baywatch in the early 1990s. For many people around the world, a lifeguard running into the surf with a red can is simply what the job looks like.

The real story is better than the TV version: more than a century of trial and error, much of it on Southern California sand, aimed at keeping both the swimmer and the rescuer alive.

Why we named our company after the rescue can

The rescue can is the simplest symbol of what a lifeguard does: watch closely, recognize trouble early and get flotation to a person fast. That's the idea behind Red Can Lifeguards, from private pool parties to backyard events across LA County, Ventura County, the South Bay and Orange County.

Check our service areas to see where we work, meet the crew, or book a lifeguard for your next event. Heading to the beach instead? Brush up on how rip currents work and how to read ocean conditions before you paddle out.