This article ran in the January 1998 issue of Australia's Surfing Life.

Edward Viscount Deerhurst was never a brilliant surfer. What was fascinating about Ted was his willingness to stick at it. Ted died at the age of 40 of heart failure in a Honolulu hotel room in October 1997. I’ll miss him and I don’t think I’m the only one.

The son of a rich and titled British landowner and an American mother, Ted Deerhurst could have done many things with his life; instead, he decided to be a professional surfer at a time when few Aussies or Hawaiians dared to consider such a career. Surf mag readers of the late 1970s will recall him being billed as “The British Lion” at events like the Smirnoff Pro in Hawaii, or the Bells Easter Classic, where this reporter first bumped into him in 1977. Being just a tiny grommet, I was awestruck to see Ted in the Torquay pie shop hanging with superluminary pros like Rory Russell and Michael Ho, and immediately assumed he was in their hell-man legend league. Over the next few years, it became obvious that Ted was something far more interesting - a man who seemed doomed to failure, yet refused to give up, no matter how cruel the blows dealt him by nasty old Fate.

Ted was a good-looking, sturdily built, passionate, idealistic person who try as he might, could not get through a heat. Often it would be because a couple of the psycho young talents of the day—Joe Engel or Tom Carroll or Mark Liddell or one of 50 others—would simply surf over him. But even when the heat wasn’t stacked and Ted was in form, something would go wrong; he’d miss his third wave, snap a legrope, go left instead of right and lose the shorebreak reform. And off it would be to the bleachers, frustration all over his face. But somehow, next event, Ted would be back, the British Lion, trying as hard as ever—and again bombing out.

Nobody had much time to worry about Ted in the dog-eat-dog pro trials world, where most guys had to make the main event in order to eat. By the Om-Bali Pro in May 1982, however, his mates were definitely growing concerned. In a fit of typically wild idealism, Ted had recently married a South African girl he’d met at the Gunston 500 and had installed her in his apartment at Burleigh Heads, where Ted had decided he needed to spend time and train—but instead of spending a honeymoon with his new wife, Ted had left her in Burleigh with $70 and bolted off to Bali where, surprise, he lost early. Big Simon Anderson, the spiritual father of all trialists, felt it was time for an Intervention.

We all went round to Ted’s hotel room and waited until he walked through the door. “Ted,” said Simon in his deepest possible voice, “what are you doing?” The poor bloke looked at us all for a moment or two, then cracked up and wept for about ten minutes. Then he turned around and gave one of the most brilliant, inspirational defenses of the surfing life I’ve ever heard. Here he was, born into English aristocracy and expected by his family to go to London and wear a pinstriped suit all day and be filthy rich. But instead, he’d chosen to surf and damn the consequences. “Surfers see things that nobody else sees in the world,” he expounded, eyes alight. “We’re living a life that the rest of the world only wishes they could live. We ride waves with dolphins and follow swells around the world—we’re free! I’d do anything to experience that.”

Later that year in Hawaii Ted won a heat, in the Pro Class Trials, and we cheered our guts out for him.

"RIP TED DEERHURST," BY NICK CARROLL

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