GNM1136
Science of Forecasting Waves
The History of Surfing From Captain Cook to the Present
By Ben Marcus
 On Captain James Cook's third expedition to the
Pacific, his ships, HMS Discovery and Resolution,
made the first recorded European visit to Hawai'i in
1778, when they stopped at the western end of the
island chain on their way from Tahiti to the northwest
coast of North America.
 Cook was killed by Hawaiians
The History of Surfing From Captain Cook to the Present
By Ben Marcus
 Lieutenant James King was made First Lieutenant
 After Cook's death in 1779 but before the Discovery
and Resolution returned to England, Lt. King devoted
two full pages to a description of surfboard riding, as
practiced by the locals at Kealakekua Bay on the Kona
coast of the Big Island. His following entry is the
earliest written account of surfing.
"The Sport of Kings" -- An Ancient
Hawaiian Tradition
 By 1779, riding waves lying down or standing on long,
hardwood surfboards was an integral part of Hawaiian
culture.
 Surfboard riding was as layered into the society, religion
and myth of the islands as baseball is to the modern United
States.
 Chiefs demonstrated their mastery by their skill in the surf,
and commoners made themselves famous (and infamous)
by the way they handled themselves in the ocean.
 Anthropologists can only guess at the origin and evolution
of wave-riding and surfboard construction in Polynesian
culture, since there's no certainty about the timeline and
movements of the Polynesians.
Early Explorers Found 'The Hawaiian Sport of Surf
Playing' to Be a National Pastime. Courtesy Bishop
Museum Archive
The History of Surfing From Captain Cook to the
Present
By Ben Marcus
 the first Polynesians arrived in the Hawaiian Islands in the
fourth century A.D.
 The Polynesians who made it to Hawai'i also brought their
customs with them, including playing in the surf on paipo
(belly) boards. Although Tahitians are said to have occasionally
stood on their boards, the art of surfing upright on long boards
was certainly perfected if not invented in Hawai'i.
 When Captain Cook arrived in Hawai'i, surfing was deeply
rooted in many centuries of Hawaiian legend and culture. Place
names had been bestowed because of legendary surfing
incidents.
 The kahuna (experts) intoned special chants to christen new
surfboards, to bring the surf up and to give courage to the men
and women who challenged the big waves. Hawaiians had no
written language until the haole (white-skinned people) arrived
The History of Surfing From Captain Cook to the
Present
By Ben Marcus
 Before contact with Cook's crew, Hawai'i was ruled by a
code of kapu (taboos) which regulated almost everything:
where to eat; how to grow food; how to predict weather;
how to build a canoe; how to build a surfboard; how to
predict when the surf would be good, or convince the Gods
to make it good.
 Hawaiian society was distinctly stratified into royal and
common classes, and these taboos extended into the surf
zone.
 There were reefs and beaches where the ali'i (chiefs) surfed
and reefs and beaches where the commoners surfed.
Commoners generally rode waves on paipo (prone) and
alaia (stand up) boards as long as 12 feet, while the ali'i
rode waves on olo boards that were as long as 24 feet.
Kamehameha at Kamakahonu by
Herb Kane
The History of Surfing From Captain Cook to the
Present
By Ben Marcus
 Hawai'i and Hawaiian surfing fell into decline for more
than 150 years around 1778. European contact was not good
for Hawai'i. After the publication of Cook's and King's
journals, Hawai'i became the central Pacific destination of
choice for captains, brigands, adventurers, missionaries
and other opportunists.
 The haole brought new technologies, languages and Gods,
along with vices and diseases that ravaged a society that
had evolved over more than a millennium.
 Haole and Hawaiian cultures were thrown together in swift
collision at the end of the 18th century, and within the first
20 years of the 19th century, Hawai'i was changed forever.
The History of Surfing From Captain Cook to the
Present
By Ben Marcus
 The undermining of Hawaiian culture accelerated in
1820, when the first of the Calvinistic Christian
missionaries arrived from England and began to
convert the Hawaiians from polytheism to the one
True God
 The Hawaiian culture fell apart but surfing remained
strong.
One of the First Known Photographs of a Surfer with his Board, c.
1890. Courtesy Bishop Museum Archive
The History of Surfing From Captain Cook to the
Present
By Ben Marcus
 Fifteen years later, Mark Twain sailed to the Hawaiian
Islands and tried surfing, describing it in Chapter
XXXII of his 1866 book Roughing It.
 "I tried surf-bathing once, subsequently, but made a
failure of it. I got the board placed right and at the
right moment, too; but missed the connection myself.
The board struck the shore in three-quarters of a
second, without any cargo, and I struck the bottom
about the same time, with a couple of barrels of water
in me."
The History of Surfing From Captain Cook to the
Present
By Ben Marcus
 By the turn of the 20th Century, surfing had all but
disappeared in the Hawaiian Islands.
 Most of the surfing took place at Kalehuawehe on the
south shore of Oahu, with a few surfers at spots on
Maui, Kauai and the other islands.
 Honolulu had become Hawai'i's largest city with one
out of every four Hawaiians living there, but surfing on
the reefs where hundreds had once cavorted was now a
rarity.
By the End of the 19th Century Surfing Was its Lowest Ebb. This
Lone Hawaiian Surfer at Waikiki Beach Carries One of the Last Alaia
Boards to Be Ridden There. Courtesy of Bishop Museum Archive
The 1900s: London, Ford, Freeth, Duke
 In 1907, Jack London came to Hawai'i as a literary lion,
having already published three best-selling adventure
novels: The Call of the Wild, The Sea-Wolf and White Fang.
 London was introduced to the joy of surfing by Alexander
Hume Ford, an eccentric journalist and wanderer. Ford
took London surfing, and there London met the most
celebrated Waikiki beach boy of the time, a 23-year-old
Irish/Hawaiian named George Freeth.
 One of the boys riding upon the crests of waves was George
Freeth, whom London encountered during surf sessions
with Alexander Hume Ford.
George Freeth
The Kahanamoku Brothers at Waikiki. Courtesy of
Bishop Museum Archive
 In 1905, the native Hawaiians
began the informal Hui Nalu
(surf club), revitalizing native
Hawaiian interest in the
sport.
 The Hui Nalu and the
Outrigger Canoe Club began
friendly competitions, and by
1911 when the Hui Nalu was
formalized there were as
many as one hundred
surfboards on the beach at
Waikiki.
Duke
 In 1912, Hawaiian beach boy Duke  Duke Kahanamoku,
Paoa Kahanamoku was already
'Ambassador of Aloha and
famous as a surfer and swimmer.
Surfing to the World.' Courtesy
 He was credited with developing the of Bishop Museum Archive
flutter kick to replace the scissor
kick in freestyle swimming and was
the three-time world record holder
in the 100-meter freestyle.
 As a surfer, Duke was one of
Hawai'i's best ocean watermen, a
beach boy and one of the founders of
the Hui Nalu Club.
 Duke was a fine figure of a
Polynesian, slim and muscular and
built for speed, blessed with
extraordinarily long hands and feet.
Duke
 In 1915, Duke was invited by the New South Wales
Swimming Association to give a swimming exhibition
at the Domain Baths in Sydney.
 Australians were vaguely aware of surfing at the time,
and the ocean-crazed people were thrilled when Duke
fashioned an 8' 6" alaia board out of native Australian
sugar pine.
 Duke rode the board at Freshwater Beach in Manly in
February of 1915 and singlehandedly put Australia on a
path to superpower status in the surfing world.
Blake and the first fin
 After George Freeth in 1907 and Duke Kahanamoku
through the 1920s, the population of surfers in California
grew slowly.
 Surfboards were mostly made of heavy and unwieldy
redwoods and hardwoods with designs adapted from
Hawaiian shapes to fit California conditions.
 By 1928, a Wisconsin-born man named Tom Blake
organized the Pacific Coast Surfriding Championships at
Corona del Mar. Top surfers from all over California
competed for the Tom Blake Trophy from 1928 to 1941,
when World War II put an end to the event.
 Blake was also the first photographer to shoot surfing from
the water.
Tom Blake, Important Surfing Pioneer and Creator of the
Surfboard Fin. Courtesy of Bishop Museum Archive
Makaha Pioneers, Rabbit Kekai in Middle, Wally Froiseth
on Right
Eve Fletcher, circa 1959
 Unlike in ancient Hawai'i, surfing in the '50s and '60s
was primarily a male- dominated sport. In spite of this,
Eve Fletcher and Anona Napoleon were two
adventurous and pioneering women who challenged
the surf alongside the men.
Anona Napoleon, 1961
 Another woman surfing in Hawai'i at the time was
Anona Napoleon, the daughter of a celebrated
Hawaiian surfing family who inherited the Hawaiian
talent for canoe racing and riding waves.
 Napoleon was a world-class competitor in both surfing
and kayaking who was temporarily paralyzed in a
diving accident, but her competitive spirit and
indomitable spirit enabled a miracle recovery.
 A year after her accident, in 1961, she won the women's
division of the Makaha International Surfing
Championships.
Gidget and the Era of Modern
Surfing
 Gidget the movie brought surfing to international
attention for the first time.
 Then came the Beach Blanket Bingo movies, the
driving surf guitar of Dick Dale, the sweet surf
harmonies of the Beach Boys, and, by the mid-sixties,
everybody was going surfing.
Today
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BBC News
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