Milestones in Surf History Part Five (#22 - #27)
Milestones in
Surf History Part Five (#22 - #27)
by Sam Bleakley
#22 :
1898 Hawaii is annexed by the USA : The second half of the nineteenth century
was a time of profound cultural and political transition in the Hawaiian
Islands. The globalization of the world economy brought ever-increasing outside
pressure, the US emerging as a Pacific power and asserting its influence. In
January 1893, a group of American and European businessmen, aided by the US
military, overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy. Queen Lili'uokalani was deposed,
relinquishing her throne. The two princes, David and Jonah, who surfed in Santa
Cruz and Yorkshire, would carve out significant political niches. Jonah, a
fierce advocate for Hawaiian independence, fought in a rebellion against the
US-supported republic and was sentenced to a year in prison. He left Hawaii
immediately upon his release and travelled the world. In 1902, he returned from
exile to participate in Hawaiian politics. David headed up the state’s
Democratic Party (and was a delegate to the 1900 Democratic National
Convention), while Jonah Kuhio Kalaniana'ole joined the Republican Party and
was elected to the US Congress in 1903 as a “delegate” from the Territory of
Hawaii, where he served until his death in 1922. His memory is woven into
Hawaiian culture, through street-names, beaches, a state holiday, and a
Hawaiian chant, “Hui Hololio” written in his honour. Despite the social
turmoil, ultimately, surfing was wholeheartedly revived in Hawaii as tourism
and beach culture became popularised in the early 1900s. The ancient sport of
Hawaii became a symbol for American tourists to consume, as a mark of a healthy
lifestyle. The economy switched from sugar (which had bought 75,000 Japanese to
the Islands to work in the cane fields between 1898 and 1907) to tourism.
#23 : 1901 -
1906 Waikiki Hotel Beach Boys : Historically Waikiki was
marshland, progressively reclaimed from it’s native taro and fish provision to Asian
rice farms and ultimately Caucasian tourism facilities. The first beachfront
resort, the Sans Souci Hotel, opened in 1884, hosting writer Robert Louis
Stevenson five weeks in 1893, who reportedly sat under the old hau trees to
provide shade and write. Two Waikiki hotels - the Moana (opened in
1901), and the SeaSide (1906) – started to offer surf lessons from the emerging
group of local Waikiki beachboys, including Duke Kahanamoku (1890-1968) and
George Freeth (1883-1919). The surfing revival also included a revival
of other sacred Hawaiian arts, including hula, a living theatre that
accompanied an oral tradition of poetry, and was often danced for Pele, the
fire goddess (in a living land of volcanic magma, basalt and lava). There were
300 distinct hulas in the Hawaiian repertoire before colonial contact. Tourism
presented a market for both beach lifeguarding, surf lessons and professional
hula troupes, entertaining locals and visitors at luaus (outdoor parties). Hawaiian music was also re-energized:
imported guitars and ukuleles had their strings ‘slackened’ to suit traditional
Hawaiian songs. Waikiki beachboys played a finger picking style with a steady
rhythm to accompany singing and hula dancing and stylish surfing. This photo
shows Waikiki beachboys lined up outside the Moana Hotel in the 1920s.
#24 : 1906 The First Surf Movie :
Thomas Edison films surfers for the first time at Waikiki : Edison is the legendary American inventor and businessman who
changed the technological world through developing the phonograph, the motion
picture camera and the electric light bulb. This
humble footage of Waikiki (the oldest surviving) was taken
for Robert Bonnine who was filming a documentary called ‘Actuality,
and Edison’s footage features (across two videos) surfers,
stylish dismounts, outrigger canoes, people arriving to a luau on horseback,
Japanese wrestling, Hawaiians throwing net in malos and the Oahu railroad. Hawaii had changed dramatically since
first contact with Europeans. American immigration began
almost immediately, led by Protestant missionaries. American style plantation
farming for sugar required extensive labour. Several waves of permanent
immigrants came from Japan, as well as China and the Philippines. Tragically,
the indigenous population declined and by 1900 Hawaiians were a minority. On a
positive note, tourism allowed the Hawaiian arts to flower once again,
particularly surfing, spread in reefs, bays, beaches and points across the
eight islands and 750 miles (1,210 km) of striking coastline.
#25 :
1907: Surf Life Saving Association founded in Australia : Following drownings
at Sydney beaches, surf lifesaving took hold, with pioneer volunteer clubs
(including Bondi and Bronte) training in life saving methods and performing
beach patrols for public safety. The first club outside of Sydney was Kiama
Surf Bather's Club, founded in 1908 in New Zealand, the historic waveriding
home of the Maoris. Surf Life Saving Great Britain (SLSGB) was formed in 1955
and early volunteer clubs patrolled the likes of Bude, St Agnes and Brighton.
The roots of British livesaving, however, stretch much further back. In 1891
The Swimmers' Life Saving Society (later, The Life Saving Society, then the
Royal Life Saving Society in 1924) was formed in London by William Henry (a
champion swimmer) to provide lifesaving training to reduce the number of
drownings. In 1892 the Bronze Medallion award was established. These movements
spread to Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa (where they were
polished to perfection) and in the 1950s and 1960s, South African and
Australian surf lifesaving clubs would produce many skilled waveriders and
lifeguards who would inspire the emerging European surf scene. Pictured here is
Australia’s first female surfer, Isabelle Lathem, a member of Freshwater Surf
Life Saving Club, who first rode tandem with Duke Kahanamoku when he introduced
Hawaiian style stand-up riding at the 1914 Surf Carnival in Manly.
#26 : 1907 Jack London Surfs at Waikiki /
George Freeth is Mercury : Hawaii became a new magnet for travel writers, and
in his glory days as a bestselling adventure novelists – ‘The Call of the
Wild’ (1903), ‘The Sea Wolf’ (1904) and
‘White Fang’ (1906) - Jack London was taught to surf by George Freeth in 1907.
In ‘The Cruise of the Snark’ (1911), London recounted the brilliant Freeth:
“And suddenly, out there where a big smoker lifts skyward, rising like a
sea-god from out of the welter of spume and churning white, on the giddy,
toppling, overhanging and downfalling, precarious crest appears the dark head
of a man. Swiftly he rises through the rushing white. His black shoulders, his
chest, his loins, his limbs - all is abruptly projected on one’s vision. Where
but the moment before was only the wide desolation and invincible roar, is now
a man, erect, full-statured, not struggling frantically in that wild movement,
not buried and crushed and buffeted by those mighty monsters, but standing
above them all, calm and superb, poised on the giddy summit, his feet buried in
the churning foam, the salt smoke rising to his knees, and all the rest of him
in the free air and flashing sunlight, and he is flying through the air, flying
forward, flying fast as the surge on which he stands. He is a Mercury - a brown
Mercury. His heels are winged, and in them is the swiftness of the sea. In
truth, from out of the sea he has leaped upon the back of the sea, and he is
riding the sea that roars and bellows and cannot shake him from its back. But
no frantic outreaching and balancing is his. He is impassive, motionless as a
statue carved suddenly by some miracle out of the sea’s depth from which he
rose.” This image is courtesy of the Jack London Society http://jacklondonsociety.org
#27 : 1907 George Freeth the ‘Hawaiian
wonder walks on water’ at Redondo Beach : Freeth was born in Oahu in 1883. His
mother was part-Hawaiian, his grandmother, Elizabeth ‘Lepeka’ Kahalaunani, a
pure Hawaiian. His father was Irish. While vacationing in Hawaii, Industrialist
Henry Huntington (of Huntington beach fame) saw Freeth surfing and swimming and
hired him through the Pacific Electric railroad to introduce surfing to Los
Angeles through a cunning marketing scheme. The company hoped to lure the
public into making regular trips to the Pacific in its railways carriages. They
were also building the largest saltwater plunge pool in the world. Freeth was
advertised as ‘the man who could walk on water’. At Redondo Beach, and other
spots along the Southern Californian coast, Freeth gave demonstrations and
lessons to spark interest among young Californians, following in the footsteps
of Prince Jonah Kuhio Kalanianaole Piikoi and his brothers. Southern California
was undergoing a large growth spurt with the development of a variety of
coastal resort communities. Here Freeth worked as a pioneer lifeguard
developing key equipment (the torpedo shaped rescue buoy) and techniques, plus
introducing water polo to the California coast. Tragically his life was cut
short at the age of 35 in 1919 when he died of a flu pandemic. Freeth had
already been dealing with respiratory infections due to the extreme exhaustion
he suffered in 1908 when he rescued six Japanese fishermen from a capsized boat
during a storm at South Bay. For this he was awarded The United States Life
Saving Corps Gold Medal, The Carnegie Medal for bravery and The Congressional
Medal of Honor.
