Milestones in Surf History Part Seven (#35 - #41)

Milestones in Surf History Part Seven (#35 - #41)

by Sam Bleakley

#35 : 1919 Tom Tremewan Pioneers Bellyboard ‘Coffin Lid’ Production in Perranporth : In the early 1900s, beachside recreation soared in popularity in Britain, and by the 1920s bellyboard surfing was common practice. One of the first people to make bellyboards on a commercial scale was Perranporth (on the north coast of Cornwall) undertaker Tom Tremewan. Jenny Rilstone, a life-long resident of Perranporth, recalls that bellyboarding emerged immediately after the WWI, in 1918, when young men had returned home from trench warfare on the Western Front. Pioneering Perranporth watermen George Tamlyn and William Saunders were amongst the first in Cornwall to ride the broken whitewater waves lying on wooden boards. Their inspiration had come from contact with South African soldiers. Stories of life back home swapped in spaces between combat had enabled them to discover that they shared surf-pounded beaches. The difference was that the South Africans, from Durban and Cape Town, talked of their own surf-riding antics on flat boards. Jenny began bellyboarding in 1921, “as soon as I had two bob for a board,” when she was just seven years old. Jenny’s timber 'Coffin Lid' was totally flat and created from tongue-and-groove screwed to three wooden cross cleats by the local undertaker, TB Tremewan. It was an activity she was to pursue until she was 82 years old. Jenny explained that by the 1930s “many Perranporth beach people were going surf-riding. It wasn’t just young men, but women, local families and an increasing number of weekend visitors.” Importantly, the railway network allowed many British families to holiday. In the seaside tourist boom of the 1920s the Great Western Railway gained fame as the ‘Holiday Railway’, able to transport huge numbers of people for a cheap cost to the coast. After tourism hit another boom following WWII, it was common in Britain for whole families, sometimes three generations, to visit the coast for the day and prone ride together. There could be hundreds of people bellyboarding a single Cornish beach on a hot summer’s day when there was a clean swell running.

#36 : 1920 Edward Prince of Wales photographed surfing in Hawaii : England’s extrovert Prince Edward was pictured having surf lessons from Duke at Waikiki. A very English press release from the royal entourage reported that “he was especially delighted with surfing…he was frightfully keen about it,” plums in mouths. The events are recorded in ‘The Diaries of Lord Louis Mountbatten: 1920-22 - Tours with the Prince of Wales.’ Travelling from Portsmouth on HMS Renown, Prince Edward and his party paddled out in a large outrigger canoe shortly after their arrival in Honolulu. “Duke Kahanamoku, the world’s champion swimmer, was the coxswain,” wrote Mountbatten. “When Duke saw a big wave approaching he ordered ‘Paddle’, and everyone paddled for all they were worth. The stern of the canoe was lifted up by the wave as it caught up with her, and the canoe, with its great outrigger, appeared to be racing down hill into a non-existent valley in the water, which it never reached, and at a speed which must have been over 20 knots. HRH (Prince Edward), who was sitting right in the stern sheets, had the crest of the wave all round him, nearly as high as his head. The canoe was then turned, and this performance repeated three times.” Mountbatten continued, “After the third ride HRH dived overboard and tried a surfboard. He had hardly mounted when he slipped off again. However, he was soon on and had one or two successful rides. The others then all dived overboard and swam about, most of them trying surfboards also.” The line up was crowded, as Mountbatten explained, “The great danger was, that if one was just swimming alone, it was exceedingly difficult to keep out of the way of all the canoes and surfboards that came racing down on top of one.”  After the surf session Edward went to meet Hawaiian royalty for a late night Luau with earth-baked pigs and hula dancing. Years later, in 1936, Edward became King Edward VIII of England. He lasted 325 days before abdicating the throne to marry twice-divorced American, Wallace Simpson. They lived in France, until the outbreak of World War II, when they retreated to the Caribbean, where Edward was Governor of the Bahamas, clearly bitten by the beach bug. Researching for the Museum of British Surfing, Pete Robinson unveiled incredible autographed photos of Edward surfing http://www.museumofbritishsurfing.org.uk/2012/04/04/a-royal-sport-edwards-1920s-surfari/

#37 : 1922 Agatha Christie hits the waves on a year-long round-the-world trip : As part of a trade mission of the British Empire Expedition (to South Africa, Hawaii, Canada, America, New Zealand and Australia), the crime novelist (Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple) surfed in Muizenberg, Cape Town and Waikiki. Agatha described her adventures in diaries and letters sent to her mother: “The surf boards in South Africa were made of light, thin wood, easy to carry, and one soon got the knack of coming in on the waves. It was occasionally painful as you took a nosedive down into the sand, but on the whole it was an easy sport and great fun.” Ultimately she stood up, delighted: “Oh, it was heaven! Nothing like it. Nothing like that rushing through the water at what seemed to you a speed of about two hundred miles an hour; all the way in from the far distant raft, until you arrived, gently slowing down, on the beach, and foundered among the soft flowing waves.” In Hawaii Agatha exchanged her silky bathing outfit for “a wonderful, skimpy emerald green wool bathing dress, which was the joy of my life, and in which I thought I looked remarkably well!” Here she claimed “I learned to become expert – or at any rate expert from the European point of view – the moment of complete triumph on the day that I kept my balance and came right into shore standing upright on my board!” ‘The Grand Tour’ publishes original letters, postcards, newspaper cuttings and memorabilia from her trip. Poirot was never reported hanging ten, nor did Miss Marple wax up her rhino chaser, but Agatha’s success as a British crime writer (she sold over a billion copies of her 80 novels) was certainly injected with a little saltwater soul.

 

#38 : 1923 Nigel ‘Oxo’ Oxenden forms the Island Surf Club of Jersey : Bellyboarding was introduced to Jersey in the early 1920s by world travelled Jerseyman Nigel ‘Oxo’ Oxenden. He was a masterful waterman, rode the outside peaks, established a critical division between green water and white water surfing, and created a leash fifty years before the leash for stand-up surfing was popularized. Oxo formed the Island Surf Club, the first of its kind in Europe, soon based in a small wooden house near St Ouen’s. The ‘green hut’ still stands. Researching for his book ‘The Surfing Tribe: a history of surfing in Britain’ Roger Mansfield interviewed Oxo’s grandson, stylish and long time Jersey surfer Jeremy Oxenden. He recalls that his grandfather “travelled to South Africa, Australia and Hawaii after WWI, and along the way picked up bellyboarding. When he got back to Jersey he built a summerhouse down at the beach and in 1923 formed the Island Surf Club. He used to make his own boards and would tie a rope from the tail of his board to the back of his belt and swim and paddle out to sea to catch the green waves. He called it ‘deep water surfing’, describing the inside as ‘the nursery’ where most surfed the whitewater, closer to shore.” Oxo’s boards were carved out of teak, pine or ash, normally about 5’ 5” long and 15” wide, weighing about 40 lbs, and decorated with hand-painted crests on the nose. In this picture check out Oxo’s leash made from sash window cord which he would tie to his belt, attached to the board by a metal loop on its tail. Oxo was a true pioneer and his spirit and style lives on in the vibrant Jersey surf culture.

 

#39 : 1924 Tom Blake inspired by a trip to Hawaii : Following in the wake of Freeth and Kahanamoku, Tom Blake became the next emissary of surfing, transforming wave-riding through innovations in board design, technique, competition, photography and writing. During Blake’s ascendance, Californians were starting to make boards more cheaply from Californian redwood, with a topcoat of marine varnish. But they remained beasts to handle. Blake was a design visionary – he wanted something lighter than the solid wood planks, and created the first hollow surfboards, fourteen feet long, sixteen inches wide, and pointed at both ends (so that a journalist at the time compared it to a cigar-box). Importantly it weighed just 30 kilos (half the weight of the Hawaiian hardwood boards). Wisconsin born Blake saw a newsreel featuring a short clip of surfing in Hawaii aged nine, then at 18, while living in Detroit, he met Duke who was on his way home from winning another Gold Medal at the Belgium Olympics. Blake soon moved to LA and became an elite competitive swimmer. He first surfed in 1921 in Santa Monica, but a heavy wipeout nearly prevented him from ever surfing again: “(I) took a big, mean, nasty pearl dive in a three-foot wave. Got shook up, put the board away and forgot about it for a while.” Three years later, now a lifeguard at the Santa Monica Swim Club, Blake surfed again, soon hooked. In 1924 he visited Hawaii. Duke was away, but his brothers took Blake to the best breaks, and introduced him to the local surfers. In ‘The History of Surfing’ Matt Warshaw writes, “The Waikiki surfers knew a little about Blake and his swimming records, and they treated him well, but the 23-year-old newcomer soon earned a reputation in Hawaii as an oddity – he was a well-dressed teetotalling vegetarian who ate handfuls of dry oatmeal straight from the bag, and was ready at all times to strike a solemn and manful pose whenever a camera was pointed in his direction.”  Obsessed by surf history, Blake visited the Bishop Museum in Honolulu and studied the long, streamlined Olo boards. Two years later, Bishop curators hired Blake to restore their wooden board collection. Blake soon built a 15-foot replica Olo, which he lightened by drilling hundreds of holes through the deck, sealing the openings with a thin layer of wood. For the next 30 years Blake shared time between Hawaii and Southern California and gained membership to Waikiki's Hui Nalu surf club. Blake lifeguarded with Duke in Santa Monica in early 1925, and between 1926 and 1935 delivered a series of groundbreaking accomplishments for the future of surfing (milestones to follow…).  

 

#40 : 1926/27 Bellyboarding Filmed in Portugal : Currently the earliest footage of bellyboarding in Europe was captured in Leça da Palmeira, a peaky beach break exposed to consistent Atlantic swell near Porto, northern Portugal. Historian and journalist João Macdonald discovered the movie stored in the National Archive of Moving Images in Bucelas. Likely the surf film was shot by the cinematographic services of the Portuguese army. Due to the large working community of British in Porto at the time (such as wine merchants and the historic partnership with the Portuguese in the 1800s battling the French), it is likely that the bellyboarders are Brits. Of course Portugal would rise up as a dominate power in surfing, sporting some of the best and biggest waves in Europe, world tour events and world tour surfers, but in the early 1900s Portugal’s glory days pioneering the golden age of exploration were eclipsed by a military dictatorship. Maritime history romantics will know that in the 15th century Prince Henry the Navigator (1394-1460) made navigation a fine art and provided ships and money to Portuguese captains, discovering Madeira, the Azores and paving the way for Bartolomeu Dias to round the Cape of Good Hope in 1488. In 1498 Vasco da Gama reached India and the Portuguese dominated the spice trade, with territory in Goa, Malacca in Indonesia, and Macao in China. It was Portuguese Ferdinand Magellan’s ships (although funded by Spain) that first circumnavigated the globe between 1519 and 1522. In the 17th century Portugal lost their spice trade domination to the Dutch, but gold was discovered in Brazil. Leapfrog to 1910 and a republican revolution took place in Portugal, yet there was no improvement in living standards for the poor, paving the way for the army to seize power in 1926. In 1932 Antonio de Oliveira Salazar became prime minister, soon a virtual dictator, with secret police, censored press and a ban of political parties. Poverty remained widespread, financial strain accentuated by 1960s guerrilla warfare in Portugal's African colonies. In 1968 Salazar was forced to resign through ill health and in 1974 the so-called Carnation Revolution finally saw democracy restored in Portugal. The first national surf competition was in 1977 at Ericeira’s Ribeira d’Ilhas, a local newspaper describing that: “Surfing consists of riding polyurethane and fiberglass planks over the beach breaks, exercising perfect balance and using the force of the waves.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89l4luie08g

#41 : 1927 Tom Blake and Sam Reid Surf Malibu for the First Time : In September 1927, Blake and New Jersey-born surfer Sam Reid were the first to ride the then private track of land known as Rancho Malibu, after driving north from Santa Monica (in Blake’s Essex roadster) on the newly paved two-lane road that would later be called Highway 1. Of course, this spot would become the ultimate archetypal summertime cobblestone right pointbreak in Los Angeles, unpeeling like ripe fruit. Malibu is the anglicized word for the Chumash Indian name for the place, Hamaliwu, meaning ‘the surf sounds loudly’. But the Ranch (cattle ranching, pottery and citrus farming) was owned by the widow May Knight Rindge. She protected the sage scented, sycamore-lined land furiously from public access with locked gates and arm guards. But right-of-way laws were fought bitterly in the Supreme Court, and Rindge lost her case, the Pacific Coast Highway allowed to tarmac through. Blake and Reid found the Rancho’s south gate locked, but no-one was around, so they parked, changed, clambered over and paddled out. Regarding the first ride, Reid noted, “we caught it together…not a yard apart, and turned into a steep, parallel slide to try and beat the continuous wall rising ahead three hundred yards to the beach. The was the game!” In ‘The History of Surfing’ Matt Warshaw explains that the wave “was a bit too racy for the finless wide-tailed planks…and was left to postwar generations to identify the break as the original ‘perfect wave’.” Photo : Keegan Gibbs.