Milestones in Surf History Part Six (#28 - #34)

Milestones in Surf History Part Six (#28 - #34)

by Sam Bleakley

#28 : 1905-1911 Hui Nalu and The Outrigger Club founded : Oahu’s best local surfers, swimmers, paddlers and canoe-racers, including George Freeth and Duke Kahanamoku, founded the Hui Nalu (Club of Waves) in 1905 (formalized in 1911). They became one with sealife: “I see the sharks all the time” said Duke, who swam well out to sea in daily practice. “I don’t bother them and they don’t bother me.” In 1908 another surf club - The Outrigger Club - was created by white haole (foreign) Alexander Hume Ford “for the purpose of reviving and preserving the ancient Hawaiian sport of surfing on boards.” Forty-years-old Ford was restless and quick thinking, with a pointy goatee and enormous ‘whiskbroom’ moustache. He was bursting with the same energy that promoted the great industrial boom in turn-of-the-century America, and saw an opportunity to promote the new territory of Hawaii (annexed in 1898) for white Americans. He fought most of his life for the Pan-Pacific Union, an international league through which he envisioned America spreading its influences to the peoples of the Pacific. Ford claimed: “it was the thrill of the surfboard that brought me to Hawaii,” and hired Waikiki beachboys to teach him to surf, including George Freeth. Ford's fund-raising manifesto described a club that would “give an added and permanent attraction to Hawaii and make Waikiki always the Home of the Surfer, with perhaps an annual Surfboard and Outrigger Canoe Carnival which will do much to spread abroad the attractions of Hawaii, the only islands in the world where men and boys ride upright upon the crests of waves.” The Hui Nalu and the Outrigger Canoe Club began friendly competitions, and by 1911 there were one hundred surfboards on the beach at Waikiki. This image of the Kahanamoku brothers at Waikiki is courtesy of the Bishop Museum Archive.

  

#29: 1911 Duke on the cover of the first Mid Pacific Magazine : Alexander Hume Ford struggled to learn to surf, but his boundless enthusiasm for wave-riding (and self-promotion) resulted in the launch of the Mid Pacific Magazine to advertise Hawaii and surfing. For Ford, surfboards were a medium through which fitness and good health would be achieved – a water-borne set of dumbells. It presented a stark contrast to the spiritual role surfing played historically in Hawaii, but helped spread surfing around the Pacific. Ford was driven to bring the culturally diverse peoples of the Pacific Rim together (under the so-called Pan Pacific Union), using Honolulu as the base – ‘The Crossroads of the Pacific’. The monthly Mid-Pacific Magazine was born in 1911 and would run for 26 years, with the expressed purpose to “increase understanding among nations and peoples.” The first edition featured Duke on the cover with an article “Riding the Surfboard”. Ford wrote many newspaper articles to showcase and help revive surfing and Hawaii, fostering better relations between the peoples of the Pacific, and of course marketing the otherworldly talents of George Freeth and Duke Kahanamoku.

#30 : 1912 Gold in Stockholm : Duke earned a place in the American swimming team for the 1912 Olympics in Sweden. He was built for speed: slim and muscular, blessed with extraordinarily long hands and feet, and he had developed the flutter kick to replace the scissor kick in freestyle. Duke passed through southern California en route to the summer competition in Stockholm, putting on surfing demonstrations at Corona del Mar and Santa Monica and causing a sensation. Duke won Gold in the 100 metres freestyle, and was catapulted to fame. Subsequently, he won Gold in the same race in 1920 in Antwerp (there were no Games in 1916), and Silver in 1924 in Paris (the Chariots of Fire Olympics), where his brother Samuel won Bronze. Touted as the fastest swimmer alive, Duke was invited to give swimming exhibitions around the world, often travelling with a surfboard, a ten feet long alaia. He also worked in Hollywood, playing island locals, Aztec chiefs and Arab princes. Duke was recognised internationally as the emissary of surfing, solidifying a reputation of expert Hawaiian watermen and women. He even reintroduced surfing to New Zealand in 1915 (once the sport of Maoris). Early twentieth-century surfer Tom Blake explained, surfing had “been rescued from the lost arts and encouraged by Duke (Kahanamoku) and his (Waikiki) beachboys. (Surfing) now promises to give health and pleasure to the youth of the world.”

 

#31 : 1914/15 Duke Inspires Australia : In late 1914, Duke was invited to Australia to compete against their swimming champions in pool meets. The swells poured in daily along the eastern coastline. In Sydney, Duke visited a timber firm, carved a length of sugar pine into an 8' 6" alaia, and surfed at Freshwater Beach, Manly (in early 1915). Duke picked out sixteen-years-old Isabella Letham from the local surf lifesaving club, and quickly got her up and riding, tandem and then solo. Claude West was also taught that day, and after Duke left, West became Australia’s long-term surf champion. With thousands of miles of coastline, and an already established beach lifesaving culture, surfing was a natural step for the sports loving and competitive Australians. Craig Baird explains that “while the Isabella / Duke story is a wonderful romantic and much celebrated tale, there were other women surfing in Australia before Duke and Isabella shared a board. Isma Amor is one such surfer named in newspaper reports before Duke's visit in the summer of 1914/15” (pictured here). For Letham, Amor and West, and many many more, surfing cultivated that longing for frontier spirit and freedom from rules.

  

#32 : 1917 Ambassador of Aloha rides a mile-long wave at Waikiki : Until the late 19th century, a temple stood on the slopes of Diamond Head, overlooking the outer reefs of Waikiki. When the summer swells rolled up from the south, the priests flew their kites to signal that the surf was up. At the time, the wave at Waikiki could be ridden from the reefs at Kalehuawehe (the ancient holy grail of Oahu’s south shore) to the entrance of Honolulu Bay, nearly two miles distance. Early 20th century coastal hotel development had dramatic impacts on the coast, and Duke Kahanamoku noted that “the ocean bottom off Waikiki was changed by the construction of the Ala Wai Canal in 1928. The project cut off streams and altered drainage patterns, which allowed sandbars to build, negatively affecting wave lanes.” In 1917 Duke came close to replicating the feats of his Hawaiian ancestors with a ride of near-mythological proportions from Kalehuawehe, which is now called Outside Castles, to the beach at Waikiki. That May, a storm off New Zealand generated a large south swell, peaking at 30 ft. Even today on a big swell, the waves at Castle’s break so far off Waikiki that surfers call the spot Steamer Lane because they have to wait near the shipping channel. Duke rode a finless koa wood board, expertly navigating steeps and flats through Elk's Club into Publics, then Cunha’s, to Queen’s, and then to the edge of Canoes, where beachboys erupted when Duke stepped ashore. That wave at Waikiki no longer breaks the way it did. The story was told (and retold) and reached the masses in 1924 when American cartoonist Robert Ripley illustrated it in his “Believe It or Not” syndicated feature. The ride was described in a 1965 interview Duke gave to Surfer magazine, although he said he fell right outside the Waikiki Tavern (where the Duke statue is today). “It lives on as one of the great legends of surfing,” said Fred Hemmings, a former state senator and world champion who knew Duke. “It’s become larger than life. It’s folklore now.” Hemmings believes Duke and his friends had never seen waves that big off Waikiki. “I am sure Duke heard, deep in his conscience, the drums of ancient Hawaii beating and challenging him to ride the waves.”

  

#33 : 1918 Muizenberg bellyboarding boom, South Africa : 1880 to 1930 saw Muizenberg, a beach-side suburb of Cape Town, develop into ‘the Brighton of South Africa’. Aided by the arrival of the railway in 1883, tens of thousands of local day-trippers could access to the sea where previously only the wealthy who owned horses and traps could regularly visit. Muizenberg quickly evolved from a whaling station into the premier holiday resort in country (recall Rudyard Kipling’s poem “white as the sands of Muizenberg, spun before the gale”). In 1913 one hundred bathing boxes stood along the beachfront either side of a pavilion, the hub of beach activity. In their annual publications The Cape Peninsula Publicity Association promoted bellyboarding, the 1918 edition describing the infectious practice : “In the Pacific the islanders have made it an art. At the Cape it has become a cult. The wild exhilaration is infectious. It steadies the nerves, exercises the muscles and makes the enthusiast clear headed and clear eyed…The great essential for ‘surfing’ as the sport is termed, is a smooth plank a couple of feet wide and about four feet in length. Armed with this the devotee wades far out where the waves are breaking best. He/she then waits his/her opportunity. A fine big curling breaker comes rushing in. The surfer throws himself/herself on the plank, is caught by the wave and whirled, straight as a die, for the beach. The wave tries to overtake him/her, but itself is his/her propelling power, and he/she is always just ahead until in the shallows it is spent and hisses harmlessly by.” This brochure is from 1925 courtesy of Bev Angus at the African Studies Library, University of Cape Town.

 

#34 : 1919 Heather Price South Africa’s First Stand-Up Surfer : Currently, the earliest recorded stand up surfing event in South Africa took place in 1919 at Muizenberg. Heather Price, from Cape Town, had met two US Marines in Cape Town who had disembarked a US naval vessel that was returning to America after World War One duties. At the time of writing, there is limited information on the soldiers, beyond the fact they had two solid wood surfboards with which they shared waves with Heather at ‘Surfers’ Corner’ in Muizenberg. Heather Price's niece Kay is married to Ross Lindsay, who visited Heather in Zimbabwe before she passed away. Heather gave Ross the images you see here and told Ross that she surfed standing up, setting her aside from the generally prone bellyboarding techniques of most beach goers on small wooden boards. Bellyboard was very popular in Cape Town and Durban from the early 1900s, and South African soldiers shared stories of wave-riding techniques with British soldiers during World War One, inspiring those same Brits to start bellyboarding at home on wooden planks made by local coffin makers. In the 1920s bellyboarding was booming in Cornwall. Unfortunately the US Marines took their boards with them when their ship sailed. However, very soon South Africa would become a hotbed of surf culture, her 1,800 mile coastline home to the largest early stand-up surf scenes outside of Australia, America and Hawaii. Durban become the epicentre, locals riding upright here in the early 1920s.