The History of Surfing
Surf Revival 1900's
INTRODUCTION
Although the spirit of surfing was diminished during the 19th century, it did not die. He'enalu, in fact, fared best of all the traditional Hawaiian sports and games. Most of the others quickly disappeared in the early period of foreign contact. Surfing's flame died down, but a fortunate combination of circumstances preserved in Hawaii the Polynesian pastime that disappeared completely in such other early cultural centers as Tahiti and New Zealand. From somewhere a spark remained to smolder through the dark century of Hawaii's transformation. It was nearly one hundred years after the abandonment of the taboo system, when what little that remained of the old world was almost unrecognizable, that new, fresh elements in a changed Hawaii fanned the spark and brought the sport of surfing back to life.
SURF REVIVAL
As the 20th century began, the Waikiki area of Oahu was the center for the few still surfing. Waves were ridden occasionally on Maui and possibly on Kauai. Surfing on the once popular Kona coast had apparently disappeared. Although Waikiki was a prominent surfing location in ancient times, its position as the center for the remnants of the sport depends as much on the major shift in the Hawaiian population from Kona to Honolulu. By 1900 28% of the Hawaiians and many part Hawaiians were living in or near Honolulu. This concentration may help to explain why surfing survived at Waikiki. Yet by 1900 even at its so called "center", there was barely a suggestion of the sport's former glory.
In 1900 one of the early surfriders at Waikiki, William Cantrell says, Princess Kaiulani was an expert surfrider from around 1895 to 1899. She rode a long olo board made of wili wili. She apparently was the last of the old school at Waikiki. Princess Kaiulani was the daughter of Governor Archibald Cleghorn and Princess Mariam Likelike and the niece of King Kalakaua and Queen Liliuokalani. Kaiulani was given the Ainahau estate in Waikiki by her Godmother Princess Ruth, and there she entertained Robert Louis Stevenson in 1889. He wrote a celebrated poem, "Forth from her land to mind she goes," on the occasion of her departure to attend school in England, after which she traveled throughout Europe with her father. The Princess was widely loved as a linguist, musician, artist, horsewoman, surfer, and swimmer.
From 1903 to 1908 marks the true revival of the sport, encouraged by the following old timers: William Dole (Dole Pineapple Co), Dudie Miller, Duke Kahanamoku, Harold Castle (Castle & Cook) George Freeth, Dad Center, Kauha, Holstein, Jordan, Lishman, Atkinson, Steamboat Bill, Winter, Brown, Kaupiko, Mahelona, Keawamaki, May, Curtiss, Hustace, Roth, Aurnolu and McKenzie.
The large olo boards were no longer made. The alaia type boards in use could not match the fine relics of earlier days that you can see in the Bishop Museum, in Honolulu today. Most boards were about 6 feet long; many were hardly more than rough-hewn planks. The sport might be said to have returned to its infancy: boards were short, riding techniques were simple, the whole pastime was unelaborated and practiced only by a few. Soon after the turn of the century, however, the first signs of a revival appeared.
During the 19th century few Caucasians learned to handle a surfboard. Mark Twain, during his trip to Hawaii in the 1860's said, "None but the natives ever master the art of surf-bathing thoroughly." It was a popular myth, in fact, that only a Hawaiian could balance himself successfully while standing and riding a wave. Despite this belief, in the early 1900's, a number of Honolulu residents, including many enthusiastic schoolboys and beachboys, re-discovered the waves at Waikiki, and gradually interest in the sport was renewed.
One of these was George Freeth, who was born in 1883 of Hawaiian and Irish parentage. In 1900, at the age of 16, he taught himself to ride standing up on the board instead of lying down. The board on which he accomplished this was a solid, heavy, 16-foot olo design. The story is that it had been given to him by his uncle, a Hawaiian prince, and the board is now a treasured item in the Bishop Museum in Honolulu. Freeth was an innovator and experimented with shorter boards by cutting the old 16-foot boards in half. As the locals were rediscovering surfing at Waikiki, tourist from the United States and Europe were discovering Waikiki for the first time. In 1901 the first major resort opened in Waikiki. The Moana Hotel was plush and built in a Beaux-arts style of architecture, distinguished by a grand Banyan tree in the courtyard fronting the beach and by a wooden pier that extended some 300 feet into the water. In order to promote the Hotel advertisements began appearing around 1906 proclaiming surfing and canoeing to be exciting vehicles of sport for tourists.
Surfing is and always will be a sport of intense excitement and the shared experience of riding waves in what is most responsible for its revival. In order to facilitate this shared experienced another Waikiki institution was beginning to emerge as a main player responsible for surfing's emerging popularity in the early 1900's -- the Waikiki beachboys. In 1907 George Freeth was brought to Redondo Beach, California, to demonstrate surfboard riding as a publicity stunt to promote the opening of the Redondo-Los Angeles railroad owned by Henry Huntington --- who gave his name to Huntington Beach. Freeth stayed on in California to become the first lifeguard, and in this way brought the art of surfboard riding to the United States. He became a national hero and earned both the Carnegie Medal for bravery and the Congressional Medal of Honor when in a particularly violent storm in December 1908, he made three trips through mountainous surf to rescue seven Japanese fisherman. At least 78 people owed their lives to his work as a lifeguard. He was a great swimmer as well as surfer, and in 1912 he would almost certainly have been selected to represent the United States at the Olympic Games had it not been ruled that he was a "professional" because he was a paid lifeguard.
At the age of 35 he died in San Diego during a national influenza epidemic; locals said that Freeth exhausted himself rescuing several swimmers at Oceanside and became an easy victim of the virus. Freeth was a great man; he had the build of a surfer and by "standing on the water" at Redondo Beach he began the move of surfboard riding out of Hawaii through the rest of the world. Also prominent in the new movement was Alexander Hume Ford, an adventurous mainlander who was so enamored with the sport that he took it upon himself to personally boost its revival and popularization. In 1907, Ford organized and formed the Outrigger Canoe Club, for the purpose of "preserving surfing on boards and in Hawaiian canoes". Hence the birth of the world's first organization whose sole mission was the perpetuation of wave-riding. The club soon offered facilities for dressing, and a grass hut for board storage right on the beach. This gave surfers easy access to the sand and to the long sloping rollers.
The charter read, (Ford quote:) We wish to have a place where surfboard riding may be revived and those who live away from the water front may keep their surfboards. The main object of this club being to give an added and permanent attraction to Hawaii and make the Waikiki beach the home of the surfrider." Ford conducted surfing classes for youngsters at Waikiki. Also in 1907, it was Ford who taught Jack London how to ride a surfboard. During his famous cruise on the Snark, London spent several weeks in Hawaii, and camped for awhile in a tent on the beach at Waikiki. About this time London wrote an impassioned article on "The Royal Sport" that appeared in a national American magazine and spurred interest among Hawaii's residents, as well as on the mainland.
The Outrigger Canoe Club was mainly for Caucasians of Honolulu. Three years after its foundation, a second surfing club was formed. The Hui Nalu (Surfing Club), which began informally around 1905, and was officially organized in 1911 to promote the sport among Hawaiians. In this way the Hawaiians eventually regained their place on the beach, and with their renewed participation and the friendly rivalry between the two clubs, the sport began to recover its status as an important part of Hawaii's life. In 1911 as many as a hundred surfboards could be seen at Waikiki on the weekend.
Modern surfers had finally recovered some of the skill that greeted Captain Cook some hundred and forty years earlier. Surfing, it seemed, or rather, surfing itself, was back on its feet.
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