Surf Culture
Our Coastal Society
First Surf Rendering by a Westerner
The first Westerner to observe the sport of surfing and to write about his encounters is Capt. James Cook, on his December arrival in Tahiti in 1777, as described in his logs and later recounted in "Cook's Voyages". In Volume 11 Chapter IX, Cook describes canoe surfing as they witnessed it for the first time,
" I saw a man paddling in a small canoe so quickly , and looking about him with such eagerness as to command my attention. He went out from shore till he was near the place where the swell begins to take its rise; and, watching its first motion very attentively, paddled before it with great quickness, till he found that it overlooked him, and had acquires sufficient force to carry his canoe before it without passing underneath it. He sat motionless and was carried along at the same swift rate as the wave, till it landed him upon the beach.
Then he started out, emptied his canoe and went in search of another swell. I could not help concluding that this man felt the most supreme pleasure while he was driven on so fast and so smoothly by the sea.."
A year later Cook arrived in Kealakekua Bay, Hawaii (on the big island) and there he witnessed the first board surfers. The expedition's artist John Webber is the first westerner to sketch a man on a surfboard. This rendering is found in his most famous engraving "A View of Karakakooa, in Owyee". Amid the hundreds of outriggers and canoes paddling out to meet the strange apparition of the British ships the Resolution and The Discovery, is a lone surfer on a blunt nose surfboard. This is the first know rendering of a surfer by a westerner.
With these first accounts, along with others from whalers and other expeditionary voyages, we realize that the real art was the act of surfing itself, that was what captivated the early explorers. They had never even dreamed of anything like surfing, so when they witnessed it for the first time they were totally overwhelmed and spent many pages of text trying to describe the feat they witnessed to those back in England, Russia, or wherever they had come from.
By the mid to late 1800's, Surf Art by westerners was beginning to be seen. A painting was recently discovered in New York that depicts surfing at Hilo Bay, (painted around 1850) by an unknown artist. It was painted on a biscuit tin,and titled "Hawaiiana".
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