The History of Surfing from Ben Cater, Ph.D

We recently teamed up with historian Dr. Ben Cater to give us an in depth look at the history of surfing from an academic standpoint. Dr. Cater is the Associate Dean of General Education, the Director of Humanities Honors Program, and the Assistant Professor of History at Point Loma Nazarene University here in San Diego. As a fun and informative elective, he teaches a surf history course. Our store manager Jake Hennessy took this class in college and it shaped his knowledge and appreciation of the sport. Here is what Dr. Cater has to say about the history of surfing: 

According to our earliest historical records, he‘e nalu (literally “wave-sliding”) formed an integral part of Polynesian culture.  Its worldview was ancient in that it assumed reality was multidimensional, intelligent, and intelligible.  The Hawaiian pantheon included gods and spirits who communicated with humanity, imparting divine significance to everyday life.  Surfing had been given to men and women at the beginning of time.  Mythology taught that Aumakua the shark god taught Pele the goddess of volcanoes and her sister, how to surf and from there, it was handed down to mortals.  Humans were expected to lead moral lives as outlined by the kapu, a quasi-divine ethical code that divided behavior into the morally clean and spiritually impure.  It influenced many aspects of life, including surfing.

According to the kapu, shaping surfboards was sacred and reserved for elite craftsmen.  Shapers were chosen from elite families and enjoyed kahuna or priestly status.  Often formally educated themselves, shapers were responsible for training younger apprentices.  Felling a tree – usually koa, ula, or willi willi due to their water-resistant properties – was considered ceremonial in nature, requiring a priest to offer prayers and a kumu, or ritualistic fish, to be buried near the roots of the fallen timber.  This rite was complemented by chants, the blessings of surfboards, and prayers at holy sites (heiaus) for good surf.  According to historian Patrick Moser, surfing was interwoven in folk wisdom, songs, and poetry.  Because spiritual power (mana) was thought to pervade the ocean, riding waves could be a conduit for divine blessing.

He‘nalu also strengthened the political and social order.  Since the thirteenth century, Hawaii featured a caste system of ali‘i (monarchs and noblemen), kahunas (priests) and Makaʻāinana (commoners).  The hierarchy was considered divine, with monarchs having descended from gods and enjoying special privileges, including exclusive access to the best surf breaks (hence “Queens” at Waikīkī) and extra-long (eighteen to twenty-four foot) surfboards (olos).  Designed for regal stability style as well as efficient paddling, olo allowed monarchs to paddle coastlines to review their kingdoms or to engage in diplomacy.  Undoubtedly olos also projected royal power over the smaller ten-to-twelve-foot alāia of male commoners and the belly-boards (paipos) of women and children.  Commoners typically rode waves together, sometimes with entire families or villages.  Surfing was done for fun, solace, and to socialize, a regular habit that strengthened community and cultural bonds.  

In the eighteenth century, contact with the Western World wrought significant changes to how people thought and wrote about surfing.  Ancient views regarding surfing as an integral part of an enchanted reality gave way gradually and incompletely though unmistakably to one that was smaller, more measurable, subjective and contextual in its meaning.  This transition was incremental and incomplete, and while not linear emerged through a steady stream of explorers, missionaries, and travelers whose descriptions and experiences with surfing came to inform a new understanding of the pastime by the 1900s. 

In 1769 British explorer James Cook observed Tahitians surf while anchored in Matavai Bay.  He and his crew represented some of the most accomplished seamen in Europe, lending weight to their remarks about the islanders’ aquatic acumen.  When ship surgeon William Anderson witnessed a native complete an especially good ride, he wrote, “‘I could not help concluding that this man felt the most supreme pleasure while he was driven so fast and smoothly by the sea.’”  Similar observations followed.  From Kealakekua Bay, Hawaii, in 1779 James King wondered at the “‘boldness and address with which we saw them perform . . . difficult and dangerous maneuvers.’”  Women appeared to surf better than men, likely due to their greater sensitivity to the nuances of wind and water, while children played in the surf without fear.  All people surfed without clothing or a modest loin cloth at most.  Although foreigners noted the frequency with which islanders surfed, they tended to portray it as an amusement or diversion rather than as a touchstone of island civilization.

Between 1820 and 1840, about two hundred missionaries arrived from New England.  Idealistic but overly narrow, they came with hopes of “‘covering these islands with fruitful fields, and pleasant dwellings and schools and churches, and of raising up a whole people to an elevated state of Christian civilization.’”  Led by Hiram Bingham, the group held typical nineteenth century views about the inferiority of dark-skinned people.  Kānaka (Hawaiians) needed the Gospel as well as racial uplift through the adoption of Christian and American values and norms, including biblical sexual ethics, church attendance, sobriety, hard work, English literacy, and the eradication of native spirituality, superstition, public nudity, and frivolous games including gambling.  Historian Scott Laderman writes, “Bingham and his contemporaries found, in time, a surprisingly receptive audience.  They were undoubtedly aided by the ongoing decimation of the Hawaiian [sic] people.”  Surfing declined after the missionaries’ arrival due to a combination of factors, including pathogens as well as a new emphasis on strenuous labor, less leisure time, schooling, and surfing’s apparent association with pagan deities, barbaric indolence, and sexual promiscuity.

By the mid-nineteenth century European and American visitors traveled increasingly to Hawaii. Motivated by pleasure and the perceived health benefits of a tropical climate, notable travelers included Herman Melville, Isabella Bird, and Mark Twain.  They produced romantic accounts of the peculiar charms of island life – balmy trade winds, powerful waves, bath-like water, hula dancing, climbing volcanoes, eating poi, and “surfriding.”  They wrote admiringly about islanders’ sunny dispositions and bronzed physiques, with Reverend Henry T. Cheever breaking from his Christian brethren in chastising their discouragement of an “‘unequalled means of retaining health, or of restoring it.’”  Among Hawaiians, surfing persisted in areas less impacted by foreign influence, argues Isaiah Helekunihi Walker, but less as a shared pastime and more as an individual act of defiance against white intruders.  In Roughing It (1872) Mark Twain recounted his attempts to surf: “‘I got the board placed right, and at the right moment, too; but missed the connection myself.  The board struck the shore in three quarters of a second, without any cargo, and I struck the bottom about the same time, with a couple of barrels of water in me.’”  Relying on his mind and emotions alone without reference to a community or a larger cultural framework, Twain’s account is notable for its subjectivity, and seems to point to an emergent modern understanding of surfing.

This understanding matured over the next couple of decades.  Scholars have described the late nineteenth century as witnessing the “revival” of surfing, although it’s probably more accurate to describe it as an era of recreation or evolution.  By the 1890s travelers began taking photographs of wave riding to inform their more exacting descriptions.  Previous generations relied exclusively on narratives description inspired by observation which, to some, left an “‘erroneous impression.’”  Chemist Henry Carrington Bolton attempted to disabuse the public by photographing kānaka to illustrate the “mechanics of riding waves.”  His efforts eventually encouraged a scientific view of surfing with later travelers describing it as an athletic performance based on the technical mastery of nature, applying “expert positions,” and developing innovative surfboard designs.  Jack London, author of Call of the Wild (1903), would go on to write about the “‘physics of surf riding’” in which he noted the speed, height, and direction of waves as well as his efforts to “properly mount” his board. 

But London would also introduce Progressive Era ideas about race and social progress, furthering a modern view of surfing.  Understanding kānaka to be a “vanishing race” like the Indians of North America, London portrayed wave-riding, and life generally, as a heroic struggle “red in tooth and claw” (to quote Alfred Tennyson) in which the fittest survived.  “White” people had seemed to evolve more efficiently and completely than brown and black populations and were destined by nature to determine the course of civilization.  Christianity’s emphasis on compassionate self-restraint and the apparent feminizing effects of industrialization, needed to be resisted through a manly, powerful embrace of a strenuous life.  Thus London, after building and sailing a ketch to Oahu, tried to “tackle surf riding” and become a “sunburned, skin-peeling Mercury.”  He sought to develop every aspect of his life in accordance with his ideology.  On the shores of Waikiki, before wading into the emerald waters, he told himself, “You are a man, and what that Kanaka can do, you can do yourself.”   

After a couple of failed attempts, London successfully rode a wave.  He also went on to establish with fellow eugenicist and supporter of Hawaiian annexation, Alexander Hume Ford, the Outrigger Canoe and Surfboard Club in 1907.  Although the club was founded to “preserve the ancient sport of surfing,” it was meant to be enjoyed by modern people - white middle-class vacationers, politicians, and businessmen seeking to build-up Waikīkī’s hotel-industrial complex.  Few kanakas surfed by the early twentieth century, but among those who did, such as future Olympian Duke Kahanamoku, the club was a no-go due to racially restrictive customs. 

The Duke and other native Hawaiians like George Freeth would create their own club and pioneer the beach boy lifestyle – hanging out at the beach playing ukeleles, talking story, flirting, napping, or nursing a hangover – that would take root in Southern California by the 1920s.  Although Freeth would be indispensable for encouraging a beach-oriented lifestyle there, and Kahanamoku for introducing the ancient art of surfing to the world, it would be Wisconsin native Tom Blake, a bachelor vegetarian who surfed alone, believed that reality was composed of matter alone, authored technical essays on surfing for Popular Science, and invented the lightweight hollow surfboard and fin, who would become the first modern surfer, argues historian Matt Warshaw.  By the early twentieth century, a modern view of surfing had fully emerged.

Ben Cater, Ph.D.

Point Loma Nazarene University