Surfing 1:
Tahitian Origins
In various forms, surfing is an old, even an ancient, pastime among a number of maritime peoples.
In 1835, the British explorer Sir James Edward Alexander described surfing off the coast of West Africa: ". . . boys swimming into the sea, with light boards under their stomachs. They waited for a surf; and then came rolling in like a cloud on the top of it." Young Peruvians were also riding the waves early in the eighteenth century, using "boards" made of reeds. But modern competitive surfing grew from Polynesian roots. More specifically, from Hawaii.
Captain James Cook watched a canoe surfer in Tahiti in 1769. Cook wrote: "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."
On his third expedition to the Pacific, Cook in 1777 discovered and named the Sandwich Islands, now known as the Hawaiian Islands or, simply, Hawaii. Cook was killed in Hawaii while trying to kidnap a native chief in order to win back a boat that had been stolen.
Captain James King then took over the job of recording the voyage. He wrote the first account of surfboarding, describing what he saw in March of 1778:
. . . {T}wenty or thirty of the natives, taking each a long narrow board, rounded at the ends, set out together from the shore. . . . As soon as they have gained. . . the smooth water beyond the surf, they lay themselves at length on their board, and prepare for their return. As the surf consists of a number of waves, of which every third is remarked to be always much larger than the others, and to flow higher on the shore, the rest breaking in the intermediate space, their first object is to place themselves on the summit of the largest surge, by which they are driven along with amazing rapidity toward the shore. If by mistake they should place themselves on one of the smaller waves, which breaks before they reach the land, or should not be able to keep their plank in a proper direction on the top of the swell, they are left exposed to the fury of the next, and, to avoid it, are obliged again to dive, and regain the place from which they set out. Those who succeed in their object of reaching the shore, have still the greatest danger to encounter. The coast being guarded by a chain of rocks, with, here and there, a small opening between them, they are obliged to steer their board through one of these, or, in case of failure, to quit it, before they reach the rocks, and, plunging under the wave, make the best of their way back again. This is reckoned very disgraceful, and is also attended with the loss of the board, which I have often seen, with great terror, dashed to pieces, at the very moment the islander quitted it. The boldness and address, with which we saw them perform these difficult and dangerous manoeuvres, was altogether astonishing, and is scarcely to be credited.
Surfing evidently made quite an impression on English eyes. The expedition’s artist, John Webber, did a drawing entitled "A View of Karakakooa, in Owyhee" that shows an islander standing upright on a surfboard.
To Hawaiians and other Polynesians, though, surfing wasn’t at all new or unusual. The Hawaiians had no written language, but they transmitted knowledge of their history, legends, and genealogy through recited poems known as chants. Some of the chants tell of surfing competitions between mythical figures, often rulers. Many of the chants go back to about 1500 A.D., but surfing is believed to be much, much older than that.
The generally accepted history goes like this: Polynesians were already using surfboards when they settled in Hawaii about 400 A.D. But they used them only as belly boards. It was in Hawaii that surfers began riding longboards while standing, possibly as early as 1000 A.D.
Surfing became an integral part of Hawaiian culture. Each surfboard was crafted from a tree trunk. After the tree had been selected and cut down, a fish was placed among its roots and a prayer of thanks was offered. Then the meticulous shaping of the board began.
Hawaii had a very rigid class structure. The alii, or chiefs, at the top of the structure used boards made of buoyant wood from the wiliwili tree. Those boards ranged up to 24 feet in length. Commoners used boards 10-12 feet long, made of the denser wood of the koa tree. Areas that offered larger waves were reserved for the alii.
Missionaries began to arrive in Hawaii about 1820. Largely because of their influence, the islanders’ culture eroded away and surfing became almost, but not quite, extinct.