Surfing 2:
The Hawaiian Revival
David Kalakau, who became king of Hawaii in 1874, called for a revival of old customs, including surfing and the hula dance. He certainly had an impact on the hula, which made a strong comeback, and probably helped influence at least a small resurgence in surfing, as well.
A group of teenaged surfers, led by Duke Kahanamoku, in 1905 formed a small organization called Hua Nalu ("Club of the Waves") to promote surfing at Waikiki Beach. Another small group of surfers was affiliated with the Waikiki Swimming Club.
When celebrity writer Jack London visited Hawaii in 1907, he met one of them, George Freeth, a 23-year-old of Hawaiian and Irish extraction.
London wrote an article about surfing that appeared in the October 1907 issue of Lady’s Home Companion. He described Freeth: "He is a Mercury--a brown Mercury. His heels are winged, and in them is the swiftness of the sea." Because of that publicity, Freeth was hired to demonstrate surfing at the opening of the Redondo-Los Angeles Railway in California.
In 1908, the Hawaiian Outrigger Canoe Club was founded at Waikiki. Despite the name, the chief object of the club was to promote surfing; or, as its manifesto proclaimed, to "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." By 1915, the club had 1,200 members.
Freeth stayed in California, becoming a lifeguard, and is credited with saving 78 lives before his death, at the age of 35, in the influenza epidemic of 1919. By then, he had introduced surfing to a number of young Californians.
But the younger Duke Kahanamoku was a much greater ambassador of surfing. In 1912, he stopped in Southern California on his way to the Stockholm Olympics, where he was to win the 100-meter freestyle swimming event. His demonstrations of surfing at Santa Monica and Corona del Mar attracted crowds.
The New South Wales Swimming Association of Australia invited Kahanamoku to give a swimming exhibition in 1915. During his visit, he fashioned a surfboard of sugar pine and demonstrated surfing at Freshwater Beach in Manly.
Kahanamoku won two more Gold Medals at the 1920 Olympics. Now one of the world’s most famous athletes, he gave swimming exhibitions all over the world during the 1920s, and often demonstrated surfing as well.
While visiting Detroit in 1920, Kahanamoku met Tom Blake, an 18-year-old long-distance swimmer from Wisconsin. Blake was captivated. Four years later, he went to Hawaii to live and to surf. More than a surfer, Blake became a student of the sport’s history and culture.
In 1926, he discovered an old, 16-foot surfboard in Honolulu’s Bishop Museum and set out to make a replica. Because the wood dried slowly in Hawaii’s high humidity, he drilled hundreds of small holes to speed the drying process, then laminated the top and bottom with plywood.
The result was a board much lighter than those generally being used. The lighter surfboard was easier to handle out of the water and easier to maneuver in the water. Blake began experimenting with construction methods and eventually developed a method of building a covered framework, similar in design to an aircraft wing.
Blake applied for a patent on the design in 1929, but he continued improving it. In 1935, he added a fin, or "skeg," to the bottom of the board for better stability.
The Blake "hollow board" design was the basis for the first production surfboards. The first manufacturer was the Thomas N. Rogers Company of Venice, California. Later, the Los Angeles Ladder Company also began producing Blake’s design. Originally nicknamed "the cigar" because of its shape, the hollow board later became known as "the cigar box" or "the kook box."
Not all surfers liked the hollow board. After Blake set records in the 100-yard and half-mile races at the 1930 Hawaiian Surfboard Paddling Championships, some demanded that competition should be limited to solid boards. However, the three surfing clubs involved decided that there should be no limitations on the type of surfboards used.
Through the 1930s and well into the 1940s, many surfers still preferred to use their handcrafted solid boards rather than Blake’s new-fangled design. Others were inspired to develop new designs of their own. One design that caught on in Hawaii was called the "Hot Curl." It was created by John Kelly in the early 1940s. Kelly purportedly took an axe to the wide tail of his solid board and hacked it down to a pintail, which made it more maneuverable in heavy surf. Kelly’s friend, aviator and surfer Woody Brown, drew on his knowledge of aerodynamics to reshape the board to make it ride faster.