"Seven Weeks in Hawaii," a short illustrated book by Washington state writer and stenographer M. Leola Crawford, was published in 1913. Visitors to Waikiki by this time were encouraged to take surfing lessons from hotel-employed beachboys; Crawford was fortunate enough to go riding with Duke Kahanamoku. * * * At three o’clock they dropped me out at Waikiki, where I had an appointment to go ridin...
Charmian Kittredge, an educated, wealthy, free-love-believing Socialist from the San Francisco Bay area, was born in 1871. At age 34, she married Jack London, five years her junior and at the peak of his fame. In 1907, the couple sailed from San Francisco to Honolulu aboard the Snark, a 45-foot yacht London designed himself. "Riding the South Sea Surf," London's still-popular account of his first ...
Australian-born Thomas G. Thrum moved with his family to Hawaii at age 11. He worked as a whaler and a store clerk, and in 1875 began publishing The Hawaiian Almanac and Annual, which he described as "a handbook of valuable and statistical information relating to the Hawaiian Islands." Thrum died in 1932, but the Annual continued until 1974. "Hawaiian Surf Riding" ran in the 1896 edition of the An...
Hawaii, James Mitchener's epoch-spanning 930-page novel, was released in 1959—the same year Hawaii became America's 50th state. This excerpt below takes place in 1820. The first missionaries have arrived in Lahaina, Maui. Some are being dropped off while others, including John Whipple (played by Gene Hackman in the 1966 movie) and his wife Amanda, are preparing to sail for Honolulu. * * * And th...
New York-born chemist and bibliographer Henry Carrington Bolton visited Hawaii's Niihau, the privately-owned "Forbidden Isle," in 1890. The text below is from Bolton's academic article "Some Hawaiian Pastimes," published in the January 1891 issue of The Journal of American Folk-Lore. Surfing at this stage was at or near its low point; the revival would begin around the turn of the century. Also, B...
British explorer and writer Isabella Bird, the first woman elected to the Royal Geographical Society, visited Hawaii in 1873. Six Months in the Sandwich Islands, Bird's 1875-published book, was immensely popular in its day, and for decades to follow. In his book Pacific Passages, however, surf historian Patrick Moser notes that Bird's account of surfing "appeared entirely derived from previously p...
The 7.9 magnitude earthquake that hit Hawaii on April 2, 1868, centered near the southern tip of the Big Island, was the largest to ever strike the island chain. The resulting landslide and tsunami killed 77 people. The account below is from History of the Hawaiian Islands (1872), by James Jackson Jarves. It has been shortened and edited. * * * At about 10 A. M., on [March] 28th, a series of ear...
"Ancient Sports of Hawaii Such as Surfing, Jumping, Sledding, Betting and Boxing," by J. Waiamau, was published in the missionary-funded Hawaiian language weekly newspaper Ka Nupepa Kuokoa on December 23, 1865. Little is known of Waiamau, but the purpose of the Kuokoa itself, according to founder and publisher Henry Whitney, was "the publication of all things educational for the benefit of Hawaiia...
Sophia Cracroft, an adventurous and well-connected upper-class Londoner, visited Hawaii for two months in 1861 and wrote about her experiences in a book of letters titled The Victorian Visitors. While there, Cracroft and her traveling partner, Lady Jane Franklin, were guests of King Kamehameha IV. The scene below takes place in Kailua, on the Big Island. * * * At twelve, we [headed off] to a bay...
British travel writer Samuel Hill spent six months in Hawaii, starting in December 1848, and visited areas well off the beaten track, including the Keauhua village on the Big Island, where Hill was introduced to surfing. As noted by surf historian Patrick Moser, Hill's observation as to the level of engagement here with the ancient sport suggests that "while surfriding had declined in the areas po...