surfresearch

"One of the great sports is to get a canoe made of a tree trunk hollowed out with an outrigger lashed to it and go surfriding. . . . The game is to get five or six in a canoe and paddle out about a mile.
There you wait until you see a wave you like, then everyone paddles as hard as they can to get a start.
If things are properly timed a big wave catches the canoe and curved on the shore side and shoots it along the front of it. Sometimes you can go half a mile and you go like the devil."
Lt. Edward S. Willing, USMC, in USS Illinois, to his father, July 20, 1908 (Willing, 26).
Naval Historical Center, Photographic Collection.

Hawaii; scenes and impressions,
Gerould, Katharine Fullerton, 1879-1944.
New York, C. Scribner's sons, 1916.
http://hdl.handle.net/2027/miun.afj6721.0001.001

The race is not weak or degenerate: it is, physically, magnificent in
strength and beautiful of feature. But
the Kanaka is amphibious-fishing, surfriding, swimming, he is, all his life, naturally in and out of the water. It is one
[ 12 ]
thing to cover yourself with palm-oil and
let the Pacific spray run off you in shining drops while you rest on the sands; it
is quite another to keep your wet clothes
on as you go about your business on the
shore-but it is to ask too much of Polynesian intelligence to request it to see the
difference.
[13]

The
city stretches some seven miles, end to
end, along the sea-front, running back,
up enchanted valleys, to the mountains:
the Pali, or Tantalus. "Ewa" of Honolulu are Pearl Harbor and Ewa plantation; "Waikiki" of it is-Waikiki. Here
are the seaside hotels and restaurants,
the Outrigger Club, Kapiolani Park, the
beach-houses of rich Honolulans, and
Diamond Head. Here are the bathing,
the surf-riding, the general tourist activity
-as well as the amusements of Honolulans
themselves. Across from the Moana Hotel
is Ainahau, among whose giant trees and
flowers Stevenson often sat with the little
Kaiulani, heiress-apparent to the now longsuperseded Queen. Kaiulani died during
Liliuokalani's reign, and her father, Mr.
Cleghorn, has been dead these many years.
[ 32 ]

A pastoral address,
Staley, Thomas Nettleship, 1823-1898.
Honolulu, Printed at the Hawaiian gazette office, 1865.
http://hdl.handle.net/2027/miun.aga4523.0001.001

Page 40?
Ntote E., page 13.
Those who still survive from the times of the First Kamehameha agree as to the physical deterioration of the people,
with more than one I have conversed on this subject. Their
impression is that it has resulted from the disuse imposed by
the Missionaries, of their old manly exercises, wrestling, running,
throwing the spear, sliding on boards down deep descents, surfriding, etc. A distinguished English gentleman, in 1831, wrote
to the Rev. H. Bingham a letter, a printed copy of which I
have before me, protesting against this policy. Sir E. Belcher,
in his voyage round the world, says of Oahu:
"On the first glance, I thought it had retrograded compared
with what we left it just ten years before, in 1827. The appearance of the natives was miserable and dirty. The habit of
frequent bathing and swimming which constituted half their existence is exploded.". t
Dr. Anderson virtually apologizes for the missionary prohibition of Hawaiian amusements, by quoting the author -of the Poly

41
nesian researches as to gambling and the abuses to which they
led. This is the old Puritan principle, which, if carried out,
would put an end to the athletic pursuits and recreations of
every Christian country in Europe. The abuses must be corrected. It is not needful to denationalize a country in order
to Christianize it. Not so did the first Evangelizers of Europe
after the destruction of the Roman Empire.

The wide world magazine.
Oct 1900- march 1901
New York : International News Company,
http://hdl.handle.net/2027/uiug.30112110810725

ODDS AND ENDS. 623
Io-BURIED UP TO THE NECK IS S.AND IN THE SANDWTCH ISLANDS.
A sand-bath is a hygienic luxury of compara-
tively ancient date, but the inventiveness of the
Sandwich Island natives has given it a newer
and more amusing significance. Burying a man
alive in sand has become one of the current
jokes of the day. The victim must be a willing
one. He stretches himself flat on the ground,
and sand is piled
sidered in the light of
artistic finish to get up a
weeping-scene. A score of
men, eye-glass in eye,
arrayed in the sweet
simplicity of striped bath-
ing-jerseys, amuse them-
selves leaning on each
other's shoulders, and pre-
tend to sob in a most heart-
breaking manner. The long
deal boards for surfriding
look really unpleasantly like
coffin-lids, and the whole
business – as a theatrical
eccentricity—stands with-
out a rival in the annals
and traditions of the bath-
ing resort.

Our Navy, the Standard Publication of the U.S. Navy ... v. 6 1912-13.
http://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.b2872769