Surfing History in a Tiny Nutshell
We are still uncovering ancient surf history from around the world.
Currently modern surfing is growing worldwide at a tremendous rate. In my time as a surfer, I have seen the numbers of surfers in Mexico, South Korea, Taiwan, India and China, for example, go from mere hundreds or less, to tens of thousands of surfers. I believe waves are an infinite resource. Swells come every 8 seconds or so over most of the earth’s coastlines. There is infinite energy, and surfing is the enjoyment of this energy through riding waves.
The modern surfing boom began in the early 1960s when a tsunami of surf culture rolled out from Southern California with the Gidget book and movie, surf music by Dick Dale, the Ventures and the Beach Boys, and with numerous surf movies like
Endless Summer and mainstream movies lead by Elvis’s Blue Hawaii. This boom has been growing for sixty plus years. Amazing!
The early stages of this boom correspond with the evolution of polyurethane surfboard blanks and polyester resin and fibreglass. With these new materials, Surfboard manufacturing dramatically increased to supply the growing demand. Prior to the 1960s boom there was another world-wide boom of surfing which started with World War One. I have heard that during the war, soldiers from the commonwealth countries, France and the USA spent time in the trenches together. Death surrounded them and they had time to contemplate what they wanted to do most when they were free. A common answer was “surfing” (and there is a lot more to this story, perhaps for another time). After the war, surfing became enormously popular in the western world. The surf scene was documented by such celebrities as Agatha Christie and George Bernard Shaw. In the UK and South Africa, surfing evolved to include beach holidays, new surfing friendly bathing suits and a considerable surfboard industry. One wood workshop in the Devon village of Mortehoe, annually produced an average of 10,000 new bellyboards for many years and over 300,000 over the years the factory was in operation, starting in 1921. This is a lot of boards for one of the many board makers in the UK! The surfing was mostly done on thin planks of wood where the nose was lifted. The lifted nose along with flexibility was a big evolution in design which brought manoeuvrability and control while surfing. During these years public beaches evolved from a place of fear and shipwrecks to a playground for all.
Around the same time (from 1910 to the 1950s) in Australia, California and Hawaii, surfing was influenced by Duke Kahanamoku, George Freeth, Tom Blake and others who stood on large, flat wood surfboards and later on hollow plywood boards. This surf culture was based on indigenous Hawaiian surfing. Over many hundreds of years the Hawaiians had developed a very advanced surfing which was largely snuffed out in the late 1800s. Western immigrants to Hawaii started to take up surfing at this time, most famously at Waikiki, yet it was a mere shadow of the surfing of a hundred years earlier.
My favourite paragraph in the book Surfing, a History of the Ancient Hawaiian Sport by Ben Finney and John Houston, 1966 states:
In 1823 the missionary C.S. Stewart observed that on Maui the surfboard formed “an article of personal property among all the chiefs, male and female, and among many of the common people.” After a run of particularly heavy waves off the Lahaina coast he added that surf provided “a fine opportunity to the islanders for the enjoyment of their favourite sport of the surfboard. It is a daily amusement at all themes, but the more terrific the surf, the more delightful the pastime to those skilful in the management of the boards… hundreds at a time have been occupied in this way for hours together.” And Ellis, that adventurous missionary who hiked around the island of Hawai’i, described the islanders’ mass reaction to a sudden run of good waves: “the thatch houses of a whole village stood empty,” he said; “daily tasks such as farming, fishing and tapa-making were left undone while an entire community - men, women and children - enjoyed themselves in the rising surf and rushing white water.”
Prior to the western world taking up surfing, many places had a well entrenched surf culture. In the 1800s surfing was well documented in Japan on the Itako or Itago bellyboards. In the year 1821, a poet, Kokurakuan Kanri wrote this haiku about children surfing at Yunohama Beach.
Perhaps ten children of 12 or 13 are there,
taking the boat's planks in each hand, diving into the rough waves and heading further and further out to sea.
Just when you think they've reached the ocean, they ride the waves and come back to shore. They do it so quickly, like an arrow, and they repeat this process over and over again. To shore, fast, like an arrow, so many times they go.
You can find more information on the surfing history of Japan at www.nobbywoodsurfboards.com
During the age of western exploration through the Pacific, there are great accounts of surfing in many places including Hawaii, Tahiti, Tonga and Polynesia. George Vason landed on Tonga in 1797 with the first group of missionaries. The other eight missionaries he landed with did not last long, but he stayed for four years. Here is a passage I find interesting because it is the first account of surfing in Tonga written by Vason, the first westerner to live with the Tongans.
(Life of the late George Vason of Nottingham 1840) Note; Vason requested the book be published after his death.
They [the Tongan royalty] take particular delight in another amusement in the water, called Furneefoo. They go down to the flat shore, at high water, when the swell rolls with great force to the land, and plunge in and swim some yards into the sea, then pushing themselves on the top of the swell, they ride in, close to the shore. It is astonishing to see with what dexterity they will steer themselves on the wave, one hand being stretched out as the prow before, and the other guiding them like a rudder behind; and though they are riding in upon the swelling billow, with a frightful rapidity, that makes you apprehend they will be dashed and killed upon the shore, they will, with surprising agility, turn themselves suddenly on one side, and darting back through the next wave, swim out to sea, till another swell waft them on towards shore; when, inclined to land, they will again turn themselves on one side, and, awaiting the wave’s return, dart through the refluent surge, and reach the shore in safety. Several hours are often spent at one time, in this sport, in which the women are as skilful as the men. I never attempted this diversion myself, as the trial might have been fatal.
Although this passage is about body surfing and does not mention surfboards, it clearly shows the mastery of the Tongan wave riding. There is evidence that the Tongans also used surfboards, but no written accounts of them surfing exist to my knowledge.
The early western merchants who sailed to India observed an advanced type of surfing. This was documented around the major city of Madras, now known as Chennai. Westerners came to know the surfers as basically porters who brought passengers of the merchant ships back and forth from the ships to the beach. The common surf craft was three logs of light wood strapped together and a wood paddle. This was used as a stand up paddle board. Exactly when this sort of surfcraft was developed, is still unknown to surf historians, though I think it has been around for a very long time. The first western image depicting a surfer on a wave was etched in Madras in the year 1800. The craft were called catamarans. This name was adapted to double hulled sailing boats.
The Madras surf experience through the eyes of an English tourist; “Madras itself is not a particularly interesting place, yet there are many things worth seeing in that flat and level city; though we observe that the description of them does not occupy quite twenty pages of the Handbook. As for our own impressions, we thought that the exciting work of landing through the surf-riding on the crest of a gigantic wave and then being swiftly whisked ashore by strong and swarthy arms was the best thing about Madras, except indeed the performance of the same operation when we took our departure. How we envied the independence and pluck of the amphibious natives dancing over the dangerous surf on their tiny catamarans.”
(Newspaper Archive. Colonies And India, London, October 4, 1879, page 11) The Colonies and India was a London weekly journal containing the latest domestic, colonial and foreign intelligence.
One of the greatest surfing eras, surprisingly, was over one thousand years ago in China, surfing the magnificent tidal bore of the Qiantang River. Nik Zanella documents this era in his book Children of the Tide (2019). He speaks of how the mid autumn festival in the capital city Hangzhou was centred around the display of surfers riding the biggest bore wave of the year. The bore wave was estimated to be 4 to 6 meters high and was one of the most powerful in the world. For five kilometres along the banks of the river, people packed in to see the spectacle, as the Emperor and Empress watched from high above in a pagoda. Surfers representing different clans along the river dressed in their colours and surfed with flags so they could be identified by the onlookers. Prizes were distributed to the most skilful displays. The surfing of the bore lasted for hundreds of years and recently, it has been surfed again, though the bore is much smaller now due to modern developments along the river.
Also, the great water-people of Peru have been surfing on Caballitos de Totora (meaning little horse of reeds) for thousands of years and continue to surf them today. Totora is the name of the reed which is tightly bound into a long surfboard shape and used for fishing and riding the surf back to shore. A caballito is a little horse and the surfers sit on them in the same fashion as sitting on a horse. They are called Tup in the indigenous Mochica language.
In the Eastern Mediterranean, water-people used the Hazaki for fishing and surfing. It is a finely crafted hollow small boat made from planks of wood. I do not believe much is known of these boards, except my friends in Israel have recently resurrected surfing on them. They are about 5 feet wide and 12 feet long with a pointed nose and tail. They have a short keel that runs from the nose to the tail. My friends say that these boards have been found in tombs which date back to age of the Pharos. See this amazing video here
What is the earliest evidence of surfing? Perhaps it lies buried with the community of Atlit Yam, a submerged ancient Neolithic village off the coast of Atlit, Israel. It has been carbon-dated as to be between 8,900 and 8,300 years old. It is ten meters underwater now, but it was a shoreline village before the ice age ended and sea levels rose. It seems to have had a point sheltering a river-mouth. It looks like it would be an ideal surf location! The skulls excavated from the underwater graves have evidence of surfers ear, the bony growth in the ear canal. This condition, which I have in both ears, comes from being in the water and the wind. I believe the circumstantial evidence suggests they enjoyed surfing.
It seems surfing has been around, and enjoyed as a past-time, for a very long time. We still feel the excitement of catching a wave just like our distant ancestors. When I look at surfing I try to take in the enormity of the activity. I see the surfboard as an ancient connection between the surfer and the energy of the ocean. It is a bit of human genius which helps us enjoy our lives. It can be simple or very complex, but the end goal of the surfboard is to help us flow with the earth’s energy, the waves.