The types of surfing practiced in Tahiti and Hawaii, which are themselves similar, were far more skilled than those found on most of the other Pacific islands, where surfing on boards was usually practiced by children, and the sport was not well developed. Their language, customs, and arts all confirm this. When these places were eventually discovered by the Western world, it was in Hawaii that the sport was found to have reached its greatest development.Īnthropologists tell us that the Hawaiians crossed the Pacific in their outrigger canoes coming from Tahiti and Bora Bora, where they had previously lived. There is ample evidence, from the many references in these chants, that the art of surf-riding was one of the most widespread of the Polynesian sports, practiced in one form or another throughout the Pacific region, from New Zealand to Hawaii, and from Easter Island to New Guinea.
This exchange was usually in the form of chants which were called meles in Hawaii.
In ancient Polynesia, there was no written language since both history and legend were handed down by word of mouth from parents to their children. Surfing is a very old sport, so old that its actual beginning cannot be traced. This book is the story of how I learned to surf, covering the pitfalls and difficulties, such as I found them, in the hope that my modest discoveries may ease the path of other beginners in this the greatest sport of all.Īnd at the same time that I may recapture for older surfers the flavor of some of their triumphs and anxieties as they took to the waves in the dream-like surroundings of America's newest and most romantic state. On a subsequent trip to the Islands during 1960-1962, I was fortunate enough to spend many days on Waikiki Beach. It was in Hawaii that I first tried the surf in the fall of 1956. There, surfing was the sport of kings, and there, over a century later, the first white man learned to surf, so that to this day, Hawaii has retained its eminence as the surfing capital of the world. There, the native Polynesians spun their wayward boards with bewildering skill as they hurtled down the faces of the breaking waves. The call of the surf is a constant call that throbs deep in the bloodstream of all island races.įrom prehistoric times, man has answered this call in a variety of ways, in canoes and coracles, in dinghies, in scows and whaleboats, but when at last the Pacific came to be explored, it was in the blue-green bays of the Islands of Hawaii that surfing - as we know it - was first observed.
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