It was during the 1800s that the great decline in all water sports in Hawaii and throughout Polynesia took place.
Despite this and its limited reach, surfing did manage to be introduced to the United States Mainland toward the latter part of the century by three visiting Hawaiians princes who attended school not far from Santa Cruz, California, south of San Francisco, in 1885.
In 1884, the popular Hawaiian monarchs, King David Kalakaua and his wife, Queen Consort Esther Julia Kapi’olani – who were childless – adopted three boys after the deaths of both their parents. By blood, the three brothers were Kapi’olani’s nephews, the sons of ali’i from Kauai, and as princes were being prepped for the monarchy.
David, the oldest (nicknamed “Koa”), was born in 1868. At the age of 16, in the fall of 1884, he was first sent to St. Mathew’s Hall, a military school for boys, located in San Mateo, California.
The following year, Edward – born in 1870 and the frailest of the three brothers – and Jonah, born in 1871, nicknamed “Cupid,” joined their brother in California.
When not at St. Mathew’s in San Mateo, the three princes were placed under the care of Antoinette Swan and her children, who were considered older 'cousins' of the princes. Mrs. Swan had once been a chambermaid to the Hawaiian Queen at Iolani Palace in Honolulu.
The Swans lived on the coast, in Santa Cruz. Despite the distance, the Southern Pacific Railroad connected San Mateo to the seaside community, so the distance was not a problem.
July 19, 1885
While spending the summer of 1885 in the Swan household, Prince Kuhio, Cupid and Edward had constructed for them – following their instructions – surfboard planks made from California redwood.
So it was that Hawaiian Queen Kapi‘olani‘s nephews Jonah Kuhio Kalaniana‘ole (Prince Kuhio) and his brothers David Pi‘ikoi Kupio (“Cupid”) Kawananakoa and Edward Abnel Keli’iahounui surfed redwood boards at the San Lorenzo River mouth in Santa Cruz.
During the mid-1880s, the glorious first-growth redwoods of the Santa Cruz Mountains were lumbered by several fledgling timber businesses. The lumber industry was by far the largest in Santa Cruz County during the 1870s and 1880s, with enormous amounts of redwood being transported out of the region by both rail and shipping lines.
While some have speculated that the prince's boards were first transported to the river mouth by elaborate horse-drawn carriages, given the location of the Swan home on the edge of the San Lorenzo, it is more than likely that the princes simply floated them down the short span of the river to the beach.
Writers Dunn and Stoner, writing in 2010, set the scene:
"By all accounts, the middle week of July in 1885 was a glorious one in Santa Cruz. Tourists from throughout the Central Valley were flocking to the bustling seaside community to escape the sweltering summer heat of the interior. The city’s hotels and boarding houses were bulging with visitors, and so, too, were the bourgeoning businesses along Santa Cruz’s fabled waterfront—the Dolphin, Neptune and Liddell bathhouses, and the beachside Free Museum.
"The South Pacific Coast Railroad had been completed in 1880 – linking Santa Cruz not only to the far reaches of the state, but to the entire country – and, suddenly, summertime tourism was emerging as an important piston in the city’s economic engine.
"The weather had been absolutely splendid during the week. The delightfully named Santa Cruz Daily Surf, edited by the talented A.A. Taylor, noted that the blanket of fog that traditionally cooled the Monterey Bay region had lifted well before noontime each day – leaving temperatures in the high-70s to mid-80s. It was a golden summer."
"In the early edition of the Surf on Monday, July 20, 1885, the newspaper carried lengthy accounts of all the previous weekend’s festivities on the Santa Cruz waterfront under a detailed, page-two column entitled 'Beach Breezes.'
"The Surf reported that 'Sunday afternoon at the beach was one of the liveliest of the season. It was warm, very warm, but tempered by a breeze, which made the heat endurable and kept people good-natured.' It described the promenade along the beach as a 'bright and moving picture of itself,' as each of the local streetcars brought 'a full load to join the gay groups already on the sand.'
"On no other Sunday of the season, the Surf assessed, 'have so many bathers, both ladies and gentlemen, been in the water, and all pronounced it delightful.'
"There was an exciting ocean race that afternoon between a pair of swimming brothers – William and Irvine Jones – with William winning by twenty yards and collecting $40, a substantial purse for that era. A small theatrical troupe, including a small donkey pulling a miniature cart, performed a comedy routine along the breakers and 'afforded much merriment to the spectators.'"
Further east along the beach, however, at the mouth of the San Lorenzo River, history was about to be made. Three Hawaiian princes – David Kawananakoa, Edward Keli’iahoand Jonah Kuhio Kalaniana'ole – were in the water with long surfboards made of local redwoods, and milled in the shape of traditional Hawaiian o’lo boards, reserved in the Islands traditionally for royalty. Their uncle, King David Kalakaua, a renowned surfer at the long break along Waikiki Beach on the island of , had taught them to surf there as well.
According to The Surf, “The breakers at the mouth of the river were very fine and here occurred the very primest of fun, at least, so said those who were ‘in the swim.’” As many as 30 or 40 swimmers were out in the water with them, “dashing and tossing, and plunging through the breakers, going out only to be tossed back apparently at the will of the waves and making some nervous onlookers feel sure that they were about to be dashed against the rocks.”
And then came the first account of surfing anywhere in the Americas:
"The young Hawaiian princes were in the water, enjoying it hugely and giving interesting exhibitions of surf-board swimming as practiced in their native islands."
One of the princes, The Surf noted, later injured himself jumping from the “railway bridge” a few hundred yards up the river, “but the water proved too shallow, and he was stunned and breathless for some time after.”
The day, however, ended well. “The evening was quite as delightful as the afternoon,” the newspaper reported. At the mouth of the San Lorenzo, where the princes had earlier performed their surfing exhibition, “the Santa Cruz City Band played its finest airs by the light of an immense bonfire and boating was the order of the evening. Guitar music and singing added to the charm of the scene and the hours sped all too rapidly.”
The river mouth itself had long been a popular location for “surf-bathing” activity on the Santa Cruz waterfront. As early as the 1860s, “life ropes” or “swim lines” (thick ropes attached at the beach by tall poles and extending out to floating rafts or anchors beyond the surf break) had been established at various points along both the main beach and Seabright Beach east of the river.
The beaches and surf line were much different than they are today, in the aftermath of the Army Corps of Engineers’ two major projects in Santa Cruz (the building of the river jetties in the 1950s and the construction of the Small Craft Harbor in the 1960s), both of which altered the flow of sand along the waterfront. But early accounts of the waves at the river mouth indicate that they were, at times, rolling breakers similar to those along Waikiki in Honolulu, where the princes had first learned to surf.
Afterwards
It is presumed that the princes continued to surf Santa Cruz in the summers of 1885-1887 and that they inspired others to do the same. A decade later, in the July 23, 1896 edition of the Santa Cruz newspaper The Daily Surf, there appeared to be local Santa Cruzans still surfing. “The boys who go in swimming in the surf at Seabright beach use surfboard to ride the breakers like the Hawaiians.”
However, to my knowledge, there are no further reports of board surfing in Santa Cruz until the late 1930’s.
Two years after the princes first surfed Santa Cruz, Prince Edward was sent home ill from St. Mathews, in September 1887, and died a short time later in Honolulu from scarlet fever. When his brothers returned home after their schooling, they brought their boards back with them – and presumably Edward's, too.
David and Jonah went on to carve out significant roles for themselves in Hawaiian history. The eldest brother, David, would eventually become the immediate first heir to the throne. His youngest brother Jonah, who had been Queen Lili'uokalani’s personal favorite, was second. Neither of them, however, would ever become king.
In January of 1893, a group of American and European businessman, aided by the U.S. military, overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy. Queen Lili'uokalani was deposed on January 17, 1893, relinquishing her throne to "the superior military forces of the United States."
Two years later, then-24-year-old Jonah, a fierce advocate for Hawaiian independence, fought in a rebellion against the U.S.-supported republic and was sentenced to a year in prison. Upon his release, Kuhio left Hawaii and traveled the Western worldfor a half decade and more. In 1902, he returned from exile and joined his brother David in Hawaiian politics.
Yet, while his brother David headed up the state’s Democratic Party (and was a delegate to the 1900 Democratic National Convention), Jonah joined the Republican Party and was elected to the U.S. Congress in 1903 as a “delegate” from the Territory of Hawaii, where he served until his death in 1922.
Today, the memory of Jonah Kuhio Kalaniana'ole is woven into the memory of Hawaiian culture. There are streets, beaches, plazas, highways, businesses, resorts, and a federal building named for him, along with a state holiday.
A well-known Hawaiian chant, “Hui Hololio,” was written in his honor:
This is the name song for Kalaniana`ole
Leader of the riders like the sea spray …
We call to thee, o answer
To your name song o Kalaniana`ole
Two Boards Found
In 2011, longtime Santa Cruz surfing historian Mac Reed amazingly found two of the princes’s boards at the Bishop Museum in Honolulu, just two planks of gray weathered wood, cataloged, but with no historical context noted.
The boards – both solid redwood and more than 17 feet long, the heaviest weighing in at more than 200 pounds – are believed to have been milled by the Grover Lumber Company.
For over a century, it had been believed that the princes’s original redwood boards were lost forever. But in 2011, when fellow surfing historian Mac Reed told Kim Stoner that he had discovered the boards in the archives at the Bishop, “I went online,” said Stoner, “and looked through the Bishop website, and sure enough, they had them catalogued, one of them was misidentified, but they were there.”
Stoner then enlisted Hawaiian scholar and historian Kristen Zambucka, who in turn, asked Stoner to send her a sample of Santa Cruz redwood to compare with a sliver she was able to get from one of the boards at the Bishop. After analysis, the boards that had been catalogued as northwestern pine, were newly identified as sequoia sempervirens, a.k.a. California coast redwood.
The two o’lo boards had been bequeathed to the Bishop Museum in 1923, a year after the death of the last remaining brother, by his widow, and had been part of the Bishop’s collection ever since. “I think it was a case of the Bishop not knowing what they had,” said Stoner.
The Bishop subsequently agreed on the loan of the boards to the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History (MAH). They were unveiled in the summer of 2015 in recognition of the 130th anniversary of the princes’ surfing at the San Lorenzo river mouth. MAH took on $10,000 expense to procure the loan of the boards, appraised at well over $300,000 a piece.
At the MAH, the boards were each de-crated with the help of a Hawaiian spiritualist who lead a welcoming chant to the boards. “It was unbelievable,” said Stoner. “I had been working on this a long time [the identification and loan of the boards], and then to see them there. All the mauna and spirit and holiness with this event was there with everybody. You could just look at people’s faces and see it.”
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