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In Polynesian times of the early 1600s, men, women and children would surf the Hawaiian waves together in harmony. Although there were males who were dominant in the sport, many women were also prominent. The Hawaiians looked at the sport in an egalitarian fashion, with equal opportunity for excellence and skill.
By the time the Europeans settled in Hawaii in the late 1700s and early 1800s, the historians Ben Finney and James Houston have accounted that “a large percentage of wahines (women) of early Hawaii were skillful surfers, and sometimes champions. Early engravings of the sport are full of half-dressed island girls perched on surfboards at the top of a curling wave.” These early women surfers were also, no doubt, enticed by the intimacy allowed males and females who rode the same waves together. There were also love and courtship competitions carried out by both sexes while surfing the waves.
The first famous surfer was known as Mamala, a demi-god of Polynesian times. She has a mythology associated with her name and was an extraordinary surfer, earning her accolades from the other chiefs and chieftesses. Princess Kaneamuna’s surfboard, dated to the mid-1600s, was discovered in 1905 in her burial cave.
Ka’ahumanu was a late 18th century canoe leaper. This feat involved jumping from a canoe into the breaker with a surfboard and riding the wave all the way to the shore. She was very adept at this style of riding but later came to dissuade others from surfing after she converted to Christianity and toured with the Calvinists.
During the hiatus of surfing in the very late 1800s, after the onslaught of Calvinist Puritanism, there were very few surfers riding the waves. One woman, Princess Ka’iulaini, is reported to be “the last of the old school at Waikiki”, according to surfrider Knute Cottrell. As surfing’s renaissance began again in the early 20th Century, surf clubs cropped up and were formally organized, The Hui Nalu (surf club) being one of them. Two women surfers are on record as being official members of the club, Mildred “ladybird” Turner, and Josephine “Jo” Pratt. The famous surfer and ladykiller, Duke Kahanamoku, is documented to be the first surfer to ride tandem on a surfboard. Of course, bringing Leslie Lemon with him to accomplish this was a fun and sexy way to make history. Duke later spread surfing to Australia where he repeated his trick in 1914 with the 15-year-old ocean girl Isabel Letham, who was later admitted to the Australian Surfing Hall of Fame for encouraging generations of Australian women to engage in the sport of surfing.
Women often began their own careers of surfing from tandem rides, owing it to the fact that their boyfriends were out there in the surf and they wanted to get in on the action. Many of these spunky females would then train and become as good as the men. Mary ann Hawkins is perhaps the most famous female surfer of the early 20th century. She won a myriad of awards for competitive swimming and surfing all throughout the 30s. By the 1970s, she became a stunt double in Hollywood films and later relocated to Hawaii where she opened up a swimming school for babies.
“She was an all around waterperson,” big wave rider and oceanograher Ricky Grigg, noted, “and I think it gave them [the women surfers who followed] a sense of depth. They had to be more than surfers. They had to be good bodysurfers and swimmers and just totally comfortable in the ocean.”
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