Although swimming can be traced back to antiquity and numbers Caesar and Charlemagne among its more famous exponents, the sport had fallen into disrepute during the Middle Ages, as it was though to be the cause of smallpox epidemics.

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Sur ng in modern times: a 1960s outlook
MAY 7, 2021 | SURFING

2. The revival of sur ng, which took place at the beginning of the 20th
century, coincided with the revival of swimming.
Although swimming can be traced back to antiquity and numbers Caesar and Charlemagne among
its more famous exponents, the sport had fallen into disrepute during the Middle Ages, as it was
thought to be the cause of smallpox epidemics.
When taken up again in the last century, swimming out of doors had transgressed Victorian ideas of
morality, and there were many complaints about mixed bathing and the agrant exposure of naked
esh on the beaches (such as ngers, toes, and necks!)
In 1896 in Athens, Greece, an event took place, which was to set swimming rmly on the map again.
The Olympic Games, revived by Baron Pierre de Coubertin, stimulated a worldwide surge of athletic
interest, which from the point of view of Hawaii, reached its zenith when the great Duke
Kahanamoku (https://www.surfertoday.com/sur ng/the-extraordinary-sur ng-life-of-duke-
kahanamoku) won the gold medal in the 100-meter freestyle swimming event in both the 1912 and
1920 games.

3. If it had not been for the war, he would undoubtedly have made it three in a row. As it was, he
captained the U. S. Olympic team again in 1924.
After analyzing the Duke's success, many swimming coaches were amazed to learn that Hawaiian
Islanders had for centuries been using the leg kick, which had revolutionized swimming under the
name of the Australian crawl.
This improvement on the Trudgen stroke had been effected by Frederick Cavill, an English immigrant
to Australia (in 1887) who had watched the swimming technique of the Australian aboriginals.
Cavill produced six remarkable sons, all of whom became good swimmers.
The oldest, Richard, became a champion and, on returning to England, assured British swimming
supremacy for many years.
This tradition was later broken by Charles Daniels of the United States, who had learned the new
stroke from another of Cavill's sons, Sidney, who had emigrated to San Francisco.
Daniels eventually developed the so-called American crawl by synchronizing the leg beat with the
arm action, thus putting America in the forefront of world swimming, a position which has been held,
thanks to Duke and others, with only occasional lapses since that time.
In 1920, the American swimming team included no less than seven Hawaiians. Warren Kealoha, and
later on Buster Crabbe and Bill Smith, succeeded the Duke as gold medallists from Hawaii.
All this focused a terri c amount of attention on Hawaii and made the islands a great center for
water sports, a fact which was to stimulate the development of sur ng considerably in the years to
come.
The history of sur ng in Hawaii (https://www.surfertoday.com/sur ng/the-history-of-sur ng-in-
hawaii) and California is really inseparable, as many of the gures who dominated the sport in one
place were also prominent in the other.
Competition between the two areas stimulated many innovations, and new ideas and new methods
were rapidly tried out.

4. The Rebirth of Sur ng
After the re-emergence of sur ng from the doldrums at the turn of the century, it was the changing
length, shape, and material of the board which in uenced the development most.
The ancient Hawaiians used two types of boards, the alaia (thin) board
(https://www.surfertoday.com/sur ng/how-to-shape-an-alaia-surfboard), and the olo (thick) board.
The alaia was used for bodysur ng, but the olo might be 20 feet long and weigh 180 pounds. Large
boards were needed to hold 400-pound chieftains.
Boards were made from koa, the sickle-leaved Hawaiian acacia, from the breadfruit, and from other
species.
The chiefs often had boards of a light, balsa-like wood called wiliwili, a Paci c relative of the tiger's
claw, the symbolic tree of India.
Before the revival of sur ng, only small boards were being used, perhaps averaging about six feet in
length, and often these were crudely fashioned from old pieces of wood which just happened to be
handy.