The Novice girls - on surfing adventures

Novice Girls ON SURFING ADVENTURES O R I G I N A L I L LU S T R AT I O N S & SHORT BIOGRAPHIES

LIZZY ARTWORK

O R I G I N A L I L LU S T R AT I O N S & SHORT BIOGRAPHIES

by LIZZY ARTWORK

July 2020 *The dates and stories reported here may not constitute an historical fact as this edition was the result of my curiosity without an accurate method on research.

INTRODUCTION

Men and women were sliding on waves originally in Polinesia and Hawaii islands and by influence of texts, illustrations and lately real photographs, it spreads to the world.

The first image of a woman on a board (paipo board) is from 1819 but the ancient Hawaiian culture claims surfing was there since 4th b.c.

Prior to European arrival, surfing was a communal activity on the hawaiian islands for men, women and children of all social classes.

Stories about the mythical Maui Princess Kelea describe her as one of the best surfers in the Hawaiian kingdom.

The demi-god Mamala is depicted as a half-woman, half-shark / crocodile who rode the waves. The oldest known papa he’e nalu, or surfboard, dates to the 1600s and comes from Princess Kaneamuna’s burial cave in Ho’okena on the Big Island.

“The Novice girls on surfing adventures” illustrates some of the pivotal women on waves until the mid 50´s and their unique story, who found their passion for the waves and inspired other women to follow her steps on the ocean side.

Illustrations are based on real photographts and texts found about the characters.

PRINCESS KAIULANI The last Hawaiian princess.

16 /10 / 1875 - 06 /03 / 1899, Honolulu, Oahu, Hawaii Surfing in 1889

Victoria Kawēkiu Kaʻiulani Lunalilo Kalaninuiahilapalapa Cleghorn was heir to the throne of the Kingdom of Hawaii and held the title of Crown Princess. Kaʻiulani became known throughout the world for her intelligence and determination. After the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893, she visited the United States to help restore the kingdom; she made many speeches and public appearances denouncing the overthrow of her government and the injustice towards her people.

According to documents at the British surfing museum in Brighton “the tall foreign dignity stood erect on a thin board with her hair blowing in the wind and rode the chilly waters” in the English channel at Brighton. After learning of the princess surfing, some of the nobility of Europe were soon trying it!

Following her return to Hawai‘i in 1897, Princess Kaiulani was a regular surfer at Waikiki.

Her 7 1/2-foot board is in the Bishop Museum.

ISABEL LETHAM “Freshwater mermaid” (23/05/1899 – 11/03/1995) New South Wales, Australia Surfing in 1915

Isabel was an Australian pioneer surfboard rider and swimming instructor, renowned as 'the first Australian to ride a surfboard' (although she disputed that claim with Isma Amor from Mainly (1912) and Grace Smith Wooton from Victoria (1910) ).

However, Isabel is well known for riding a board with Duke Kahanamoku, on the 10th of January of 1915 at Freshwater Beach, Sydney.

The story tells that Duke Kahanamoku invited the 15 years old Letham among the crowds, for a tandem surfing demonstration.

At the time she was already an accomplished swimmer and bodysurfer.

After this experience she tells she was "hooked for life”.

Soon, on her new redwood board made by her father, Isabel was catching waves and making them along Sydney’s northern beaches.

Letham went on to become an good surfer and to teach surfing and swimming.

During the 1920s Letham lived in California where she worked as an assistant swimming coach at the University of Southern California and Director of Swimming for the City of San Francisco.

A talented sportswoman and fierce feminist, Isabel became a life member of the Australian Women Board Riders Association in 1978. In 1993, she was inducted into the Australian Surfing Hall of Fame. .

C E C I LY C U N H A 1909-1978 Waikiki. Hawaii.

Surfing in 1930 Emanuel Cunha’s daughter Cecily was an avid surfer and surfed the waves off her family home along with other surfers from Waikiki and Kapahulu in the early 1900s.

Although their home was torn down after World War II, the site is still known as Cunha's. It is one of the few surf sites in Hawaiʻi where paipo boards are still ridden.

Her grandfather was a descendent of portuguese whale hunters from São Jorge island, but Emanuel made his living by opening a respectable saloon and hotel, and became an active member of the Hawaiian Historical Society, Mason and a member of the local chapter of the fraternal Independent Order of Odd Fellows. Cecily was also the granddaughter and niece (on the maternal side) of the poet George Sterling. Without any familiar relation to George Cunha (known for his surfing with Duke Kanamonuku) Cecily drew a life almost parallel to him, as a great swimmer and surfer. She used the old wooden boards and surfed right in front of the family home .

Cecily Cunha is the first Portuguese-Hawaiian identified in the history of surfing, and one of the first surfer women surfing in Waikiki beach around 1930.

In 1794 there were already Portugueses in Hawaii, as a result of the stopovers of the whaling routes. In 1910, about 23 thousand Portugueses resided in the archipelago, almost 13% of the population. They were the ones who brought the “cavaquinho - a small guitar, quickly renamed ukulele, an icon of Hawaiian music. The brother of Cecily, Richard Sonny Cunha was a composer, bandleader, pianist, singer, politician and entrepreneur and got known in Hawaii by popularizing hapa haole music, a type of Hawaiian music.

Beatrice Newport was however the best woman surfrider along, surfing ”equal to the average surfer boy” and the only “girl riding the Kalehuawehe”.

ALREMA BECKE “The Queen of Palm Beach” 30/10/1897. Suffolk, England.

Surfing in late 1920´s

Alrema heard about surfing (and later seen or taken part in) during her 11th year when her father took her and her sister to Fiji and then on to Samoa.

Alrema Samuels was the second daughter of the famous South Seas writer George Lewis Becke.

By just being herself and just doing what she had always done, this lady stands as a bit of a beacon for all that came afterwards, even if she was not alone in her love of riding a surf board and being among the early female proponents of such.

She was “quite the brownest of the fairer sex and better than most men on a surf board.�

Alrema Becke married in 1919, Harry Samuels at Mosman. During their happier times they spent months at Palm Beach in a 'bungalow' in Florida Road.

Alrema was the 'Australia's Woman Surf Board Champion' by 1930, she lends us an insight into the growth of a sport and the growth of Palm Beach Surf Life Saving Club.

Her success on the board and clearly being included 'among the boys' although always feminine, possibly stemmed from experiencing girls and women surfing in the Polynesian islands, where such things were always part of life with none of the 'this is how ladies behave' pressed upon women of her generation within Australia.

And she was quite stylish on her beach outfit!

A G AT H A C H R I S T I E 15/09/ 1890 – 12/011976 - Torquay, England Surfing in 1922

The British crime fiction writer was a true pioneer, not only in novels but also in surfing!

During a year-long round-the-world trip, to promote the British Empire Expedition, Agatha learned how to surf in 1922, when riding waves was the privilege of only a few! First in South Africa riding a prone surfboard on Muizenberg beach, and along her stops in Australia and New Zealand before hitting Honolulu in August. But It was at Waikiki that Agatha learned how to stand up on a surfboard.

Among her photographs, sailing dairies and letters to her mother, she described her adventures and struggles to start surfing: "The surf boards in South Africa were made of light, thin wood, easy to carry, and one soon got the knack of coming in on the waves. "It was occasionally painful as you took a nosedive down into the sand, but on the whole it was an easy sport and great fun.” “I learned to become expert - or at any rate expert from the European point of view – the moment of complete triumph on the day that I kept my balance and came right into shore standing upright on my board!”

Agatha Christie became a Britain’s earliest “stand-up” surfers, at the same time as Prince Edward of Wales, future King Edward VIII, was also so stoked on surfing that he ordered the royal ship HMS Renown to return for 3 days in September just to surf on this secret surf trip he hooked up with Duke’s brother David Kahanamoku and friends in 1920.

MARGOT RIT TSCHER (1916 - 2012) - New York. USA “Queen of Seas” Surfing in 1937

Daughter of an American family living in Santos, Brazil, Margot became the first woman surfing in Brazil, by influence of her brother Thomas, who constructed several surfboards inspired in Hawaiian shapes he saw on the article “Riding the Breakers” about Tom Blake and his boards on Popular Mechanics magazine from 1937.

Passionate about the sea, Margot was surfing at Gonzaga´s beach in1937, and after a short time she was already expert on “walking on the waters” making all her life by the ocean. She surfed until the 60s.

MA RY A N N H AW K I N S “A water-person” & “the grace personified in water” (1919-1993) Pasadena, California.

Surfing in mid 1930´s

Mary Ann was the undisputed standout woman surfer of the 1930s, winning the Pacific Coast Women’s Surfboard Championship in 1938, 1939 and 1940.

At six years old, Mary Ann was sickly and weak, so her parents enrolled her in a swim program.

A couple of years later, it was Duke Kahanamoku’s swimming that captured her imagination (who she would have the chance to personally meet and surf in the 1939 during Duke Kahanamoku´s Swim Meet in Honolulu, where she broke the Hawaiian record for the 220 meter freestyle!)

Because of her love for ocean swimming, her mother bought a house in Costa Mesa, where she surfed among surfers as Tarzan Smith.

When moved to Santa Monica in 1935, she got her own board, which was almost unheard in California in the mid-’30s. She was almost the only girl surfing around California, again among a group of guys that included Tulie Clark, Hoppy Swarts, Bud Morrisey, Barney Wilkes and E.J. Oshier and her surfing improved.

On this period, the weight of surfboards was considerable and Mary Ann probably weighed less than her surfboard!

Between 1935 and 1941, she was the “darling” of the California surf scene, winning nearly every women’s surfing and paddleboarding event she entered.

She also served as a model for the next generation of California female surfers.

NORMA JEAN BAKER & DARRYLIN ZANUCK Surfing in 1946

Marilyn Monroe was a surfer in 1940s when she was yet Norma Jean Baker!

Among the beach crowds was Darrylin Zanuck, daughter of the powerful studio head Darryl Zanuck. They were both surfing in Malibu and struggling to carry the heavy boards to the ocean.

This is a “triangle love affair” story that says that Darrylin stole Norma´s lover, the actor and surfer - Tommy Zahn, who later ordered to his board´s shaper friend Joe Quigg, what would be considered the modern surf board the “novice girls board”, a fashioned ten-foot two-inch red wood balsa plank, sealed with fiberglass resin, as a present to Darrylin.

Quigg made the board to satisfy Darrylin´s need for a shorter, lighter and more manageable ride, that was easier to carry and fit in her glamorous car.

That surf model became the precursor to the “Malibu chip” and the shapers realized that “less was more”. What followed next was that a lot of girls learned how to surf on those boards in just a few months: Vickie Flaxman, Robin Grigg, Aggie Bane…

K AT H Y K O N H E R Z U C K E R M A N “Ambassador of aloha” (19 /01/ 1941) Surfing in mid 1950´s

-“GIDGET”

Kathy Konher is the real-life inspiration for the fictional character of Franzie (nicknamed Gidget) from the 1957 novel, “Gidget: The Little Girl with Big Ideas” written by her father Frederick Kohner, based on what Kohner told her father about her journal of her trips to Malibu. In 1959 Columbia Pictures adapted it to the big screen.

She grew up in Brentwood, Los Angeles, and spent much of her childhood on the beaches at Malibu. She started surfing at the age of 15 with such influential surfers as Miki Dora, Mickey Munoz, Dewey Weber and Tom Morey.

Surfer magazine voted her the seventh most influential surfer of the twentieth century!

“There were always girls surfers. I was just the one that got famous. I never saw myself in a gender role but wanting to belong. I very much wanted a family outside my own family. Having lived it, I never felt that I had to do this prove to them that a girl could surf. I wanted to be accepted and I want them to see that I could do it. It was not so much that I was a girl but that I was determined to be part of this group!” she said when asked if she things that Gidget´s long-lasting popularity is because it was about a determined girl who conquers adversity and reaches her goal of becoming a surfer when there weren't any female surfer.

However in 1960 she stopped surfing as Malibu got too crowded with the surfing boom created by this popular novel.

MARGE CALHOUN 1926 - 2017. Hollywood. Cafifornia. USA Surfing in 1956

She spent her childhood weekends with her family on Venice Beach and Santa Monica, practicing swimming and diving.

Calhoun was a competitive swimmer, having trained for the 1940 Summer Olympics, before the event was cancelled due to World War II.

Calhoun began surfing Topanga Canyon in the 1950s, riding a board given to her as a Christmas gift by her husband. Along with her two surfing daughters, she was an inspiration to a generation of young women who aspired to surf despite being stigmatized by a heavily chauvinistic, 1960s-era surf culture.

In 1961 she was a co-founder of the United States Surfing Association, being their first secretary and first woman surfing judge.

TO BE CONTINUED...