Crawford and The Duke

Seven Weeks in Hawaii written by M. Leola Crawford gives us a short description of the tourist experience with surf riding as it became popularized in Hawaii with the tourist community. This short excerpt shows us the tourist experience as a romanticized experience in paradise. Crawford seemed to have taken a liking to “the Duke” Kahanamoku whose “fame as an Olympic swimmer allowed him to break down some racial barriers in the Islands and hold membership in both the Outrigger and Hui Nalu.” 

The relationship between Crawford and Kahanamoku was portrayed as a potentially romantic relationship in a time when interracial relationships were not the norm. It is also important to note that the beach boy lifestyle as mentioned in Pacific Passages that although the beach boys were “responsible for spreading the enthusiasm for surfriding throughout the first half of the twentieth century, most of them endured lives of poverty as second class citizens.” The life of a beach boy seemed glamorous despite having low pay and at times being treated as second class to the haole tourists. They “instructed, charmed, massaged, and rescued surfriding tourists in the waves.” Because Kahanamoku was not a professional beachboy but also an Olympic athlete and accepted by many haole groups the idea of the Duke with an American tourist girl was not so far fetched. In fact M. Leola Crawford wrote in “Seven Weeks in Hawaii” in 1917 about the time that she spent with the Duke. We see the playfulness of the potentially romantic relationship when Crawford says how she would love to learn to surf as long as she did not have to get wet. As a playful response from the Duke as described by Crawford, “this Duke was carrying me to shore ‘to keep the lady from getting wet’ as he said, and how he laughed and showed his pearly white teeth. I am quite fond of ‘the Duke’!”. After continuing to describe her experience with the Duke, the lomi-lomi massage and that “bidding the Duke aloha we painfully wended our way homeward. And, as before stated, we are now but limping shadows of our former selves!” Kahanamoku obviously made some sort of impact on Crawford and although we do not get to read about his experience of their time together as the reader we assume that this relationship had the potential to be romantic even if only for the short time they spent together. 

-Loren