London Promotes Western Influence

  This is a bit delayed, but I have been thinking about it for a while...  

   After reading London's account of surfing, and going over lecture notes, I felt I needed to do a bit more research as to why London was really in Hawaii to begin with. London's writing was great account of how learning to surf is difficult for a Haole, however, he seemed to be promoting something further than the experience of surfing itself. Here is a passage on Jack London that I found very useful in helping me clarify London's intentions.

“Ford had a restless, driving energy, and such people can, sometimes, be insufferable,” noted his major biographer Valerie Noble. “He must certainly have taken Jack London and his wife, Charmian, by surprise on the evening of Wednesday, May 29. The Londons were sitting in a cool corner of the… [Moana Hotel], when a bearded young man stepped briskly up to them with ‘You’re Jack London, aren’t you?My name is Ford.’ London acknowledged the greeting and said that he had heard that Ford was in Honolulu and had wanted to see him. He’d read much of Ford’s writings. Quickly introduced to Charmian, Ford rushed on in quick conversation with Jack. In an undertone, he told London that he had a lot of good material for stories, but there was no use for him to try, as his fiction was rot. He could write travel articles, but admitted that it took no artist to do that. Ford then offered to jot down and give them to London. London suggested that he join them for dinner, during which Ford talked steadily.”

Although both men shared the common interests of writing and traveling, it was Ford’s interest in the ancient Hawaiian sport of surfing that really caught London’s attention. Ford promised to give London “whacking good material – for stories.”

Charmain recalled of that evening: “At present he (Ford) is interested in reviving the old Hawaiian sport of surf-boarding on the breakers. When he left, we were able to draw the first long breath in two hours… One had the sense of being speeded up; but his generous good nature was worth it.”

Ford’s primary biographer Valerie Noble wrote that Ford’s “enthusiasm for surfing was boundless.”

Jack London was so taken with Ford’s description of wave riding that he promised to join Ford on a “surfing excursion.”Charmian noted that her husband “finds the man most stimulating in an unselfish enthusiasm to revive neglected customs of elder island days, for the benefit of Hawaii and her advertisement to the outside world.” She considered Ford a “genius” at “pioneering and promoting” who “swears he is going to make this island’s pastime (surfing) one of the most popular in the world.”

The following Saturday, June 1, “True to his promise, Ford appeared… with an enormous surfboard, and made fun of the small one that had been lent to the Londons.”

Imagine a beginning surfer trying to teach someone who has never done it. Ford would have been in a predicament had it not been for George Freeth, once again. Freeth was surfing off Waikiki that day, further out. When London saw how well and easily Freeth rode the outside breakers, he – like Ford – was encouraged in his own efforts to ride.

“Out there in the midst of such a succession of big smoky ones,” later wrote the beginning surfer, hard drinker and chain-smoker Jack London, “a third man was added to our party, one Freeth. Shaking the water from my eyes as I emerged from one wave and peered ahead to see what the next one looked like, I saw him tearing in on the back of it, standing upright with his board, carelessly poised, a young god bronzed with sunburn. We went through the wave on the back of which he rode. Ford called to him. He turned an air spring from his wave, rescued his board from its maw, paddled over to us, and joined Ford in showing me things...”

Although London later suffered from severe sunburn and a bump on the head from a loose board, he wrote enthusiastically about his first surfing session. “Ah, delicious moment when I first felt that breaker grip and fling me. On I dashed, a hundred and fifty feet, and subsided with the breaker on the sand. From that moment I was lost.”Writing further he acknowledged, “I tackled surf-riding, and now that I have tackled it, more than ever do I hold it to be a royal sport.”

London not only appreciated surfing, but also the younger Freeth’s skill and demeanor. “Where but the moment before was only the wide desolation and invincible roar, is now a man, erect, full-statured, not struggling frantically in that wild movement, not buried and crushed and buffeted by those mighty monsters, but standing above them all, calm and superb, poised on the giddy summit, his feet buried in the churning foam, the salt smoke rising to his knees, and all the rest of him in the free air and flashing sunlight, and he is flying through the air, flying forward, flying fast as the surge on which he stands. He is a Mercury – a brown Mercury. His heels are winged, and in them is the swiftness of the sea.”

The same day Jack London surfed with Ford and Freeth, Charmain watched from the beach and wrote of what she saw: “The thick board, somewhat coffin-shaped, with rounded ends, should be over six feet long. This plank is floated out to the breaking water, which can be done either wading alongside or lying face-downward paddling; and there you wait for the right wave. When you see it coming, stand ready to launch the board on the gathering slope, spring upon it, and - keep going if you can. Lie flat on your chest, hands grasping the sides of the large end of the heavy timber, and steer with your feet. The expert, having gauged the right speed, rises cautiously to his knees, to full stature, and then, erect with feet in the churning foam, he makes straight for the beach.”

As for London himself, he was determined to be able to stand and ride his borrowed surfboard: “But tomorrow, ah tomorrow. I shall be out in that wonderful water, and I shall come in standing up. And if I fail tomorrow, I shall do it the next day, or the next. Upon one thing I am resolved: the Snark [his sailboat] shall not sail from Honolulu until I, too, wing my heels with the swiftness of the sea, and become a sunburned, skin-peeling Mercury.” London was also stoked to see Ford surf. “What a sport he is,” London exclaimed, “and what a sport for white men, too.”

-Malcolm Gault-Williams

      After reading this detailed explanation of London's reasoning behind learning how to surf, I became much more convinced that surfing has been completely turned around from what it was originally meant to stand for and represent. Here surfing is clearly used as a way in promoting tourism, and a means of income for the President. Ford was turning surfing into a political subject to gain wealth, and promote the occupation of Hawaii by Westerners. The early accounts of surf-riding had to do with the connection the Hawaiian people had with the ocean, and the way they flawlessly moved on their boards. Learning to surf was not for sport, as we read in the beginning of Pacific Passage, it was the Hawaiians way of connecting to the ocean, and their land, the land which they believe they were made from and are biologically a part of. The entire meaning of surf-riding has been completely lost by the time we get to Jack London's account, and even before then. The Western civilization had started to come to Hawaii and adapt itself to their customs. However, they did not only adapt; they changed their customs and made them their own. While doing so, the Hawaiians were losing their religious connection to their land, it more ways than just surf-riding, but also the amount of tourism and culture change it would bring with it. Surf-riding was immensely effected by the western civilization, and it is a great example as to how the annexation, and population, of Hawaii has greatly effected it's culture, religion, and over all meaning of existence. Hawaii is no longer the land of it's people, and it's meaning of existence is no longer to provide for it's people and connect to them, but it is now a spot of tourism, a spot of surfing, the land of “Blue Hawaii”.

-Kaeliann Hulett