Since it was posted, the following has been attributed to a Yahoo.com group World Wide Surfers.
Gary: I cannot make out the date and the place where she is supposed to be riding. Very interesting. The early artist never got it right concerning how a board slides on the surf and/or what a wave really looks like.
Joe; The wave looks more like a wave in mid ocean.... that may be what the east coasters were familiar with - being on a boat. Yes, they never have the board canted properly..... possibly it took photographs to show artists what really was happening. If any art has a proper surfing perspective before about, what, 1920 or even later....... then they either saw photos by Gurrey, or postcards by Baker (I think was one), and would be a rarity like finding a Don Blanding that isn't signed.
What photo was mass circulated...... postcards..... Nicholas magazine had Gurrey.... was that a highly circulated magazine? I don't know. Maybe not til Blake's photos in the National Geographic did the average Joe see what surfing really looked like. There was a newsreel or two..... None of it became commonplace until....... Gidget and the movies..... there were a few Sports Illustrateds and national mags in the 50's...... not sure how many were before that.
Gary: I think I can read New Jersey 1888? Or 1898? IN any event this blows away the myth that the Duke was the first to surf back East! Am I right?
Joe: "A Gay Queen of the Waves." "Asbury Park, New Jersey surprised by the daring of a sandwich island girl." does it say SURPRISED by the etc.? Interesting.....as once more, it is a woman on a wave...... like the chief's daughters that showed Lt. Wise how to surf at LaHaina in the
late 1840s. Were more or most men off making a living and being good husbands and so forth.....in the cane fields or on the whaling vessels....... Or is it that women/girls just plain are mo fun to see and talk and more interesting to the readers?
Gary: I think "Or is it that women/girls just plain are mo fun to see and talk and more interesting to the readers?" This is a significant image and now we have another cult shero, and icon of the mysterious history of surfings past, The Sandwich Island Girl, USA Mainland, 1888
Matt: That's really cool. I'm a bit shocked, actually. Is there any historical act behond this, or just a fanciful bit of illustration? Really interesting....tell me if you know anything.
Gary: One more thought; What other beaches/cities in the USA were large enough for a showing off of The Sandwich Island Girl? You would think if someone brought her over to woo the crowds with her surfing, they would make a few other stops along the way like they did with Duke. Wonder what the folks at the Asbury Park, NJ, historical society know about this event?
It is 'The Sandwich Island Girl' surfing New Jersey in 1888. Pretty cool and that predates many of the sorties I have ever head about surfing on the mainland. I now firmly believe no one can say who was the first at any one beach anywhere here on the mainland. I am feeling there were incidents where people surfed and bodyboarded that are unrecorded but took place starting after the Civil War sometime. Much earlier than previously thought.
Joe: From its founding in the 1890's......... Asbury Park........ 1888 was in the Boom period.....San Diego was in on this..... many of the Victorian wonderful homes in San Diego were built in 1887-8. They built a lot a great Hotels.........like the Hotel Del Coronado...... many are gone.......burned down...... like the one that was in La Jolla (I think)..... anyway gone....... They were to draw tourists
and buyers ....... of real estate along the coasts.... summer homes..... So, the front page picture...... with no story inside..... may have been just an advertisement of a sort.
Like Paradise of the Pacific magazine was in a fashion.
Jens Joe, et al: Fascinating image and down right controversial, I might add. If you look closely at the gal's left thigh, you will see the edge of a Greg Noll patch, thereby proving that the early female Noll team riders, did, in fact, incorprate the vertical stripes on their persons, while Greg, of course, wore the horizontal. Also, this picture shows indisputable evidence that Slipcheck was used on the nose of surfboards (dark patch beneath her foot) before the early 1960's, as witnessed by her incredible slide-slip technique with fully buried nose and fin completely out of the water. Her ample bosom and hula- like grace no doubt brought male New Jersey beach goers to their knees in awe of the sandwich Island girl.
Mahalo,
Jens
Bill: P.S. I believe we did surf Asbury Park a couple of times back in the 60's but don't know much beyond that. Mark Fragale might be able to bear some light on this subject.
Do I understand that you have the entire issue of the August 18, 1888 Police Gazette and that there is no text regarding the cover illustration anywhere in the publication? This would be highly
unusual. I do research for writing projects on sporting pursuits other than surfing in similar periodicals (English, European, & American) dating back to the mid-1800s. Almost always I find text relating to cover illustrations inside if the issue is complete. Often, however, illustrations are separated from the stories. Do you have this specific periodical in its entirety and are there any missing pages?
This is a fascinating image. My guess is that it has a basis in fact and was not entirely conjured up in an artist's imagination. "Artistic license" may have influenced the depiction of this image if the artist did not actually view the surfer girl riding the wave. I do not find it all that out of the ordinary if the artist heard the story about the girl surfing in Asbury Park and created the image. Rather charming, I would say.
Joe :re-Police Gazette But, of course, the Police Gazette itself was sinful. When you get right down to it, that is what it was. The illustrations showed women's ankles. All the time! In every issue! Writing in 1930, the renowned columnist Franklin P. Adams, looking back to his youth, said that the pugilistic stuff never had interested him—what got to him was the ankles. "Yes, I used to stare at those pictures, and so did all the boys that I knew."
Fox never came out and said that ankles and even knees were the subjects of half the illustrations. It was just that women tended to fight with one another in Kenosha, or get tossed by a steer in Laredo, or get caught in barbed wire in Rochester —and when this happened, their skirts jumped up. And sports reading of these events and studying the woodcuts in an atmosphere of cigars and bay rum—for the true home of the Police Gazette was the barbershop and saloon— well, they read and studied. Who can blame them? They lived in towns in which the street paving ended where the trolley made its turnaround. Their wrists were thick and their nails dirty. They drank, being largely of the lower orders (as was 95 per cent of the population) and therefore pretty much immune to the genteel Women's Christian Temperance Union ideas of the middle classes. Their surroundings were grimy and dreary: coal dust in the winter and mud in the spring and the smell of horse manure all year round. There was precious little spice in their lives. So they looked at ankles.
Gary: I remember when I was real young, before what now has become porn magazines, there was a police magazine that showed females in scant clothing being molested. Everybody bought the magazine for that reason not for the real police work or other stories. So I guess the tradition carried on into the 1950's anyway.
more...
If the publication is authentic, in my mind it's the most significant find in decades. I am now convinced there were others before Freeth and Duke that surfed the Mainland. They may not have been famous and the event may not have been recorded but someone surfed or bodyborded before those men. Of course Freeth is the first most significant surfer and Duke made a lot of press on his East coast surf and also his early Corona del Mar surf rescue. But when it comes to the first, we will most likely never know. It only makes sense to just say that we know the percentage of likelihood is extremely high and with this recent find, very likely.
Bodysurfing proceeded board surfing. All those sailors and swimmers since humans first arrived on the West coast had to enjoy that pastime before any type of board hit the surf.
Joe T. I have no doubt 'Indians' bodysurfed California....they were at La Jolla Cove where underwater grinding bowls have been seen and abalone could be picked up in knee-deep water in 1900 nearby. Certainly canoes have ridden 'inland' river waves/rapids and probably ocean waves.....any longboat coming ashore would qualify as surfing. ACTUAL STAND UP on a board SURFING, though....... could be this girl.....certainly Kanaka's (Hawaiians) around the world off the sailing vessels they served on would have ridden waves bodysurfing if not creating boards for themselves.....maybe like Corky and ironingboard.
Apparently others have shown interest in this just recently -- this is the note I received back from Helen Pike, author of Asbury Park's Glory Days: The Story Of An American Resort
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0813535476/qid=1140465147/sr=1-
1/ref=sr_1_1/102-7348948-9396900?s=books&v=glance&n=283155
Dear Gloria, Joe, and Mindi, "The Sandwich Island Girl" is sure making the rounds since cropping
up in my e-mail from Mindi on Saturday! I'll see what I can do. Lecturing on media and teaching writing five days a week doesn't give me the time I used to have to work on my next book, but if you can be patient, I will look what was microfilmed from the 1888 papers to see what I can find.
Gary: I am still stoked on the Sandwich Island Girl. During that period, Buffalo Bill used Indians to draw the crowd. I can only assume this (if authentic) is very real since who would bother to place a surfing maiden out there when cowboys and Indians and outlaws were the big draw at the time. It's too overwhelming in my mind to be a factitious creation assuming it's a authentic publication. Your East coast contacts should go for this and research the heck out of it. Just think, the East coast could be the first area surfed on the Mainland! What a change that would be!
Allen: Look in our recent Surfing Books guide for some of the early dates/observations. I'm sure some of the more traveled/learned/informed people had heard of this then-unusual Hawaiian 'trick' of 'Walking on Water', though I'm sure a majority of the John Q. Public had not (or could not comprehend the idea). Possibly some of this disregard/dis-belief of Surfing was also due to the notion that only the brown-skinned nativescould do this trick and not the Euro's (as expressed in both Twain & that other guy's writings (sorry for the old-age fart on his name - Charmaine's husband.. you know the guy (joe - London)). People also didn't really 'play' in the early part of the century - the notion
of 'leisure time' is a post-WWII concept (look at the thought of swimming then). Another thought, how about skiing? The Euro's/Scan people were practicing this both as a form of transportation and recreation but I believe very little was illustrated in the US due to its unfamiliarity (??).
Joe t.
What fun huh?!
aloha nui.
