"Surf-Riding, Eastern Sport" ran in the September 25, 1909, edition of the Honolulu Advertiser. It was taken from a letter Outrigger Canoe Club founder Alexander Hume Ford wrote to the paper, dated September 11, sent from New York. Hawaiian-born musician Alvin Keech would later become famous for popularizing (and possibly inventing) the banjo-uke, or banjolele.

Alvin Keech from Hawaii is here, and invited me to come down to Edgemere [Queens, Long Island] and go out surfboard riding with him. This is the first time I have seen real surfboarding on the Atlantic Coast. Of course I went and Keech had two boards ready. We went out and caught several waves, getting a standing ride of perhaps two or three hundred feet, but that was great for the Atlantic. Keech daily astonishes the natives, but even he cannot keep in the water in these latitudes more than half an hour at a time. I was frozen stiff in fifteen minutes so came out to sit with the ladies on the beach and watch Keech do his stunts. Within a few days after his first exhibition, the idea of the surfboard swept down the beach and after a number of people had been thrown and small boys crippled, the Samoan surfboard was adopted. This is a bit of thin wood about three feet long by a foot and a half wide and [when you] place in front of the chest [it] takes you in before the small breakers. Our boys at Waikiki would indulge in body surfing and let it go at that. I have been using pictures everywhere in different publications illustrating how it is done in Hawaii. The youngsters at Asbury Park took the pictures from 

 [magazine], and the account of how it was done, and had a try at it. They called them "skidders" but no one has as yet attempted to stand, although the surfboard idea is spreading down the coast and has reached Atlantic City. I do not see how anyone could learn in these cold waters, but of course, those who have learned in Hawaii can sometimes catch a wave and get a short ride. My experience with Keech only made me more homesick than ever for Hawaii.

I was ready to start back via Europe and Asia about a month ago but received an order from one of the leading magazines for a series of immigration articles, a subject which I have studied in many parts of the world. As soon as I finish this work, I shall start at once for Hawaii as I wish to be there for the Clark Cup contest in January. By the way, Clark wishes to put up annual cups. I am suggesting instead an annual racing canoe built during the year in Hawaii and placed on exhibition with full equipment, koa paddles and all, somewhere downtown so that the interest can be kept up. This, as a prize for the big race and an annual koa surfboard for the best wave-rider, I think would attract many people right after Christmas. As it is, the comic sections of the Sunday papers are beginning to exploit the fun of surfboard riding in Hawaii, and my good friend Art Young, the crack artist of 

, has promised me to design a corking letterhead for the Outrigger Club.

I enclose you a set of surfboard cards I am getting out to send with my compliments to the members of the club. I 

 [sweet-talked] the magazines into letting me have the cuts after they had been used so that I will have quite a batch of them to bring back to Hawaii.

I am sorry that after all, I will not meet the vice president of the Outrigger Club in Manchuria, as I had expected to. Keech and I both have friends leaving soon for Hawaii, tempted there by the prospect of learning to ride the surfboard. Keech really deserves a medal for the splendid work he has done talking “Hawaii” this summer. I know a number of hitherto annual European tourists who on his advice are going to Hawaii. 

"SURF-RIDING, EASTERN SPORT," ALEXANDER HUME FORD (1909)

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