Surfing’s revival in the early twentieth century made perfect sense. Seascape painters and poets had already done their part by rehabilitating the public’s regard for the ocean—what had been seen as a roiling vastness filled with sea monsters and splintered boats was now viewed as a place of beauty, self-discovery, sensuality, godliness, even comfort. “Where rolled the ocean,” dashing Romantic poet and enthusiastic ocean swimmer Lord Byron wrote in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, “thereon was his...
Chapter 2:
Gliding Return
- A Fine Little Revival /
- Jack London Loves Purple /
- California: The New Frontier /
- Beachboy Life /
- Duke Kahanamoku /
- Surf Shooting Down Under /
- The Bronzed Islander Shows How /
- Surfing in the Jazz Age /
- Tom Blake Redesigns the Sport /
- What Depression? /
- When Clubbies Ruled Australia /
- Surfboard as Woodcraft /
- Palos Verdes Surf Club /
- San Onofre: the Nearest Faraway Place /
- Riding the Hot Curl /
- Enter Makaha /
- Death at Waimea /
- The Overwhelming North Shore /
