Duke Kahanamoku Rookie Card
Date1913
Object number00055939
NameCard
MediumPaper
DimensionsOverall: 91 × 62 mm
ClassificationsEphemera
Credit LineAustralian National Maritime Museum Collection
Collections
DescriptionRookie card of Hawaiian Olympic swimming gold medallist Duke Kahanamoku. The collectors card was issued by Pan Handle Scrap, chewing tobacco company.
HistoryDuke Paoa Kahanamoku became a champion swimmer, and a tremendously popular Olympic gold medallist who visited Australia during the First World War to feature in demonstrations of swimming and surfing. He is widely credited for a huge boost in awareness and popularity of surfing and one of its early celebrities. He is also bound up in the development of the Australian Crawl, which was at the time known as Australia’s national stroke, adapting its now standard scissor kick in preference to the frog kick common at the time.
The Hawaiian had a friendship with fellow Olympic swimmer Australian Cecil Healy forged through competition at the Stockholm Olympic Games in 1912 when in a show of widely applauded sportsmanship, Healy chivalrously delayed the Olympic final until Kahanamoku could compete, only to be beaten by the stylish Hawaiian swimmer in a close finish. Healy won silver, but claimed gold to Kanahamoku and the US team’s silver in the men’s relay. Kahanamoku visited Sydney at the invitation of the Australian Amateur Swimming Association in the summer of 1914-1915 just months after the outbreak of war to compete in and promote swimming carnivals in Australia (and then to New Zealand). He was also asked to demonstrate the art of surfing. He gave an exhibition of wave riding to media at Freshwater on 24 December 1914 using a solid surfboard made locally (in Blackwattle Bay, Pyrmont in fact), modelled on but a good deal heavier than those he used in Hawaii. Kahanamoku also put on unadvertised or private surfing displays at Manly, Cronulla and Bondi and surfed at a carnival at Dee Why on 6 February 1915.
Kahanamoku selected 15 year-old Isabel Letham to demonstrate tandem surfing and encouraged children to the sport, and to use his board in his public displays, including two young boys named Claude West and Snowy McAlister. All three became athletes and swimming and surfing advocates. Kahanamoku swam in local swimming carnivals against Healy et al, where he broke his own record over the 100 yard distance. (@ 53.8 sec). He toured the south coast of NSW with a party including gold medal Olympian Fanny Durack who he would no doubt have met in Stockholm.
SignificanceThe Australian visit of Kahanamoku in the summer of 1914/15 is now widely regarded as a seminal moment in the development of surfing in Australia; his appearances were widely publicised and hugely popular with 2-3 thousands lining the beach in anticipation (despite his first public appearance being cancelled). Surfing was practised by a few beachgoers in Australia at the time but given that it was only a little over a decade since daylight bathing restrictions were lifted, it was not widespread. Hawaii was heralded as its birthplace and the champion and thrilling Kahanamoku was considered its demi-god. He visited Australia again for the Melbourne Olympics in 1956 where he met Australia’s champion Olympic swimmers including Dawn Fraser.
c 1915
