In The Art of Body Surfing, a bodysurfing how-to manual published in 1972, author Robert Gardner included a brief chapter about bodysurfing history. Evidently, Gardner had limited resources to pull from when he wrote about the history of bodysurfing over 50 years ago:
“Board surfing had a clearly documented moment of historical recognition—that day in February of 1778 when Captain Cook sailed into Hawaiian waters and reported seeing a man who ‘appeared to be flying over the water.’
“Body surfing has no such chronicler, no such authentication or historical acknowledgment of its existence. It grew unheralded and unannounced. But rest assured that centuries ago, some innovator, standing in waist-deep water on one of the continental shelves, pushed off into a wave, face down, hands outstretched in the most primitive kind of body surfing, and found himself being propelled to the beach.”
First Account of Bodysurfing in the Pacific
We now know that the first written account of oceanic bodysurfing predates that of board-surfing, rendering Gardner’s work outdated. Penned in 1769 by Joseph Banks, a member of Captain Cook’s first Pacific voyage (1768-1771) aboard the HMS Endeavor, the following passage describes a group of Tahitians bodysurfing a local reef break:
In the midst of these breakers, were ten or twelve Indians [Tahitians] swimming for their amusement: whenever a surf broke near them, they dived under it, and, to all appearance with infinite facility, rose again on the other side.
This diversion was greatly improved by the stern of an old canoe; they took this before them, and swam out with it as far as the outermost breach, then two or three of them getting into it, and turning the square end to the breaking wave, were driven in towards the shore with incredible rapidity, sometimes almost to the beach.
At this wonderful scene we stood gazing for more than half an hour, during which time none of the swimmers attempted to come on shore, but seemed to enjoy their sport in the highest degree.
Earlier, I used the term oceanic when referring to the first written account of bodysurfing because there is, in fact, an account of river bodysurfing that predates the above description of bodysurfing in the Pacific. Perhaps surprisingly, the first ever description of bodysurfing comes from dynastic China, where bodysurfers rode an annual tidal bore at the mouth of the Qiantang River over 1,000 years ago.
River Bore Bodysurfers in Dynastic China
In the book Shifting Currents: A World History of Swimming, author Karen Carr includes a passage about a group of tattooed watermen from medieval South China who participated in the tradition of nong chao, or ‘tide play,’ at the head of Hangzhou Bay:
“Around August or September every year, thousands of people left the Song Dynasty capital at Lin’an (modern Hangzhou) and went down to the mouth of the Qiantang River to see the tide play. As the tide comes in and meets the water flowing down the Qiantang River, it forms tidal bores. These are steep waves up to 30 feet high that can travel as fast as 25 miles per hour. Professionals body-surfed these dangerous waves, holding up colorful flags.”
Carr goes on to reference the original source of this information, a description of the “professional” tidal bore bodysurfers written by Song dynasty (960-1279) official Zhou Mi in about 1250 CE:
The tidal bore on the Zhe River is one of the great sights of the world … When it begins to arise far away at Ocean Gate, it appears but a silver thread; but as it gradually approaches, it becomes a wall of jade, a snow-laden ridge, bordering the sky on its way. Its gigantic roar is like thunder as it convulses, shakes, dashes, and shoots forth, swallowing up the sky and inundating the sun, for its force is supremely vigorous.
There were several hundred youths of Wu who were expert at swimming. They had loosened their hair and had tattoos on their bodies. In their hands they held colored banners some twenty feet in size and raced against each other with the utmost exertion, swimming against the current, floating and sinking in the leviathan waves a myriad ren high. Their leaping bodies executed a hundred different movements without getting the tails of the banners even slightly wet – this was how they showed off their skill.
Although many indigenous coastal communities around the globe have bodysurfed for thousands of years, the Song dynasty Chinese were the first to write about the pastime. Interestingly, the oldest tide charts in the world were made for the Qiantang River back in 1056.
Bodysurfing Featured in Hawaiian Mythology
The fact that the first written description of bodysurfing comes from dynastic China takes nothing away from the ancient Polynesians, who developed bodysurfing (along with other forms of wave-riding) to the highest degree over several millennia. However, Polynesians left no early written accounts of the sport due to their oral tradition.
The oldest mention of bodysurfing in Polynesian oral lore comes from the The Epic Tale of Hi‘iakaikapoliopele, which, after being transmitted via world of mouth for centuries, was ultimately published in the Hawaiian-language newspaper Ka Na’i Aupuni in 1905.
In this epic tale of Hawaiian mythology, the goddess Hi‘iaka and her brother, Kānemilohae, surf with the Kaua‘i chief, Lohi‘au, as part of an effort to bring him permanently back to life:
“Hi‘iaka and Lohi‘au rode their wave. Hi‘iaka’s skirt became a surfboard for Lohi‘au, while Hi‘iaka’s chest, her whole body, actually, became her board to ride the waves.”
As we can see, the goddess Hi‘iaka uses her whole body to ride the waves, thus establishing bodysurfing as a sport of the earliest Hawaiians, practiced by their gods.
Learning to Bodysurf in West Africa
It is important to note that most early written accounts of bodysurfing came from European observers, rather than the actual bodysurfing communities themselves, as was the case with Banks’ 1769 description of Tahitian bodysurfers.
Another example is the following account from On a Surf-bound Coast (1887), which describes an African man named Sua teaching the British author how to bodysurf somewhere along the Atlantic Coast of West Africa:
“Watching it [a wave] carefully till it is just upon him, he turns his face to the shore and rising on to the top of it he strikes out vigorously with it towards land, and is carried dashing in at a tremendous speed after the same manner as the surf-boats beach themselves.
“I try to imitate his example, but not with such success, in my haste and inexperience getting too much in advance, and being rolled up with the breaker instead of riding on its crest. However, I come out of it all right after a little tumbling about, and scramble out to find Sua on the beach highly amused by my performance, grinning from ear to ear.”
Although Robert Gardner had little research to base his chapter “The History of Body Surfing” on, he was right to suggest that humans have been bodysurfing since antiquity. Thankfully, in the half-century since Gardner published The Art of Body Surfing, we have filled in some of the gaps in our knowledge of bodysurfing history, as demonstrated by the examples above.
