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chapter 14 An Authentic Narrative of a Voyage Performed by Captain Cook and Captain Clerke in His Majesty’s Ships Resolution and Discovery (1782) William Ellis d. 1785 William Ellis served as surgeon’s second mate aboard the Discovery and later the Resolution. Because he published his account of the voyage in 1782, two years before the official version appeared, the following excerpt represents the earliest published description of Hawaiian natives riding surfboards. Since the word surfboard did not yet exist, Ellis decided to call them sharkboards. His concluding comment that water seemed the “natural element” of Hawaiians became a regular trope among travelers to the Pacific, many of whom characterized the natives as “amphibious.”6 Waimea, Kaua‘i January, 1778 Their canoes or boats are the neatest we ever saw, and composed of two different coloured woods, the bottom being dark, the upper part light, and furnished with an out-rigger. Besides these, they have another mode of conveying themselves in the water, upon very light flat pieces of boards, which we called sharkboards, from the similitude the anterior part bore to the head of that fish. Upon these they will venture into the heaviest surfs, and paddling with their hands and feet, get on at a great rate. Indeed, we never saw people so active in the water, which almost seems their natural element. 69 ...

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