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chapter 18 A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean (1784) John Douglas, ed. 1721–1807 John Douglas, bishop of Salisbury, edited the official account of Captain Cook’s second voyage to the South Pacific and was charged with editing Cook’s final voyage. Such editions were normally the result of a compilation : Douglas would have gathered all journals from the voyage and produced the final version, integrating various observations and generally smoothing out the rough language of the mariners. Because of the many differences between this final version and the preceding journal entry of James King—including specific details that Douglas could hardly have credibly invented—one is led to the probability that King either provided Douglas with more information as the two worked on the final version, or Douglas based this passage not on King’s words, as has long been thought, but on a text that has not yet come to light. Authorship aside, the following version became the most influential account of Hawaiian surfriding for the next fifty years. Surfriding was introduced to the West as a “perilous and extraordinary” exercise in which Hawaiians perform “difficult and dangerous manœuvres”—a description that remains accurate today. Kealakekua Bay, Hawai‘i January 18–February 14, 1779 Swimming is not only a necessary art, in which both their men and women are more expert than any people we had hitherto seen, but a favourite diversion amongst them. One particular mode, in which they sometimes amused themselves with this exercise, in Karakakooa [Kealakekua] Bay, appeared to us most perilous and extraordinary, and well deserving a distinct relation. The surf, which breaks on the coast round the bay, extends to the distance of about one hundred and fifty yards from the shore, within which space, the surges of the sea, accumulating from the shallowness of the 75 water, are dashed against the beach with prodigious violence. Whenever, from stormy weather, or any extraordinary swell at sea, the impetuosity of the surf is increased to its upmost height, they choose that time for this amusement, which is performed in the following manner: Twenty or thirty of the natives, taking each a long narrow board, rounded at the ends, set out together from the shore. The first wave they meet, they plunge under, and suffering it to roll over them, rise again beyond it, and make the best of their way, by swimming, out into the sea. The second wave is encountered in the same manner with the first; the great difficulty consisting in seizing the proper moment of diving under it, which, if missed, the person is caught by the surf, and driven back again with great violence; and all his dexterity is then required to prevent himself from being dashed against the rocks. As soon as they have gained, by these repeated efforts, the smooth water beyond the surf, they lay themselves at length on their board, and prepare for their return. As the surf consists of a number of waves, of which every third is remarked to be always much larger then the others, and to flow higher on the shore, the rest breaking in the intermediate space, their first object is to place themselves on the summit of the largest surge, by which they are driven along with amazing rapidity toward the shore. If by mistake they should place themselves on one of the smaller waves, which breaks before they reach the land, or should not be able to keep their plank in a proper direction on the top of the swell, they are left exposed to the fury of the next, and, to avoid it, are obliged again to dive, and regain the place from which they set out. Those who succeed in their object of reaching the shore, have still the greatest danger to encounter. The coast being guarded by a chain of rocks, with, here and there, a small opening between them, they are obliged to steer their board through one of these, or, in case of failure, to quit it, before they reach the rocks, and, plunging under the wave, make the best of their way back again. This is reckoned very disgraceful, and is also attended with the loss of the board, which I have often seen, with great terror, dashed to pieces, at the very moment the islander quitted it. The boldness and address, with which we saw them perform these difficult and dangerous manœuvres, was altogether astonishing, and is scarcely to be...

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