Tom Blake (March 8, 1902-May 5, 1994)

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Tom Blake was a larger-than-life surf pioneer, a seminal force in the history of the sport, who almost single-handedly transformed surfing from a primitive Polynesian curiosity into a 20th century lifestyle. In the process, he was responsible for preserving much of surfing's oral history as well as resurrecting the streamlined surfboards of ancient times.

Born and raised in Wisconsin by relatives after his mother died, Blake took to the road after high school. He was in Detroit in 1920 when Olympic Gold Medal swimmer Duke Kahanamoku passed through on an exhibition tour and was so inspired by the strong, soft-spoken Islander that he decided to devote his life to the great Hawaiian watersports of swimming, paddling and surfing. Less than four years later, Blake met Duke once again, but this time it was on the beach at Waikiki, and the 24-year-old Midwesterner was one of the strongest swimmers in the country, good enough to set a world record in the 10-mile open.

In 1924, surfing was just awakening from its 19th century near death experience. Surfboards were big awkward slabs of timber weighing more than 100 pounds. They were difficult to maneuver, and they didn't float particularly well.

Blake was a man of great physical capacities, but also of considerable vision. When he discovered several ancient Hawaiian olo boards sequestered in a store room at Honolulu's Bishop Museum in 1926, he carefully replicated them, then drilled hundreds of holes in the wood to accelerate the drying process in humid Hawaii. He then sheathed the hull in marine plywood veneer and refined the shape, thus creating the first "hollow" surfboard. At 15 feet long, 19 inches wide and 4 inches thick, it weighed less than 100 pounds -- an ultralight board for its time.

In 1928, Blake brought his new boards to the mainland, where some 10,000 beachgoers witnessed the first Pacific Coast Surfing Championships at Corona del Mar. Blake's long, narrow boards were regarded as silly and jokingly dubbed "cigars." At the sound of the gun, he launched his big board amidst the laughter of the crowd and quickly recovered from a last-place start to win the 880 by over a hundred yards. Blake patented his "Hawaiian Hollow Surfboard" in 1930, and soon almost all racing paddleboards were hollow.

The hollow boards worked well in the surf, too. Floating high, they were easier to maneuver than the heavier slabs, and they made excellent vehicles for the popular sport of tandem surfing. But they were the consummate lifesaving tools. Adopted on the mainland by the American Red Cross Life Saving Division, the Hawaiian Hollow Surfboard totally revolutionized water rescue techniques in the United States and around the world.

Blake's lighter hollow board (aka "cigar boxes" and eventually "kook boxes") immediately made surfing accessible to greater numbers of people. Manufactured first by the Thomas N. Rogers Company of Venice, California, and later by the Los Angeles Ladder Company, this was the first "production" surfboard in the world. During the '30s and '40s, surfers generally chose between two types of boards -- a 10-foot redwood plank or a longer, narrower Blake-style cigar box.

To give his surfing paddleboard more directional stability, Blake created (and patented) a small, keel-like fin, although the importance of this invention wasn't really appreciated until the late '40s when Bob Simmons, Joe Quigg and others began to use them. Blake also invented the sailing surfboard, a concept that presaged the windsurfer.

As if this weren't enough, Tom Blake invented surf photography. He bought a 4"x5" camera from Duke Kahanamoku, created a waterproof housing for it and photographed Waikiki's surfers from his paddleboard. Published in National Geographic in 1935, Blake's classic shots not only introduced a much wider audience to the thrill of surfing, they inspired at least two young California surfers to take up cameras: John "Doc" Ball and Don James and both became legendary surf photographers.

Seeded by Blake's ideas, other surfers began experimenting with their equipment, and a design renaissance was soon underway. Blake was delighted. He saw surfing as one of the most beneficial of human endeavors. Besides being a freethinking innovator and champion waterman, Blake was a visionary surfer, himself a prototype for an emerging lifestyle. This vision was in large part due to his understanding of the old Polynesian sport of surfing. In the process, he took pains to gather and record the fading history of its ancient origins, the oral and physical history embodied in contemporary surfers and the artifacts of their world.

In his travels to Hawaii, Blake was so utterly respectful of the people he met that he was invited into the heart of their community and culture. He was even wise enough to respect the earth. A vegetarian, Blake believed that every bit of this world -- every grain of sand and every snapping barrel -- is not simply the work of God, it is God. He articulated his vision in a wonderful essay, titled "The Voice of the Atom."

Although he wished he'd even been there earlier, Blake loved Hawaii and its "Aloha frame of mind." His 1935 book, Hawaiian Surfboard, preserved a wealth of Hawaiian legend and information about surfing's role in the missionary and pre-contact Hawaiian cultures. It also chronicled his evolution as a discoverer of Polynesian culture.

In the end, it was the popularization of Hawaii and surfing, to which he himself had hugely contributed, that drove him off the tropic beaches and back to California and eventually to Montana, where he found the same rhythms and cycles of waves in the big skies and undulating landscape. At the age of 92, back in his home state of Wisconsin, Blake passed away. Alone with Duke Kahanamoku as an honoree of both the swimming and surfing halls of fame, he was both savior and conductor of the 20th century's first surfboard revolution. In many ways, he was the first modern surfer. -- Drew Kampion, October 2000

Click here to find all the Tom Blake photos and editorial on Surfline.