Surfing's Origins - Tom Blake part 2
Before I get started I want to thank Spencer Croul and the Croul Family Foundation for the help in creating Addicted to Joy. Images in this blog are courtesy of the Croul Family Foundation. Most of my information has been obtained in conversation with Spencer and from the book “Tom Blake: The Uncommon Journey of a Pioneer Waterman.
Tom Blake was such a seminal figure in surfing. One blog isn’t enough to tell his story. I was hoping I could do this in 2 installments but I suspect more is on the way. Tom was a creator and true innovator. Some of his accomplishments were surf photography, the sail board, the leash, the hollow board and the fin for surfboards. Let’s dive in together.
Paul Strauch Jr. told me about Tom Blake making Paul’s first real surfboard in the late 1950’s to early 1960’s. Tom, Paul, and Paul’ s father went to the lumber yard (McWayne Marine Supply) to select the wood.
Every day Blake would pedal his bike up the hill with his lunch (usually a bag of nuts and fruits) and work on the board. After a couple of weeks, Paul started asking questions about the construction and Tom would answer. Paul got a real education from a master and the resulting fantastic surfboard.
Tom was a swimmer before he was a surfer. Always interested in his health, in 1924 he turned to be being a full time vegetarian for the rest of his life. In 1920, he met Duke Kahanamoko in Detroit at a showing of a movie and their friendship began. When Tom went to Hawaii in 1924, Duke was one of the first people he looked up. Tom developed a life long bond with the man at that point.
He was briefly married in 1925 to the daughter of an Oklahoma oil man and they spent their honeymoon in Hawaii. Tom was very private, but a story said he did nothing but surf the whole time they were there…the marriage lasted less than a year.
In 1926, he returned to Hawaii and renewed his friendships and returned to the life of a surfer and inventor. His first published photographs from a camera he used in the water were around 1930. In the picture below you’ll see the invention of the sail board.
Nobody took cameras anywhere near the water for a lot of reasons. Mostly, they were bulky and required that you make only one image at a time. That changed with the invention of a 35mm camera and film in 1927. Tom really became the first surf photographer. I’m going to share some of those early photos.
Tom’s work with creating a hollow board that only weighed in the forty pound range over the hundred pound plus range of the traditional solid redwood ‘Olo’s. Here’s a look at the drawing:
Things evolved quickly for Tom. In 1930, he was the first one to use a leash to keep the board from getting so far away and saving a long swim to the beach. Maybe one of the biggest invention is the “Finn” in 1935.
Above all, it was the joy of being in the water
I can say that Tom Blake may have changed surfing more than any single individual, ever. I hope you find inspiration in his story and in the film Addicted to Joy. I invite you to watch, Aloha.
I’d like to thank you all for reading Wood Water Soul. We’d like to announce we have moved Addicted to Joy to a new streaming service, we have some very cool things planned for the future, we’re excited to share it with you, please share it with a friend.
Mahalo for Sharing 🤙🤙🤙