APP.com, the Jersey Shore’s USA Today local-news source, wants to know. The woman known only as “Sandwich Island Girl” is the first person ever to surf on the East Coast of the United States, performing the feat off the coast of Asbury Park, New Jersey. She was illustrated on the cover of the August 18, 1888, National Police Gazette, a depiction that predates by at least one to two decades the next record of surfing activity on the East Coast. She may even be the first person recorded surfing anywhere in the continental United States. But the identity of this historic woman has always remained a mystery. However, thanks to the dogged efforts of East Coast surfing historian Skipper Funderburg, the mystery might soon be solved.
The cover illustration was created by Police Gazette artists, and is the only known visual depiction of the event. But the accompanying article was taken from a Philadelphia newspaper, which the Gazette actually cuts short when reprinted. Skipper discovered the missing text, which confirms Sandwich Island Girl was actually doing the act of surfing rather than just balancing: “When she has had enough of it she will bring the plank into shore, she riding upon the further end and guiding it like a goddess over the crests and through the foam of the biggest breakers.”
The missing text also contains further personal details, though no name: “She comes from the Sandwich Islands [Hawaii] and is making a tour of the country. Her father is an enormously rich planter. She arrived in the Park a week ago with the family of a wealthy New York importer. She is at a fashionable hotel and is one of the most charming dancers at the hotel hops, as well as the most daring swimmer on the Jersey coast. She is well educated and accomplished, and, of course, speaks English perfectly, and with a swell British accent that is the despair of the dudes. She learned to be mistress of the waves in her childhood at her native home by the sea, where, she modestly says, all the girls learn swimming as a matter of course, quite as much as girls in this country learn tennis and croquet.”
Now Skipper has uncovered further evidence. It seems one of those “despairing dudes” tried to track down Sandwich Island Girl by placing a personal ad in an Asbury Park newspaper. The paper also published a short article about his search, which also referenced a mention of the woman by a New York newspaper. All of these new findings are being reported by APP.com, which has put together an excellent video and article on the situation to date. More to come as the search continues!
