by Phil Jarratt
Duke’s loss to Johnny Weissmuller may have signalled the beginning of the end of his swimming career, but it did nothing to diminish his popularity. When he returned to California to resume his film career, he continued to be mobbed by wellwishers everywhere he went, and the situation got even worse when he won awards for bravery after helping to rescue eight fishermen from a capsized boat off Newport Beach. While surfing with some friends during a storm at Corona Del Mar, Duke witnessed a 40-foot pleasure yacht violently overturned by the enormous waves. Seventeen people who had rented the boat for a fishing expedition suddenly found themselves thrown overboard. Duke paddled to their rescue, making three trips from the shore to the capsized boat and back, saving eight of the fishermen. Two of Duke’s surfing friends, Owen Hale and Gerard Vultee, were able to rescue another four victims. Unfortunately, five people drowned, a fact that caused Duke sleepless nights for many years.
The three men later received awards from the Hawaiian Society of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Athletic Club for their heroism.
In 1926 business tycoon William Wrigley Jr asked Duke to enter his Catalina Channel Marathon Swim, scheduled for the following January with 25,000 dollars for the winner. The race was a stunt to promote Wrigley’s residential properties set around his casino on Catalina Island, and he knew Duke’s involvement would guarantee its success. The fortune on offer was enticing, but Duke had already made up his mind to challenge Weissmuller again. He was going to make the swim team for the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics. He said no to Wrigley and got back into a serious training routine.
In 1927 he was back in Waikiki for the opening of the futuristic War Memorial Natatorium. ‘Opening the Natatorium without Duke would have been like having a luau without poi,’ said Big Bill Rawlins.
Sargent Kahanamoku recalled watching his big brother swimming an exhibition lap down the middle lane of the big new baths:
He goes down about 20 yards and the waves start hitting the sides of the tank. Those waves were so big you could take a 120-pound surfboard and ride them! Nobody else, not even Johnny Weissmuller could get in the middle of a pool and make waves like that.
A few months later Duke was well into his final preparations for the Olympic team qualifiers when influenza laid him low again, dashing his hopes for one last shot at Olympic gold. Instead, the 37-year-old watched the newsreel coverage from Amsterdam, showing Weissmuller taking his last Olympic medals before turning professional and joining Duke in Hollywood. But Duke was starting to feel his days in the movie industry were now numbered, too. As the Great Depression began, the film roles became harder to find, and eventually he cut his losses and went home.
Julia Kahanamoku’s health had begun to deteriorate in the late 1920s and Duke moved back in with her in Kalia while his own house on Ala Moana Road continued to be rented. He was offered the job of ‘supervisor’ at City Hall, which turned out to be a glorified janitor’s position. It wasn’t Hollywood but Duke didn’t care. He had a few bucks in his pocket, he was back amongst the beach boys and surfing or canoeing every day, and he was surrounded by family. In any case the job didn’t last long: he took time out for the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics (he failed to make the swim team but was reserve on the water polo team, which won a bronze without troubling Duke on the bench) and when a new board of supervisors was elected in 1933 he was unceremoniously kicked out.
Concerned about his financial future, friends loaned Duke money to help him establish a business of his own. He leased two service stations and set himself up in a small apartment between the two so that he could grab his board and surf whenever he wasn’t pumping gas. Despite his worldwide fame, Duke was without pretension and was quite happy when Union Oil took out newspaper advertising featuring his image. He even had his name sign-written on an alaia surfboard on a prominent wall at both stations. But a popular song, ‘Duke Kahanamoku, Former Olympic Champion, Now Pumping Gas’, finally got to him.
In 1934 he was convinced by powerful friends to run for the position of Sheriff of Honolulu, and was elected by a narrow margin after a hard-fought campaign. Although his main Republican opponent played strongly on Duke’s lack of qualifications for the job, there was never a mention of the fact that his father had left the police force in disgrace. Gentleman’s rules applied, and once Duke was in office, there was no chance of getting him out. He served thirteen consecutive terms until the position was abolished in 1960, often elected unopposed. (In 1956 he was elected despite being absent for the entire campaign at the Melbourne Olympics.)
Although constant travel had prevented him from forming any lasting relationships, Duke had been associated with a string of glamorous women over the years, both in Hawaii and California. In 1935, however, soon after his new position as sheriff had placed him under even greater public scrutiny, the world’s richest woman, tobacco heiress Doris Duke, arrived in Honolulu on her honeymoon and immediately began steamy affairs, first with Sam Kahanamoku and then with Duke. Doris, 23, had married socialite James Cromwell, who had no hope of keeping up with her sporting and social agenda. She rode, she sailed, she swam, and soon, under the tuition of the Kahanamokus, she was a proficient surfer. But above everything else, Doris loved sex. She had installed Duke as a permanent fixture at her Black’s Point estate, Shangrila, even when her husband was in residence. The affair was an open secret in Honolulu; tongues wagged at social gatherings but very little found its way into the press.
In 1940, while Doris was pregnant with a son, Arden, who died at birth, Duke spied his brother, Sam, on the lanai of the Royal Hawaiian Hotel with a very pretty girl. Duke had Sam introduce him to Nadine Alexander, a ballroom-dancing instructor at the hotel. Nadine was worldly, sophisticated, a 35-five-year-old divorcee who had taught dancing in London and New York before coming to Hawaii. She quickly fell deeply in love with the handsome, silver-haired surfer, and he reciprocated the feeling. They were married in August 1940 in front of family and friends at a small rural church on the Big Island of Hawaii.
To show there were no hard feelings, Doris Duke put up a 5000-dollar interest-free loan and the Kahanamokus bought a house conveniently close to hers at Black’s Point. Duke was to live there the rest of his life.
Duke’s celebrity never waned: he remained famous at home and abroad and was constantly pestered for photographs every time he ventured out at Waikiki with his board. He never let it get to him, always presenting a smiling face to tourists, the perennial ambassador of aloha. Duke was still basically a pauper (albeit one with a glamorous wife, a comfortable home and a lot of free dinners) when the office of sheriff was abolished in 1960, but a young entrepreneur named Kimo Wilder McVay, the son of socialite and philanthropist Kinau Wilder, resolved to secure Duke financially for the rest of his life.
Duke had some experience of commercial endorsements, having been involved with several clothing labels since the late 1930s, not always to his advantage, but nothing had prepared him for Kimo McVay, whose grand plan for him included hiring his name to a swimming meet, a boy’s club, a Waikiki restaurant and supper club, a surf team and a surfing tournament. Duke Kahanamoku’s, in the International Market Place, was an immediate success, featuring the young singer, Don Ho, most nights. The Duke Kahanamoku Invitational surfing contest, introduced in 1965, soon became the most prestigious surfboard-riding event in the world.
The Wilder McVays gifted Duke a 1963 Lincoln Continental, for which Kimo had had a personalised hood ornament made showing Duke riding a wave. With this and his personalised ‘Duke’ licence plates, Duke felt pretty good as he cruised slowly from home to the restaurant, the Outrigger Canoe Club and the Waikiki Yacht Club. But his health was slipping fast. Already suffering from acute stomach ulcers, Duke was hit in the head by a boom while sailing, and after prolonged dizzy spells, he underwent surgery for a blood clot on the brain in May 1962. He was close to death for weeks, but after a long recuperation on Kauai, he returned to his busy social whirl.
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nbsp; He and Nadine visited Australia again in 1963, seeing Isabel for the last time, then attended the Tokyo Olympics the following year. But in early 1967 he was back in hospital with bleeding ulcers and was on the critical list for weeks after doctors removed almost half of his stomach. His friends saw a pattern emerging and decided to make Duke’s seventy-seventh birthday in August something special. More than 6000 people turned out for the party, hosted by the Wilder McVays and Don Ho in the Waikiki Terminal. A frail Duke was presented with a Rolls Royce Silver Cloud that he would drive a mere handful of times.
On 22 January 1968 he suffered a fatal heart attack in the parking lot of the Waikiki Yacht Club. After a funeral service at St Andrews Episcopal Cathedral, a huge motorcade moved across town to the beach in front of the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, where the beach boys sang the old songs before Duke’s ashes were taken out into the bay by canoe and scattered over the waves he had so loved.
In Australia:
Claude West
Claude shared Duke’s board with Isabel until William Letham made one for her, and he continued to ride it—and his own boards modelled on it—through the war years, soon becoming the second-best shooter in the Manly area after Tommy Walker, and certainly the area’s best surfer/shaper.
He won the Surf Life Saving Association surfboard title in 1919 and remained unbeaten until 1925, although a bad accident in 1920 prompted him to advertise his surfboard for sale with the explanation, ‘owner in hospital owing to using same’. (Young Palm Beach surfer Adrian Curlewis bought it.) In that same year he famously saved Governor General Sir Ronald Munro-Ferguson from drowning at South Steyne, paddling out on his surfboard to pluck him from the rip.
Claude bequeathed the Duke board to Freshwater Surf Club in 1956. He retired as a lifeguard soon after but continued to surf well into old age. He died in May 1980 and his ashes were scattered beyond the waves at Manly.
Cecil Healy
On 15 September 1915, Cecil Healy enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force. After service as a quartermaster sergeant in Egypt and France, he transferred to the infantry officer school at Trinity College, Cambridge. Here, Cecil was right at home. He swam, rowed, boxed and played rugby, while often being called upon as an Olympic gold medallist to use his considerable oratorical skills to motivate young players or recruits.
In June 1918, however, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Sportsmen’s Battalion and posted to France. He was killed during his first action in the battle for Mont St Quentin on 29 August, just nine weeks short of the armistice. He never married.
Tommy Adrian
Tommy Adrian sailed off to war in July 1915, aged 22. When he returned to Australia in August 1919, he brought with him three service medals and more than his fair share of horrific memories. As a gunner and later a driver, with the Fifth Field Artillery Brigade, he served in the frontlines of trench warfare in France for more than three years, his only extended leave being to have his appendix removed in London, after which he returned to the thick of the action.
Discharged from the army in January 1920, Tommy was a classic victim of shell shock, physically and mentally exhausted, and tortured by the horrors he had seen and the loss of dear friends like Cecil Healy. He spent most of his time pottering around the family shoe shop, but derived one of the few pleasures in his life in helping young swimmers improve their technique at the Manly Baths. One of these was a youngster called Andrew ‘Boy’ Charlton.
When Boy Charlton was selected for the 1924 Olympic Games, there was controversy over whether Tommy should be allowed to accompany him as coach. Not only did he have no formal qualifications, but he was considered emotionally unstable. His sea passage was paid for by the Sunday Mail newspaper in return for insider articles, but Tommy suffered a fit of depression during the voyage and threw himself overboard. He was rescued but spent the rest of the trip confined below decks and played no part in Charlton’s Paris preparation. He never recovered from this and spent the rest of his short life a shadowy presence in the back room of the family store.
Tommy Walker
Australia’s first quality surfboard rider continued to drift in and out of the sport through the war years and beyond. The Sydney press reported him demonstrating surf shooting on a ‘Duke board’ at Freshwater in March 1915. He was also a regular at Yamba on the NSW North Coast while working as a seaman on coastal runs or as a sugar factory worker.
Manly regulars became used to ‘Looney’ Walker appearing at the beach after long absences, and at some point in the 1920s he appears to have moved to Sydney’s western suburbs and given up the sport. He made his voice heard in 1939, however, when swimmer Harry Hay wrote in The Referee about Duke Kahanamoku having introduced the surfboard to Australia in 1914. Tommy responded by sending a photograph of himself with his surfboard at Manly in 1909.
This was the last heard of Tommy Walker, who is believed to have died in Adelaide in 1941.
Don McIntyre
Although Boomerang Camp closed down (along with most of the Freshwater camps) by the late 1920s, McIntyre continued his association with the Freshwater Surf Club, and remained honorary secretary of the Surf Life Saving Association until 1932. On his retirement a grateful committee presented him with a gold watch and a cheque for 50 pounds. He died at home in Manly in July 1948.
Mina Wylie
Despite being in the shadow of Fanny Durack for much of her career, Mina was a champion in her own right. Between 1906 and 1934 she won 115 state and national titles and held world records in freestyle, breaststroke and backstroke. In some years she was the standout in every event at the Australian championships and in 1922 won the New South Wales 880-yards title by an extraordinary two laps.
From 1928 to 1970 she taught swimming at Presbyterian Ladies’ College, Pymble. In 1975 she was elected to the International Swimming Hall of Fame. Never married, she lived most of her life in the family home at Coogee. She died in July 1984 at Randwick.
In Hawaii:
George Cunha
After his return to Hawaii George continued to represent his club and Territory with distinction at swim meets at home and on the US mainland, although he never made the Olympic team. By the early 1920s, he was swimming and diving professionally with various troupes along the eastern seaboard.
Francis Evans
Following his presentation of the tour report to the Hui Nalu committee, Francis dropped out of the headlines. He remained a member of the club and played guitar at social functions with his brother. He took a job with the City in the purchasing department in 1917 but soon after left for the mainland to enlist.
Alexander Hume Ford
After hosting Jack and Charmian London again in 1915, Ford seemed to lose interest in surfing, although he maintained a close involvement with the Outrigger Canoe Club. His main preoccupation was with the Pan Pacific Union and the ‘Hands across the Pacific’ club, both of which he championed alongside Percy Hunter of the NSW Tourist Bureau. He used the pages of his Mid-Pacific Magazine to promote trade, tourism and peace across the region. In the 1930s he visited China and Japan on several occasions, hoping to use his waning influence to diffuse tensions.
But Ford’s grand plans for peace and prosperity in the Pacific came to nothing when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941, bringing America into the war. He was a broken and impoverished man, having given his all for the cause. The board of the Outrigger Canoe Club voted him an allowance of 40 dollars a month and provided his meals, and in April 1944 a huge party was organised to celebrate the founder’s seventy-sixth birthday. Ford died the following year, leaving an estate of 300 dollars.
George Freeth
George continued to work at the Los Angeles Athletic Club until 1915, while becoming California’s leading advocate for a professional lifeguard service. He was then poached by the increasingly prominent San Diego Rowing Club to take charge of its swim program.
Within a few months SDRC swim team was one of the best in the United States. George also supplemented his income by lifeguarding and performing fancy diving at the Hotel Del Coronado pool.
At the end of the summer of 1916, the SDRC unexpectedly fired George as part of a cost-cutting campaign. They allowed him to continue sleeping at the club, but the following year this privilege was taken, too. George’s life was beginning to unravel. He took a job at a sports store and moved into a room in a cheap hotel until May 1918, when a drowning tragedy forced the City to review its lifeguard policy and hire the best lifeguard in the state.
George’s life was back on track but his health was not. In January 1919 he contracted Spanish influenza. In March Ludy Langer visited him in hospital and reported that he was too ill to talk. He died in April, aged 35. The San Diego Rowing Club arranged for his ashes to be sent home so that they could be scattered over the waves at Waikiki.
Bill Rawlins
Big Bill remained on the executive of the Hui Nalu into the 1920s, while cementing his position as one of Hawaii’s leading attorneys and legislators. During his tenure as Territorial commissioner of public lands, he was involved in several landmark native-title cases. He died in 1946.
Sources
Although I lived on the northern beaches peninsula of Sydney for more than twenty years, and at one time wrote a weekly lifestyle column for the Manly Daily, I never took much notice of Manly or Freshwater until Duke and Isabel became my research obsession. I have been pleasantly surprised to discover much about the area and how it was a hundred years ago simply by walking its streets and exploring its beaches and rocky headlands.