A short life of Duke Kahanamoku

Duke Paoa Kahinu Mokoe Hulikohola Kahanamoku was born on 24 August 1890 at Haleʻākala in Honolulu, in what was still the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi. Duke was a given name, inherited from his father, who was christened Duke by Bernice Pauahi Bishop in honor of a visiting Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh. It was never a title.

The Kingdom was overthrown in January 1893, when he was two years old. That same year his family moved to Kalia, on the Waikīkī shore, to be near his mother’s family, the Paoas. He grew up in the water there.

Around 1908 he and two friends named a club under a hau tree on the Moana Hotel lawn: Hui Nalu, the Club of the Waves. He trained in the Alakea Slip in Honolulu Harbor and dove for coins thrown by arriving passengers on boat days.

When the Olympic trials came, Hui Nalu paid his way by subscription and donation.

On 11 August 1911, in Honolulu Harbor, he swam 100 yards in 55.4 seconds, 4.6 seconds inside the world record. The AAU refused to ratify it, suggesting the judges had used alarm clocks rather than stopwatches. He re-broke the record under AAU supervision on the mainland the following year.

He swam for the United States, which had annexed Hawaiʻi in 1898, and won five Olympic medals, three gold and two silver, across Stockholm 1912, Antwerp 1920 and Paris 1924.

Surfing is heʻe nalu. It is Native Hawaiian and centuries older than him. What Duke did was carry it from Waikīkī to the world.

On 24 December 1914, at Freshwater Beach in Sydney, he shaped a board from local sugar pine and paddled out. Australia dates its surfing to that afternoon, and the board is still at the Freshwater club.

On 14 June 1925, off Newport Beach in California, a fishing boat capsized in heavy surf. Duke brought eight men alive off the water on his surfboard.

Elected Sheriff of the City and County of Honolulu in 1934, he served thirteen consecutive terms until the office was abolished in 1961. He did not retire; the office ended before he did.

He is Hawaiʻi’s Ambassador of Aloha.

He died in Honolulu on 22 January 1968, aged 77. Jan Gordon Fisher’s nine-foot bronze of him was dedicated at Kūhiō Beach on 24 August 1990, his hundredth birthday.

He rarely brought the medals up. This site tries to write him the same way: understated about extraordinary things.