New Acquisition: Travel Magazine June 1939 Featuring “Surfboarding in Hawaii”

Surf Museum Hawaii (SMH) is building up its ephemera collection. Some of the printed antiquities will be a part of the permanent exhibit, and others will be displayed for one-off and/or rotating exhibits. Vintage travel magazines from about 1901 to 1940 are of particular interest to SMH. The era marked a heyday for mainland-to-Hawaii travel, with “surf riding” being prominently featured on and within the publications of the time.

It all started in 1887, when Matson Navigation expanded upon its commercial business and launched a passenger steamship offering service from San Francisco CA to the Hawaiian Islands. Their offering grew to include service from Los Angeles in 1914. To meet fast growing demand, Matson built their first luxury liner in 1927 just two years before The Great Depression. The S.S. Malolo (Hawaiian for “relax”) was followed by the addition of two other luxury liners, the Mariposa and the Monterey, which were launched in 1930 and 1932, respectively. These ships were instrumental in the development of tourism in Hawaii. The next big leap would come in April of 1935 when Pan American Airways began commercial flights to Hawaii from the mainland. Pan American dominated the North Pacific skies until the arrival of United Air in the 1940s.

It was within the first four decades of the 1900s that lifestyle and travel periodicals made their way into the newsstands and mailboxes across America. With Matson and Pan Pacific making the islands accessible to the privileged, magazines often ran features of Hawaii . The subject matter was ubiquitously adored by the world, which made it easy to attract advertisers who earned revenue by selling the Polynesian dream. Editors and advertisers alike would run covers and full page ads of palms, sand, sunsets, hula girls, and surfing. A near century later, publications with wave-riders gracing the shield yield top dollar on the surf memorabilia market. They are sold in surf auctions and markets like Honolulu’s quarterly Wiki Wiki One Day Vintage Collectibles & Hawaiiana Show.

SMH recently acquired one of the most prized items from the genre, the June 1939 issue of TRAVEL.

TRAVEL was a Robert M. McBride & Company (New York) publication. The first issue of TRAVEL was published in 1910 and ran in the same iteration until late 1940 prior to Robert M. McBride & Company’s bankruptcy in 1948. Despite it being a monthly magazine, only one issue featured surfing on the cover. The cover design was titled “Surfboarding in Hawaii“. It featured a surfer in a less-revealing than traditionally worn malo (loin cloth) shooting down the line of what we presume to be the Queens or Canoes surf break in Waikiki. There are two other hidden surfers sharing the wave, all of whom are riding olo boards, although they prophetically resemble Dick Brewer’s big wave guns. The artist is unknown, but the design comes curiously courtesy of Canadian Pacific (railway). Equally curious, is that there are no articles or photos about surfing or the Hawaiian islands within the publication’s 50 pages. However, the full-page back cover ad for Matson Line to Hawaii makes up for it. The now-famous ad has been reproduced as a wall-hanger in seaside homes and hotels around the world.