SEA GIRT NJ- Jan 25, 2023
Is the mystery solved?
New Book: Forsaken Kings, Emma Spreckels The Surfer of Asbury Park explores the life of the first surfer on the east coast.
“A Gay Queen of the Waves” was reported by the Philadelphia Press in July 1888 and described a “Sandwich Island Girl”, performing a never-before-seen activity in the water. She was surfing, standing on a plank riding the waves over four days in Asbury Park NJ. She was memorialized on the cover of the August 15, 1888 National Police Gazette with a dramatic woodcut of the scene. After four years of research, author Vincent Dicks of Sea Girt, New Jersey has found the likely surfer, and she is the subject of his new book: Forsaken Kings, Emma Spreckels the Surfer of Asbury Park.
Emma was the daughter of Sugar King Claus Spreckels. Claus dominated the sugar trade in Hawaii for over a decade. He had come east to Philadelphia in 1888 to build his first sugar refinery on this coast as his rival Harry O. Havermeyer funded a competing plant in the west.
“The Press article mentions the surfer was the daughter of a wealthy planter of the islands,” Dicks explained. “I took the 1888 Planters Journal and tracked each owner and manager of the plantations in the kingdom of Hawaii. I researched the families for an appropriate age daughter and ships logs for travel records. Emma Spreckels is the only one who was the correct age and on the east coast that summer. Her family also had a relationship with John Lorimer Graham of Rumson who took out the ad which appeared in the Asbury Park Daily Press in August 1888, trying to locate the girl for his lonely Hawaiian wife.”
Dicks has been able to convince a number of experts in the surfing world that Emma was most likely the first surfer in New Jersey, pre-dating Olympian Duke Kahanamoku in 1895 at Atlantic City. Mike May of the NJ Surfing Hall of Fame, Malcolm Gault Williams of Legendary Surfers Blog, as well as Professor Patrick Moser of Drury University, author of Pacific Passages: An Anthology of Surf Writing, all acknowledge that Emma is the leading candidate based on Dicks’ research. Matt Warshaw has even gone as far as declaring it in the Encyclopedia of Surfing.
“This article ran in the July 31, 1888, issue of the Pittsburgh Press. The unnamed woman is almost certainly a wealthy Hawaii-raised teenager named Emma Spreckels, daughter of sugar baron Claus Spreckels and great-aunt to famed 1970s surfing antihero Adolph “Bunker” Spreckels...”
Emma spent part of her childhood in Hawaii. The family had a home in Punahou, with views of Waikiki and Diamond Head. She and her brother Rudolph attended the Punahou School (Then called Oahu College) in 1882-3. She also spent time around the royal court and was on familiar terms with King David Kalakaua, who hosted parties in her honor. The king visited Emma in San Francisco, just days before his death in 1891.
Her father was friendly with Scottsman Archibald Cleghorn, the husband of Princess Likelike and father of Princess Kaiulani, an accomplished surfer herself. While Kaiulani was five years younger than Emma, Cleghorn had three other daughters from a prior marriage close to Emma’s age.
By 1888, Claus Spreckels and Kalakaua’s relationship had soured, and Spreckels was building the largest sugar refinery in the world in Philadelphia. He moved his family moved east and two of his sons were reported strolling the boards at Cape May and Atlantic City. In the early summer, Claus his wife and daughter were vacationing at the Wissahickon Inn outside of Philadelphia. In July Claus went back west alone, leaving Emma free to visit Asbury Park.
The unnamed female surfer in the story had unusually expensive bathing clothes, was trained in formal dance, and was not with her parents, but with another girl from a wealthy New York family. The reporter knew she attended fashionable hotel parties in the evenings and surfed over four days, yet failed to get her name. Somehow, he also knew her father was enormously wealthy.
Dicks suggests that Emma could have paid to keep her name out of the article. “The average newspaperman made very little money. Emma Spreckels was one of the richest young women in America. Her father would not have wanted this kind of publicity. There were ways the reporter could get his story, and Emma could keep her name out of the newspapers.”
“The surfing world, initially skeptical of the story, has come around. They no longer question if Asbury Park is the first documented surfing on the East Coast. Through my work, Emma is clearly their leading candidate.”
Forsaken Kings is historical fiction. Emma’s life story is told from her perspective. She was a witness to the downfall of the Hawaiian Monarchy as the descendants of the American Missionaries took control of the government. Emma eventually had to defy her wealthy father to live the life she wanted. Early response has been positive:
"Beautifully rendered, and accurate." -John Briscoe Author and Dir. SF Historical Society on the portrayal of 1880s San Francisco
“With exhaustive research and a storyteller’s flair, Vincent Dicks offers a sweeping fictional narrative of one of the nation’s most important and unjustly forgotten families.” -Dr. Sandra Bonura author of Empire Builder: John D. Spreckels and the Making of San Diego & California Sweet: The Life & Legacy of Claus Spreckels
"A masterful weaving of 19th-century newspaper articles and other reading into a grand story. It captures the essence of a Victorian girl becoming a woman within an almost forgotten social class system reflective of royalty." -Candace W. Lee former Archivist at Kamehameha Schools
Published by Career Gaudium Press and Available January 25, 2023 at Amazon.com in Hardcover, Paperback, and ebook.