Thomas Edward Blake (March 8, 1902 – May 5, 1994) was an American athlete, inventor, and writer, widely considered to be one of the most influential surfers in history, and a key figure in transforming surfing from a regional Hawaiian specialty to a nationally popular sport.
[4] After leaving school, Blake embarked upon the nomadic lifestyle that would characterize most of his life, working a succession of jobs in Detroit, New York, and Miami.
One episode from that period that presaged his later career occurred in Detroit in 1920, when he encountered the legendary Hawaiian surfer Duke Kahanamoku at a movie theater.
He shook hands with Kahanamoku and later reported, "I felt that somehow he had included an invitation to me to come over to his own Hawaiian islands... As I look back now I realize how much I was influenced by this first contact with the man who has become the best-known personality in the history of surfing.
In 1922, he traveled to Pennsylvania to enter a ten-mile race on the Delaware River and triumphed over a field of the East Coast's top swimmers, breaking the existing record in the process.
Back on the mainland, in September 1927, Blake and his friend Sam Reid became the first to surf Malibu Point, and in 1928, he organized, and then won, the first Pacific Coast Surfriding Championship.
However, his victory sparked some resentment among his native Hawaiian friends, feeling that the new board had given him unfair advantage, and Blake stopped entering races after this.
Then on August 1, 1936, he set a milestone that still stands: entering the waves at Kalehuawehe near Waikiki, he made a run estimated at 4,500 feet, the longest recorded surf ride in history.
Blake initially sought to build lighter olos by drilling hundreds of holes in the board, then covering the openings with a thin outer layer.
In 1932, he received a patent for his hollow surfboard design "and opened the sport up to hundreds of people who weren't able to muscle the heavy plank boards down the beach and into the water.
"[12] Blake’s internally braced hollow wooden surfboards were eventually superseded by laminated boards with an interior layer of balsa, then by foam-and-fiberglass designs, but another of his innovations remains a fixture of modern surf- and paddleboards, the "skeg" or fin.
As one author wrote, "The modern sport of windsurfing can be traced back to the 1930s when a surfer named Tom Blake, whose arms became particularly tired one afternoon from paddling his board out to catch the waves, thought he should be able to use the wind for propulsion.” For his first experiment, he simply used an umbrella, but subsequently refined the design, adding a proper sail and a foot-controlled rudder.
[18] Nonetheless, Blake’s innovations were significant, and a photo spread of his work that was published in 1935 in National Geographic magazine helped call attention to the potential his device offered.
[20] Later in life, Blake devoted a great deal of his thought to matters of philosophy, and in 1969, published an essay, "Voice of the Wave," which approached surfing from a metaphysical perspective.
Offering acknowledgments to "Descartes, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Socrates, Aristotle, Gautama, Lao Tsu, Confucius, Zeno, Mohammed;... Swedenborg, Spinoza, Emerson, Thoreau, Bacon, Schweitzer, Galileo, Copernicus, Albert Einstein" and many others, the book explored topics as diverse as immortality, vegetarianism, and the nature of God.
[21] It is clear that the book is the culmination of a long process of contemplation: some eighteen years before its publication, he carved its essential message, “NATURE=GOD”, into a secluded rock face on the Lake Superior shoreline near his hometown of Washburn.
For the next three decades, from 1955 well into the 1980s, Blake lived wherever the mood took him: in California at Malibu, Ventura, and in the Imperial Valley on the shore of the Salton Sea; in Florida, at Boca Raton; and finally back to Wisconsin.
His friend and biographer Gary Lynch reported that in those days, Blake owned one plate, one knife, one fork, one dish, and one chair.
He quickly renewed his ties to the community, spending much of his remaining years living in his van at a park on the Lake Superior shoreline, where he was seen as a friendly eccentric who was more than happy to give swimming and paddling lessons to local teenagers.
[28] No discussion of Blake's life would be complete without mention of his long-term commitment to vegetarianism, a philosophy that he adopted with evangelical zeal.
In a 1955 article reporting Blake's departure from the island, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin reminisced about the sight of the great surfer as, "Late in the evening... he would seek his way back to (his) tiny boat, carrying a brown paper sack containing carrots, celery, a loaf of bread, some cheese (and) ice cream for his lonely evening meal.
Blake placed surfboards, paddleboards, and life saving equipment within reach of the interested athlete, lifeguard, and seaside visitor.
And while the great Duke nobly represented a spiritual tie to his ancient Hawaiian sport, it was Blake who provided the modern mode for all who came after.