By the time Captain Cook and his ships reached the Hawaiian Islands in 1778, the art, sport and religion of surfing had reached a sophisticated peak. But what Cook and Lieutenant King described in Tahiti and Hawai'i was the zenith of the sport in Old Polynesia, because in the wake of the Resolution and the Discovery, Hawai'i and Hawaiian surfing fell into decline for more than 150 years. European contact was not good for Hawai'i. After the publication of Cook's and King's journals, Hawai'i became the central Pacific destination of choice for captains, brigands, adventurers, missionaries and other opportunists. The haole brought new technologies, languages and Gods, along with vices and diseases that ravaged a society that had evolved over more than a millennium. Ruling Chiefs by Herb KaneB3Haole and Hawaiian cultures were thrown together in swift collision at the end of the 18th century, and within the first 20 years of the 19th century, Hawai'i was changed forever. In 1819, less than 50 years after Cook made contact with the Hawaiians, Liholiho, the son and successor of Kamehameha I publicly sat down to eat with his mother and other high chiefesses. Men eating with women had been taboo since the beginning of time, but Liholiho had been swayed and overwhelmed by the overpowering influence of haole culture. His defiance of a cornerstone taboo sent a message throughout Hawai'i that the old system of laws was no longer to be followed, which dealt a fatal blow to the kapu system.As the kapu system crumbled, so did surfing's ritual significance within Hawaiian culture. Now a commoner could drop in on a chiefess without fear for his life, or even giving up his lehua wreath. The end of the kapu system also brought about the demise of the Makahiki festival, the annual celebration to the god Lono in which surfing played an integral role. But now that the Hawaiians had been set adrift from the old ways, Hawaiian culture fell into chaos. As James D. Houston and Ben Finney wrote in Surfing: A History of the Ancient Hawaiian Sport: "For surfing, the abolition of the traditional religion signaled the end of surfing's sacred aspects. With surf chants, board construction rites, sports gods and other sacred elements removed, the once ornate sport of surfing was stripped of much of its cultural plumage." Surfboards Were Among the Prized Possessions of Hawaiian Ali'i. This Engraving Appeared in 1819 in Freycinet's Voyage Around the World. Courtesy Bishop Museum ArchiveA5, An 1836 engraving depicts the Hawaiians with a church 16 years after the first missionaries arrived.The undermining of Hawaiian culture accelerated in 1820, when the first of the Calvinistic Christian missionaries arrived from England and began to convert the Hawaiians from polytheism to the one True God, whose son was Jesus Christ. The Hawaiian chiefs resisted this new God for a time, but within a decade this new strict, moral Christian code was replacing the kapu system and the Hawaiian's sensual way of life.The Calvinists insisted that the Hawaiians wear more clothes, learn to read and write, work more and play less. Restrictions on play included surfing. People who knew Hawai'i before and after accused the missionaries of ruining much of what was unique and good about Hawai'i, and that included discouraging Hawaiians from surfing. An 1836 Engraving Depicts the Hawaiians with a Church 16 Years After the First Missionaries Arrived. Courtesy Hawai'i State ArchivemissonariesAs early as 1838, a visitor to Hawai'i noted that:A change has taken place in certain customsÉ I allude to the variety of athletic exercises, such as swimming, with or without a surfboard, dancing, wrestling, throwing the javelin, etc. all of which games, being in opposition to the strict tents of Calvinism, have been suppressedÉ Can the missionaries be fairly charged with suppressing these games? I believe they deny having done so. But they write and publicly express their opinions, and state these sports to be expressly against the laws of God, and by a succession of reasoning, which may readily be traced, impress upon the minds of the chiefs and others, the idea that all who practice them, secure themselves the displeasure of offending heaven. Then the chiefs, for a spontaneous benevolence, at once interrupt customs so hazardous to their vassals. A Missionary Preaches to a Hawaiian Congregation, 1820s. Courtesy Bishop Museum ArchivemissonariesHarsh words, which drew a response from Hiram Bingham, one of the staunchest defenders of the missionary position: "The decline and discontinuation of the use of the surfboard, as civilization advances, may be accounted for by the increase in modesty, industry and religion, without supposing, as some have affected to believe, that missionaries caused oppressive enactments against it." (Houston and Finney, Surfing: A History of the Ancient Hawaiian Sport.) Hiram Bingham, Chief American Missionary, Preaching at Waimea in 1826. Courtesy Bishop Museum ArchiveB7The "oppressive enactments" of the missionaries were those very things: modesty, industry and religion. The missionaries frowned upon or forbade wearing loin cloths, gambling and the close intermingling of men and women on land and sea. With this enforced modesty and morality applied to surfing, Hawaiians very quickly lost interest in the sport. To put it in a modern idiom, if you couldn't bet money or get naked or meet chicks, where was the fun?The only thing dying faster than Hawaiian culture were the Hawaiians themselves. Ravaged by diseases, alcohol and other poisons brought ashore by the flood of post-Cook haole, the Hawaiian population dwindled from somewhere between 400,000 and 800,000 natives at the time of Cook's arrival, to a mere 40,000 by 1896.