Surfing Guinness Book of World Records recognized a wave ride by Garrett McNamara at Nazaré, Portugal as the largest wave ever surfed. For hundreds of years, surfing was a central part of ancient Polynesian culture. Surfing may have first been observed by British explorers at Tahiti in 1767. Samuel Wallis and the crew members of who were the first Britons to visit the island in June of that year. Another candidate is the botanist Joseph Banks being part of the first voyage of James Cook on , who arrived on Tahiti on 10 April 1769. Lieutenant James King was the first
RMS Tahiti local workers, and officers attended a conference on board HMS "Mantua", an armed merchant cruiser, which had experienced an influenza outbreak three weeks previously. The first soldiers suffering from Spanish influenza began reporting to the hospital on "Tahiti" on 26 August, the day that she left Freetown. By the time she arrived at Devonport on 10 September 68 men had died and a further nine died afterwards, an overall mortality rate of 68.9 persons per 1,000 population. It is estimated that more than 1,000 of those on board had been infected with the disease. A later enquiry found that mortality