King Kalakaua | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

February 17, 2020 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Dunnottar Castle

This story is not about a castle, it’s about a sailing vessel named after a castle – Dunnottar Castle. First, a little about its name.

In the 5th Century, St Ninian brought Christianity to Scotland, and chose Dunnottar as a site for one of his chain of Churches. In the 12th Century Dunnottar Castle became a Catholic settlement with the first stone chapel being consecrated in 1276.

William Wallace (“Braveheart,”) Mary Queen of Scots, the Marquis of Montrose and the future King Charles II, all called the Castle home. Here a Scottish garrison once saved the Scottish Crown Jewels from destruction by Cromwell’s invading army.

In 1874, ‘Dunnottar Castle,’ a three-masted 258-foot British iron-hulled ship, was launched in Glasgow, Scotland.

She rests in the Pacific, lost at Kure Atoll on July 15th, 1886 while bound for Wilmington, California from Sydney, Australia with a cargo of coal.

A malfunctioning chronometer put the Dunnottar Castle off course and onto the reef. Though efforts were made to jettison the cargo and repair the damaged hull, the stricken vessel could not be refloated, and the crew abandoned ship for the nearby deserted island. The castaways would have to take charge of their own rescue. (PMNM)

Seven of the crew members, including its Chief Officer, took one of the surviving tender boats and sailed, for 52 days, to Kauaʻi. Upon being informed of the tragedy, the British Commissioner in Honolulu organized a rescue mission. (HawaiianAtolls)

Under the reign of King David Kalākaua, the Hawaiian Kingdom, suspecting that the British might use the occasion to annex the island, shared the expedition expenses and instructed Commissioner James Boyd to take formal possession of Kure. On September 20, 1886 he took possession of the island, then-called Moku Papapa, for the Hawaiian government. (PMNM)

The rescue mission came back to Honolulu with the same amount of people it had sailed out with. No survivors were found on the atoll, except for two fox terriers and a retriever. All of the survivors had been picked up earlier by a passing vessel and were on route to Chile. (HawaiianAtolls)

Before the mid-19th century, Kure Atoll was visited by several ships and given new names each time. Many crews were stranded on Kure Atoll after being shipwrecked on the surrounding reefs and had to survive on the local seals, turtles and birds.

The King ordered that a crude house be built on the island, with tanks for holding water and provisions for any other unfortunates who might be cast away there. But the provisions were stolen within a year, and the house soon fell into ruins.

Thus, the wreck of the Dunnottar Castle precipitated the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi’s official presence at Kure Atoll, Hawaiʻi’s most remote coral atoll at the northwestern extreme end of the entire archipelago. (PMNM)

The Kure Atoll refuge staff (State of Hawaiʻi DLNR-Division of Forestry and Wildlife) came across the wreckage by accident while transiting through the lagoon. Atoll staff radioed the NOAA archaeologists who were surveying two other locations at Kure (The New Bedford whaler Parker and the USS Saginaw), and a preliminary survey was initiated. (PMNM)

The Dunnottar Castle lies adjacent to a shoal area in the vicinity of the atoll reef, accessible only in calm weather. Many of the wooden components, loose materials, and organic fabrics have been swept away, but the heavier elements remain. No small or movable artifacts were encountered. (PMNM)

Large sections of iron hull plate, iron frames, rigging, masts, auxiliary steam boiler, keelson, anchors, windlasses, winches, capstans, davits, rudder and steering gear, cargo hatches, bow sprit, hawse pipes, chain locker, ballast stone, deadeyes, chains, stringers, bitts, ladders etc. are fixed in place on the sea bottom. (PMNM)

The site is approximately 250 feet in length, corresponding to the ship’s original size. The industrial nature of the artifacts and the general lack of coral cover makes the location well-suited for standing up to the power of the winter storms and seas which pound the atoll. (PMNM)

The wreck of the Dunnottar Castle is a nearly complete assemblage of a late-19th century commercial carrier, an incredible heritage resource from the days of the sailing ships like the Falls of Clyde (Honolulu,) Balcalutha (San Francisco Maritime Park) and Star of India (San Diego Maritime Museum) when our maritime commerce was driven by steel masts and canvas, wind power, and human hands. (PMNM)

Kure Atoll is the most northwestern island in the Hawaiian chain and occupies a singular position at the “Darwin Point:” the northern extent of coral reef development, beyond which coral growth cannot keep pace with the rate of geological subsidence. Kure’s coral is still growing slightly faster than the island is subsiding.

North of Kure, where reef growth rates are even slower, the drowned Emperor Seamounts foretell the future of Kure and all of the Hawaiian Archipelago. As Kure Atoll continues its slow migration atop the Pacific Plate, it too will eventually slip below the surface.

Kure is the northern-most coral atoll in the world. It consists of a 6-mile wide nearly circular barrier reef surrounding a shallow lagoon and several sand islets. The only land of significant size is called Green Island and is habitat for hundreds of thousands of seabirds.

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Dunnottar-Castle-Altmeier-(NOAA)-07-2006b

Dunnottar-Castle-Tilburg-(NOAA)-07-2006b

Large metal structures o the hull-(hawaiianatolls)

Dunnottar_Wreck-Preliminary_site_Sketch-(NOAA)

Dunnottar Castle in the 17th century - From Slezer's Theatrum Scotia (1693)

January 31, 2020 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Lawrence McCully

Lawrence McCully was born in New York City on May 28, 1831; two years later, the family moved to Oswego, New York. He attended Courtlandt Academy and graduated from Yale in 1852; he was a tutor for a family in New Orleans and later taught school In Kentucky.

“Without any family, friends or connections in these Islands to call him here, he, as the result of his reading, formed the plan of settling in the Sandwich Islands, and came hither via Panama and California.” (star-bulletin)

On December 15, 1854, King Kamehameha III died; shortly after, McCully, a young man of 23 years, arrived in the Islands with the intent of making it his home.

Here he stayed; “he knew the land of his adoption intimately and greatly to the advantage of the public service. [He was] an educated man, with high sentiments and pure character, a well stored mind, cultivated by reading and foreign travel.” (Chief Justice Judd)

He got a job in 1855 as “Police Justice” in Hilo. A couple years later, he resigned and moved to Kona, where he bought land and began an orange orchard. While on the Big Island, he learned the Hawaiian language.

When he moved to Honolulu in 1858, he studied law in the office of Chief Justice Harris and passed the bar in 1859. In 1860, he was elected to the Hawaii Legislature as a representative of Kohala, then was picked speaker of the House.

Because “the practice of law was not very remunerative in those early days,” McCully became, in 1862, an interpreter to the Supreme Court and the Police Court in Honolulu. He later became Clerk of the Supreme Court; then, he took a position as a deputy attorney general.

McCully was married Miss Ellen Harvey, at the residence of Chief Justice Allen, May 20, 1866. They had an adopted daughter, Alice. (Burrage & Stubbs)

In 1877, King Kalākaua appointed McCully as Second Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, then in 1881, to First Associate Justice and a member of the Privy Council.

While on a trip to London in 1891, “he acted as the accredited delegate of the Hawaiian Evangelical Association at the Ecumenical Conference of the Congregational Church. … On his return home he gave an account of the gathering from the pulpit of Central Union Church, holding the intense interest of the congregation as he told his story in graphic language without notes.” (Daily Bulletin)

“Living through the reigns of four successive kings and holding office under all of them, he witnessed the great political and economic changes that have taken place during the past forty years. As Police Justice, Interpreter, Clerk of the Supreme Court, Boundary Commissioner, Deputy Attorney-General and Justice of the Supreme Court.” (Chief Justice Judd)

“Two important characteristics of Judge McCully [are] his prudent and simple method of life, not savoring of either extravagance or parsimony … [and] his inherent honesty of character. He loved the truth. Policy had no place in his thoughts, and never swerved him in his decision. Sometimes a consideration of policy would have been to his advantage, but he never thought of that “. (Chief Justice Judd)

“As a Judge I think every one will accord to him honesty of intention and honesty of purpose. I think all recognize the fact that he possessed in a striking degree a love of justice as such. He was just to all; he endeavored in his decisions to do justice. He was possessed also of a sense which is called common, but perhaps it is rather uncommon. He possessed a common sense and clear judgment, a logical mind that enabled him to arrive at conclusions in his decisions which recommended themselves to the Bar, certainly, and I believe to the community as a rule.” (Castle)

“In social life he shone, for his conversation was always instructive, his words fluent and select. He associated only with the best and purest spirits—nothing low or degrading met with response in him. As a Judge, his work was good. His written opinions are characterized by thoroughness of treatment and sound sense.” (Chief Justice Judd)

Judge McCully was one of a group of land owners who pooled their resources to bring “Mr. Peirce, a well borer” from California to drill for artesian water on their properties in Honolulu proper, the first of these being bored in 1880 at the Mānoa property of Mr. Augustus Marques “a gentleman not long resident in the kingdom, who had built his house on the dry flat land at the mouth of Manoa Valley.” (ASCE-Hawaii)

Then, on the 15th September, 1880, another well was drilled on the McCully property and a fine flow was obtained and named the Ontario Well. It greatly exceeded what had hitherto been got … Being nearer town and directly on the road, and, the volume being larger, this well renewed the public interest and enthusiasm, and hope of a new source of prosperity to the country. (Thrum, 1882)

McCully had acquired a land grant (3098) and owned about 122 acres makai of Algaroba Street to Kalākaua Avenue. In 1900, eight years after McCully’s death, a subdivision map and a prospectus for the property was submitted to the authorities.

The property, which extended from South King Street to Waikīkī Road (Kalākaua,) was to be divided into 53-blocks of equal size. The subdivision was to be serviced from “town” by an electric streetcar line passing through the district.

The main mauka-makai thoroughfare is McCully Street; ‘Ewa-Diamond Head streets are named for trees (Algaroba, Banyan (later called Waiola,) Citron, Date, Fern, Lime and Mango (later turned into Kapiʻolani.) (Other tree-named streets, Orange, Palm and Tamarind, are no longer there.)

What became known as the “McCully Tract” was developed as a residential area in about 1901. Sales stalled, in part, because the declaration in the prospectus said deeds would not be transferred until lands were filled to government grade, something that did not happen until undertaken as part of the Waikiki Reclamation Project. (Stephenson)

From 1925 to 1927, the Ala Wai dredge material was used to fill and raise the surface levels of the McCully area. Walter Dillingham’s Hawaiian Dredging Company was the contractor for the canal project and he had an interest in the McCully property through the Guardian Trust Company. (Stephenson)

Lawrence McCully died at his residence on April 10, 1892. A district on Oʻahu, a major roadway (and bridge) and others are named after him.

Today, McCully is a well-established residential community generally Koko Head side of Kalākaua Avenue, between King Street and the Ala Wai, generally surrounding McCully Street (one of the neighborhood’s major mauka-makai arterial roadways.) (C&C Honolulu)

It has the highest median household income within the Honolulu Urban Core and has the lowest individual poverty rate among the Urban Core neighborhoods. (C&C Honolulu)

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November 24, 2019 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Mokupāpapa

Hōlanikū is a verb phrase that is defined as “bringing forth heaven.” It is a variant of the word helani (heaven) and also the name of a zenith star observed by priests. (Kikiloi)

The chant of Kamahuʻalele states that Hōlani is an area attached to the Hawaiian Archipelago, perhaps alluding to the fact that it is the open horizon that meets the sky and stretches west past Hawai‘i. (Kikiloi)

It is a single name that stands alone and is located at the very end of the island sequence. It is suggested that Hölanikü corresponds with the location of Kure Atoll. (Kikiloi)

There is an account in Captain Cook’s log book that he was at Kure Island, possibly his second trip, 1779. When he encountered a Hawaiian canoe at Kure, and asking the natives… There were ten natives on the double-hulled canoe. What they were doing there? And they said they had come to “collect turtles and bird eggs.”

Mokupāpapa (literally, flat island) is the name given to Kure Atoll by officials of the Hawaiian Kingdom in the 19th century.

Under the reign of King David Kalākaua, the Hawaiian Kingdom disbursed an official envoy to Kure Atoll to take ‘formal possession’ of the atoll.

Because of these incidents, King Kalākaua sent Colonel JH Boyd as his Special Commissioner to Kure. On September 20, 1886 he took possession of the island, then-called Moku Papapa, for the Hawaiian government.

In 1898, the archipelago, inclusive of the certain lands in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands (NWHI,) was collectively ceded to the United States through a domestic resolution, called the Newlands Resolution.

Mokupāpapa is approximately 1,200 miles northwestward of Honolulu and 56 miles west of Midway Islands. The International Date Line lies approximately 100-miles to the west.

Largely neglected for most of its history, during World War II Kure was routinely visited by US Navy patrols from nearby Midway to insure that the Japanese were not using it to refuel submarines or flying boats from submarine-tankers, for attacks elsewhere in the Hawaiian chain.

US Navy built a tall radar reflector in 1955. Coast Guard navigation LORAN radio station operated from 1960 to 1992, after that, the Green Island runway was allowed to be overgrown and is now unusable

The Hawai‘i State Seabird Sanctuary at Kure Atoll is under the jurisdiction of the Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR,) through its Division of Forestry and Wildlife (DOFAW.)

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Aerial picture of Green Island, Kure Atoll, Northwestern Hawaiian Islands-(WC)

Brown Boobies (Sula leucogaster) on Green Island, Kure Atoll-(WC)

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Brown Boobies (Sula leucogaster) sitting on marine debris. Green Island, Kure Atoll, Northwestern Hawaiian Islands-(WC)

Hawaiian Monk Seal swimming beneath Kure Atoll (James Watt-Oceanstock-com)

Kure Atoll, Northwestern Hawaiian Islands - Satellite image from USGS' Landsat7 Satellite-(WC)

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Kure_Atoll-South west corner of Green Island-(NOAA)

Kure-blackfoot albatross chick-(Forest & Kim Starr)

Kure-Wildlife_Refuge-sign-(Forest & Kim Starr)

Marine debris on the beach of Green Island, Kure Atoll, Northwestern Hawaiian Islands-(WC)

Marine debris on the beach of Green Island, Kure Atoll

Kure-Wildlife_Sanctuary-sign-(Forest & Kim Starr)

Papahaønaumokuaøkea Marine National Monument

November 16, 2019 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Renaissance Man

A polymath (Greek, “having learned much,”) sometimes referred to as a Renaissance man, is a cultured man who is knowledgeable, educated or proficient in a wide range of fields.

Hawaiʻi’s last King, Kalākaua, has been referred to as a Renaissance man.

Concerned about the loss of native Hawaiian culture and traditions, Kalākaua encouraged the transcription of Hawaiian oral traditions, and supported the revival of and public performances of the hula.

He advocated a renewed sense of pride in such things as Hawaiian mythology, medicine, chant and hula. Ancient Hawaiians had no written language, but chant and hula served to record such things as genealogy, mythology, history and religion.

He is remembered as the “Merrie Monarch” because he was a patron of culture and arts, and enjoyed socializing and entertaining.

While seeking to revive many elements of Hawaiian culture that were slipping away, the King also promoted the advancement of modern sciences, art and literature.

King Kalākaua has also been described as a monarch with a technical and scientific bent and an insatiable curiosity for modern devices.

Kalākaua became king in 1874. Edison and others were still experimenting with electric lights at that time; Edison’s first patent was filed four years later in 1878.

The first commercial installation of incandescent lamps (at the Mercantile Safe Deposit Company in New York City) happened in the fall of 1880, about six months after the Edison incandescent lamps had been installed on the steamer Columbia.

In Hawaiʻi, the cornerstone for ʻIolani Palace was laid on December 31, 1879. In an era of gas lamps, King Kalākaua was astute enough to recognize the potential of “electricity,” and helped pioneer its practice in the Hawaiian kingdom.

The king had heard and read about this revolutionary new form of energy, but he needed further evidence of its practical application. Kalākaua arranged to meet the inventor of the incandescent lamp, Thomas Edison, in New York in 1881, during his world tour.

Five years after Kalākaua and Edison met, Charles Otto Berger, a Honolulu-based insurance executive with mainland connections, organized a demonstration of “electric light” at ʻIolani Palace, on the night of July 26, 1886.

The Pacific Commercial Advertiser described the experience as, “Shortly after 7 o’clock last night, the electricity was turned on and, as soon as darkness decreased, the vicinity of Palace Square was flooded with a soft but brilliant light which turned darkness into day…”

“… by 8 o’clock an immense crowd had gathered. Before 9 o’clock, the Royal Hawaiian Military band commenced playing and the Military Companies soon marched into the square…”

“… a tea party was given under the auspices of the Society for the Education of Hawaiian Children organized by her Royal Highness the Princess Liliʻuokalani and Her Royal Highness, the Princess Likelike. The Palace was brightly illuminated, and the large crowd moving among the trees and tents made a pretty picture.”

Shortly after this event, David Bowers Smith, a North Carolinian businessman living in Hawaiʻi, persuaded Kalākaua to install an electrical system on the palace grounds. The plant consisted of a small steam engine and a dynamo for incandescent lamps. On November 16, 1886 – Kalākaua’s birthday – ʻIolani Palace was lit by electricity.

With the palace lit, the government began exploring ways to a provide power plant to light the streets of Honolulu. They turned to hydroelectric, using the energy of flowing water to drive the turbines of a power plant built in Nuʻuanu Valley.

On Friday, March 23, 1888, Princess Kaʻiulani, the king’s niece, threw the switch that illuminated the town’s streets for the first time. The Honolulu Gazette wrote of that moment:

“At 7:30 p.m. the sound of excitement in the streets brought citizens, printers, policemen and all other nocturnal fry rushing outdoors to see what was up. And what they did see was Honolulu lighted by electricity. The long looked for and anxiously expected moment had arrived.”

A year later, the first of a handful of residences and business had electricity. By 1890, this luxury had been extended to 797 of Honolulu’s homes.

It’s interesting to note that the first electric lighting was installed in the White House in 1891 – after ʻIolani Palace. (Contrary to urban legend that it also pre-dated the British palace, Buckingham Palace had electricity prior to ʻIolani Palace. It was first installed in the Ball Room in 1883, and between 1883 and 1887 electricity was extended throughout Buckingham Palace.)

Some suggest ʻIolani Palace had telephones before the White House, too. However, the White House had a phone in 1879 (President Rutherford B. Hayes’ telephone number was “1”.) “By the fall of 1881 telephone instruments and electric bells were in place in the Palace.” (The Pacific Commercial, September 24, 1881)

“The first telephone ever used in Honolulu belonged to King Kalakaua. Having been presented to him by the American Bell Telephone Company.” (Daily Bulletin, December 4, 1894)

Kalākaua’s interest in modern astronomy is evidenced by his support for an astronomical expedition to Hawaiʻi in 1874 that came from England to observe a transit of Venus (a passage of Venus in front of the Sun – used to measure an ‘astronomical unit,’ the distance between the Earth and Sun.)

Kalākaua addressed those astronomers in 1874 stating, “It will afford me unfeigned satisfaction if my kingdom can add its quota toward the successful accomplishment of the most important astronomical observation of the present century and assist, however humbly, the enlightened nations of the earth in these costly enterprises…”

Later, in 1881, during his travels to the US, King Kalākaua visited the Lick Observatory in California and was the first to view through its new 12” telescope (which was temporarily set up for that purpose in the unfinished dome.)

It was not long after this that King Kalākaua expressed his interest in having an observatory in Hawaiʻi. Perhaps as a result of the King’s interest, a telescope was purchased from England in 1883 for Punahou School. The five-inch refractor was later installed in a dome constructed above Pauahi Hall on the school’s campus.

In 1891, while ill in bed, King Kalākaua recorded a message on a wax-type phonograph in the Palace Hotel in San Francisco.

According to an August 2, 1936 account in The Honolulu Advertiser, Kalākaua is recorded to say, “Aloha kaua — aloha kaua. Ke hoʻi nei no paha makou ma keia hope aku i Hawaiʻi, i Honolulu. A ilaila oe e haʻi aku ai ʻoe i ka lehulehu i kau mea e lohe ai ianei,” which translates to:

“We greet each other – we greet each other. We will very likely hereafter go to Hawaiʻi, to Honolulu. There you will tell my people what you have heard me say here.”

Kalākaua died in San Francisco a few days later (January 20, 1891.)

King Kalākaua’s desire for technology had an effect on all Hawaiʻi; technology changed the way the people of Hawaiʻi lived. King Kalākaua wanted Hawaiʻi to be seen as a modern place and not an isolated, primitive kingdom.

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September 29, 2019 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Kapiʻolani Park Bandstand

In the late-1800s and early-1900s the central area, and the dominant feature, of Kapiʻolani Park was an oval race track. The western end of Kapiʻolani Park was a swamp fed by runoff and sediment carried by streams from the Koʻolau Mountains.

A duck pond and kalo loʻi were in what is now the site of the Honolulu Zoo.

At that time, there was the desire to create a watery landscape and areas of dry parkland; this resulted in the “construction of a system of canals and ditches from which water was drained to create a collection of small islands and ponds.”

The largest of these ponds was located at the site of the current Honolulu Zoo. An island stood in the middle of the pond and was named Makee Island, after James Makee (a Scottish whaling ship captain, one of the founders of the Kapiʻolani Park Association that established Kapiʻolani Park and friend to King Kalākaua.)

The ponds created a watery landscape in an otherwise dry and flat park; the ponds were used for boating and the tree lined islands, which were accessible by footbridges, were popular spots for picnicking.

A small, covered bandstand (the first of several subsequent Kapiʻolani Park Bandstands) was located on Makee Island.

To get to there you either rowed across the waterway or crossed over on one of several narrow wooden plank bridges.

The Bandstand, originally built in the late-1890s, served as Kapiʻolani Park’s stage for community entertainment and concerts, including regular performances by the Royal Hawaiian Band.

Founded in 1836 by order of King Kamehameha III, the Royal Hawaiian Band is one of the last living links to Hawaiʻi’s monarchy. The “King’s Band,” as it was once known, became a staple of daily life with performances at state occasions, funerals and marching in parades.

The band accompanied reigning monarchs of the time on frequent trips to the neighbor islands and brought their music to remote destinations of the kingdom. Today, the Royal Hawaiian Band continues the legacy and performs and marches in over 300 concerts and parades each year.

By late-1920s the Ala Wai Canal project drained and filled Waikīkī’s waterways to create Kapiʻolani Park as we generally know it today. In 1926 a replacement bandstand in the drained Park was built.

A double row of ironwood trees flanked a path comprised of crushed coral was planted to the east of this second bandstand. The trees were planted as an “allee,” a term borrowed from French landscape architecture of the seventeenth century to describe a long, avenue lined by a double row of trees.

The allee is about 500 feet long and is a remnant of a former carriage road or system or paths and roads that were constructed to provide access to scenic areas within the park.

Bandstand number three replaced this facility in 1968. The pretty much concrete, utilitarian bandstand was designed by Wilson, Okamoto and Associates and was sited at the ʻEwa end of the Park (near the prior.)

Then, in 2000, the 4th and existing Kapiʻolani Park Bandstand was constructed in this location. Designed in the “Contemporary Hawaiian Victoriana” style.

Kapiʻolani Park has hosted four different bandstands over the years, and it appears each served a useful life of about forty-years before being replaced with another in differing design and functionality.

While the design and scale of each bandstand has changed each time, a constant has been its role as a focal point for island entertainment and festivals.

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Kapiolani_Bandstands-over_the_years-(kapiolani_park-a_history)

Kapiolani_Bandstand-Royal_Hawaiian_Band_Playing_in_Original_Bandstand_on_McKee_Island-(kapiolani_park-a_history)

20000629 – The original grandstand that stood on Makee island, Kapiolani Park. From the book, the View from Diamond Head. Hibbard and Franzen. Press release photo.