Images of Old Hawaiʻi

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Lusitana Society

On September 30, 1878, a pioneer band of 180 Portuguese landed in Honolulu.  The Portuguese entered Hawaiian society in large numbers between 1878 and 1913, predominantly, although not exclusively, to join the sugar plantation workforce. (Bastos)

“About 65 per cent of the Portuguese, who formed the bulk of the assisted Caucasian immigrants, were women and children, as against 19 per cent of the Japanese.”

“Therefore at a time when it cost but $87.75 to bring a Japanese laborer to the islands, it cost $266.15 to bring a Portuguese, including the passage of the nonproducing members of his family.” (Report of the Commissioner of Labor, 1902)

“In the long run the discrepancy in cost was not so great, because the Portuguese settled in the country and raised up children there, so that they and their families were a permanent increment to the working population”.

“The Portuguese are largely employed in the semi-skilled occupations of the plantation … These people are an exceedingly hopeful element of the population. They are both industrious and frugal, and their vices are not of a sort to injure their efficiency as workers.”  (Report of the Commissioner of Labor, 1902)

Few returned to the Portuguese islands, and to the disappointment of the planters, very few renewed their contracts. (Portuguese Historical Museum)

On O‘ahu, they followed the classic pattern: when their contracts expired, they moved to town, concentrating in the Punchbowl and Pauoa districts. (Jardine)

“Around the base of Punchbowl is to be found a colony of Portuguese, who naturally draw together in this strange land, and there they distinguish themselves by the neatness of their dwellings, the growth of pretty (if common) flowers, and a general air of thrift is lacking on the part of many of their neighbors.” (PCA, Sep 23, 1884)

Here, street names commemorate famous Portuguese people and the areas from which they came: Lusitana, Funchal, Lisbon and Azores; Alencastre, Madeira, Morreira and Magellan; Correa, Enos and Osorio. (Jardin)

Lusitana Street was named for the Lusitana Society (sometimes referred to as Lusitania Society), although two with that name existed: the Sociedade Lusitana Beneficente de Hawaii, and the União Lusitana Hawaiiana, founded in 1882 and 1892, respectively. (Bastos)  (Lusitania is the ancient name of West Hispania, and now a poetic name for Portugal. (Hawaiian Dictionary))

“Like most other immigrant groups with little or no access to established sources of capital, the Portuguese fostered accumulation of savings among their number.”

“But the Portuguese Benevolent Society was formed in order to be able to help individuals hit by adversity – invalids, widows, and orphans, for example.” (Correa & Knowlton)

“The remarkable financial results achieved by our Portuguese immigrants grow more apparent still in their Benevolent Societies, of which there are four in Honolulu – the Lusitana (1,900 members), the San Antonio (2,100 m), the Patria (125 m) and the San Martino (200 m), to which must be added the Camoes Court of Foresters, with two societies in Hilo.” (Thrum)

“Of all these, the ‘Lusitana’ is the only one which possesses a complete financial statement from its incipiency; it was created in 1882, especially to help the newly-arrived plantation laborers, and has been, for the greater part of its existence, sustained nearly exclusively by such laborers from savings out of their meager wages”.

“Moreover, the ‘Lusitana’ owns its own premises, has $53,000 safely invested, thereby helping members in mortgages, and it keeps an emergency fund of about $9,000.” (Thrum)

“This shows on the part of the members of this Association a very laudable spirit of providing for the future, as well as a pride to prevent themselves from becoming helpless objects of charity during sickness or accidents, which might well be imitated by other nationalities in this Territory.”  (Thrum)

“It is no small accomplishment for a few thousand imported plantation laborers, mostly driven to Hawaii by distress in their own country and arriving in a nearly indigent condition …”

“… to have insured themselves and their families against the worst economic consequences of illness and death, and to have accumulated so large an amount of collective funds during the two or three decades that they have been settled in the Territory.” (Report of the Commissioner of Labor in Hawaii, Sep, 1906)

The Lusitana Society building was at the intersection of Alapai and Lunalilo. It was later used as a dance hall and academy, and as the home of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. The site was later run over by the H1 freeway.

The Portuguese population all over Hawai‘i declined significantly in the early 1900s. Partially due to the Gold Rush in California and the 1906 San Francisco fire, many moved to California to help rebuild or to find their fortune. (NPS)

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by Peter T Young 1 Comment

“Ownership”

“… an underlying principle was that objects not made by the human hand could not be owned, that is they could not be set aside for the exclusive or perpetual use of any individual …” (Linnekin)

‘Kumulipo’ is a prayer of dedication of the chief Lonoikamakahiki to the gods soon after his birth (around 1700.) The ‘pule’ (prayer) was given in around 1700.

The Kumulipo is a genealogical prayer chant linking the royal family to which it belonged not only to primary gods belonging to the whole people and worshiped in common with allied Polynesian groups.

It was not only to deified chiefs born into the living world, the Ao, within the family line, but to the stars in the heavens and the plants and animals useful to life on earth, who must also be named within the chain of birth and their representatives in the spirit world thus be brought into the service of their children who live to carry on the line in the world of mankind. (Beckwith)

It was their belief that their gods had created the land and the sea and everything on the land and in the sea. These resources were there for everyone’s use – land water and sea. Because these were created by the gods, they must be cared for. No one must take more than they need and everything must be shared. (Kelly)

In Hawaiian culture, natural and cultural resources were and are one and the same. Native traditions describe the formation (literally the birth) of the Hawaiian Islands and the presence of life on, and around them, in the context of genealogical accounts.

All forms of the natural environment, from the skies and mountain peaks, to the watered valleys and lava plains, and to the shoreline and ocean depths are believed to be embodiments of Hawaiian gods and deities. Earth and nature possessed mana (spiritual life forces) that came from the gods. (Maly)

It was the nature of place that shaped the cultural and spiritual view of the Hawaiian people. ‘Cultural Attachment’ embodies the tangible and intangible values of a culture – how a people identify with, and personify the environment around them.

It is the intimate relationship (developed over generations of experiences) that people of a particular culture feel for the sites, features, phenomena, and natural resources etc., that surround them – their sense of place. This attachment is deeply rooted in the beliefs, practices, cultural evolution and identity of a people. (Kent)

One Hawaiian genealogical account, records that Wakea (the expanse of the sky-father) and Papa-hanau-moku (Papa, who gave birth to the islands) – also called Haumea-nui-hanau-wawa (Great Haumea, born time and time again) – and various gods and creative forces of nature, gave birth to the islands.

As the Hawaiian genealogical account continues, we find that these same god-beings, or creative forces of nature that gave birth to the islands, were also the parents of the first man (Haloa), and from this ancestor all Hawaiian people are descended.

It was in this context of kinship, that the ancient Hawaiians addressed their environment, and it is the basis of the Hawaiian system of land management and use. (Maly)

Before the constitution was established, all property rights for both chiefs and commoners were unstable; the entire control over the land was vested in the king. According to the opinion of learned men the land belongs to the common people, and property rights are to be vested in the commoners.

In old days the inheritance of the family burial place, the caves and secret burial places of our ancestors was handed down from these to their descendants without the intrusion of a single stranger unless by consent of the descendant, so that wherever a death occurred the body was conveyed to its inheritance.

These immovable barriers belonged to burial rights for all time. The rule of kings and chiefs and their land agents might change, but the burial rights of families survived on their lands. Here is one proof of the people’s right to the land.” (Kamakau)

With this right of the common people to the land is connected an inherent love of the land of one’s birth inherited from one’s ancestors, so that men do not (willingly) wander from place to place but remain on the land of their ancestors. The Kona man does not wander to ʻEwa or Koʻolau, nor does the ʻEwa man change to Waialua.

Whether rich or impoverished and barren, his love is unchanged; he cannot treat the land with contempt. However good the land on which he later lives he will wish to return to the land of his birth.

The land so worthless in the eyes of a stranger is good to him. But today the habit of going away for an education or sailing abroad has undermined this old feeling for the land. (Kamakau)

In old days captives might be carried away in war or friends and favorites taken into the households of chiefs, but on the whole the common people remained on the land inherited from their ancestors, and a family lived continuously on the land of their birth.

True the chiefs had the right to the fruits of the land and the property of the people, and when a chief was overthrown in war his followers also moved on. But it was they who were the wanderers. (Kamakau)

The people born of the soil remained according to the old saying, O ko luna pohaku no ke kaʻa ilalo, ʻaʻole i hiki i ko lalo pohaku ke kaʻa (It is the top stone that rolls down; the stone at the bottom stays where it is.) (Kamakau) The image shows the Islands from space. (NASA)

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‘Holy Moses’

In 1886, “a small whaling vessel anchored off the Island of Oʻahu, opposite the city of Honolulu. A wizened little man with knowing, twinkling eyes of jet black, and some sixty odd winters in his long white beard, and a wind-lashed face, disembarked the ship.” (Canadian Jewish Chronicle, April 15, 1938)

“His quick smile, his rapid wit, his good nature, his feats of magic, soon made him a popular figure among the natives of the flourishing community of Honolulu, and earned for him the affectionate name of ‘Rosey.’”

“It is by this name alone that the old-timers still remember him, and only after considerable inquiry was the writer able to learn that ‘Rosey’ was a contraction of ‘Rosenberg,’ the true name of this wandering prophet.” (His full name was Elias Abraham Rosenberg.)

“’Rosey’ amused the King by telling him prophetic stories and reading his horoscope. From this amusement Rabbi ‘Rosey’ turned to mysticism and interpretations of the Talmud, read and explained to King Kalākaua the Torah.” (Canadian Jewish Chronicle, April 15, 1938)

He also earned the name ‘Holy Moses.’ He befriended Kalākaua and was appointed appraiser at the Custom House. “A foreign fortune teller by the name of Rosenberg acquired great influence with the King.” (Alexander)

He had his detractors; “A curio by the name of Rosenberg, who is too well known in our neighborhood (San Francisco) to need much introduction, is cavorting around Honolulu and has succeeded in ingratiating himself in the King’s favor.”

“At last accounts he was teaching his Majesty Hebrew, and predicting all manner of disturbance in the line of earthquakes, fires, etc., thus endeavoring by a species of charlatanism to work on the superstitions of an easily deluded neighborhood.”

“The Islands, more especially Honolulu, have a Hebrew population of which they have ample reason to be proud, and when such a scalawag as Rosenberg comes floating around, putting himself forward as a prominent representative of Judaism …”

“… a good-sized boot should he effectively applied to the more delicate portion of his anatomy, and instead of the Custom House, a berth should be given him in some distant land where at least he might be far removed from respectable members of a refined Jewish community.” (Jewish Progress; Daily Bulletin, May 10, 1887)

However, Kalākaua took such a shine to him that at one point Rosenberg was actually granted a room in ʻIolani Palace for fortune-telling and drinking sessions which the King frequently took part in. (Kain)

“I struck old Holy Moses last Friday on his way to the Custom House. He looked as smiling as a summer morning and had a big envelope in his hand. I asked Holy Moses how he was getting along. He told me he had just got his appointment as appraiser …” (Flaneur, Hawaiian Gazette, April 5, 1887)

“I noticed my venerable friend Holy Moses knocking round the Custom House lately and the boys there have dropped calling him ‘Moses,’ ‘Rosy’ and other pet names. Now they are very circumspect and never forget the Mr when they address him. … Holy Moses has promised to tell them the number of the lucky ticket in the Louisiana lottery.” (Flaneur, Hawaiian Gazette, April 26, 1887)

“Though his stay on the island was only six months, Rosenberg made quite the impression on the reigning monarch, King Kalākaua. He spent time teaching the king to read Hebrew and gained the monarch’s trust.”

“His majesty is said to have been so impressed that he started the study of Hebrew in order that he could read from the ancient Torah that his Rabbi friend carried with him and temper the laws of his ocean-bound kingdom with many of its teachings.” (Canadian Jewish Chronicle, April 15, 1938)

A Sefer Torah (Pentateuch) and Pointer were brought to Hawaiʻi in 1886 by Elias Abraham Rosenberg who came here from San Francisco. Although the rabbinical lists do not contain his name, he called himself a rabbi.

He appears to have ingratiated himself with King David Kalākaua and became a royal soothsayer, of sorts, preparing horoscopes and prophecies for the King as well as telling him Bible stories and teaching him Hebrew. Rosenberg left the Torah and Pointer with Kalākaua for safe-keeping. (Temple Emanu-El)

Kalākaua presented Rosenberg with a silver cup and a gold medal; “Mr. A. Rosenburg, the Custom House Appraiser, received a present of a silver cup and a gold medal, on the first instant. The cup bears the inscription ‘His Majesty Kalākaua I to Abraham Rosenberg, June 1st, 1887.’”

“The gold medal, which is about the size of a $5 gold piece, is similarly inscribed, with the King’s features on the reverse side, and a small attachment on the upper rim in the shape of a crown, to which is fastened a strip of blue ribbon.” (Daily Bulletin, June 3, 1887)

“The king received the Torah scroll and yad … over the years that followed, the scroll and yad gradually made their way to Temple Emanu-El, where they remain to this day, safely ensconced in a glass cabinet.” (Canadian Jewish Chronicle, August 4, 2011) Rosenberg left the Islands June 7, 1887 and returned to San Francisco; he died a month later.

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by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Mikimiki

Tugs and barges first began to appear on the East Coast during the late-nineteenth century. This was the time when steam ships and the developing railroads began displacing the slower and less reliable sailing vessels in the coastal trades.

Rather than scrapping all of these sailing ships, folks took advantage of their sound hulls and the new steam technology by converting the steam ships into barges and towing them behind steam tugs. (However, by 1950, tug-barges became practically extinct on the East Coast.) (Marcus)

Not so in the Islands …

The Youngs went to Hawaiʻi from San Diego. Good seafaring men of Maine stock, whose parents went to California in Forty-nine, they followed a natural inclination, and the application of Yankee methods soon built up a business which has grown to be one of the most important in the Islands. (Rogers)

In 1929, the tug Mikimiki ((‘to be quick, to be on time’) designed by Leigh H Coolidge and built by the Seattle-based Ballard Marine Railway Co) was launched.

The original wood-constructed Mikimiki was powered by twin Fairbanks-Morse diesels developing a total of 1,200 horsepower. At the time of completion, this power made her the most powerful tug in the US.

She made the voyage to Hawaiʻi from the West Coast, towing a 140-foot steel barge, in eleven days, sixteen hours and ten minutes. This worked out to an average speed of 8.5 knots, bettering the record of the earlier Seattle-built Mahoe by almost three days.

The Mikimiki spent her entire career working in the Hawaiian Islands, with an occasional tow to the West Coast included. (YB-100)

The design of the Mikimiki tugboat, although devised for commercial use, had a major influence on World War II tugboats and the post-war towing industry, particularly in the Pacific Northwest. (Port of Anacortes)

The excellent performance of the original Mikimiki led to the adoption of her basic design for a large fleet of tugs produced for the US Army Transport Service in West Coast shipyards for World War II service. (YB-100)

At the beginning of 1942, more ships were needed for the war effort. Folks recognized the Mikimiki design “could be used as it was a proven, reliable tug that has already been drawn and lofted, and was available with only slight design changes”.

Miki-class tugs were built for the US Army during World War II to haul supplies and rescue stalled ships. They were designed to move barges with supplies and equipment as efficiently as possible. But that they ‘did more than they were built for’’ a Miki-class tug landed men on the beach in Normandy during World War II. (Benthien; Port of Anacortes)

These tugs were classed as LTs (large tug) with an overall design length of 126 feet and a beam of 28 feet. They were heavily constructed with 15-inch square fir keels.

Bulwarks were solid with iron bark rail. Although they were constructed of wood, the tugs were at least ‘one-third iron.’ Although the tugs were built “heavy” meaning that they were of solid construction, they retained their graceful lines and they were fast. (Jones; Port of Anacortes)

The Army contract for construction of the vessels was written so that the shipyards could use local wood for building the tugs. Those Miki-class tugs built on the West Coast were constructed from fir, oak and cedar, while those on the East Coast were composed of oak for the structure with white pine. Inside sheathing was ¾- inch waterproof plywood. (Port of Anacortes)

Of the 61 Mikis built for the Army, most of the tugs were built on the West Coast; however, 10 tugs were built on the East Coast, 38 were built at various yards in Washington State.

Actually, there were Mikis, which had a single main engine, and the Mikimikis, which had two main engines. Each tug had about 1,500 total horsepower. (Towingline)

After World War II the Miki class tugs worked in the commercial tug and barge industry, and filled the gap and became the backbone of the towing industry after they were surplused by the US Army.

They also played a major role in the commerce that aided the development of the Territory of Alaska, and bolstered the tug and barge trade between the West Coast and Hawaii.

They were instrumental in the expansion of several Pacific Northwest tug and barge companies. No class of tugs contributed more to the success in the postwar era than the Miki-class tugs built for US Army service. And it all started in Hawaiʻi, with Young Brothers. (Jack Young, the youngest brother of the Young Brothers, is my grandfather.)

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by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Doubtful Island of the Pacific

“In the early dawn of the second day out, the steamer rounds Kalae Point, the extreme southern cape of Hawaiʻi – a locality noted for the wreckage and drift logs occasionally thrown ashore, and which often line the beach for miles, consisting mostly of timber and trunks of trees and occasionally wreckage of vessels.”

“It was here that … one of the masts of the United States sloop-of-war Levant, which was lost in the winter of 1860, while on the passage from Hilo to the mainland (was found.) After leaving Hilo the ship was never heard from.” (Hawaiian Planters Monthly, January 1900)

“A ship’s mast has drifted ashore, just below the harbor of Kawalunalu (Kaʻaluʻalu,) in Kaʻu (near Kamilo.) It is seventy-six feet long. The lower part of the mast, which was in between decks, is squared and finished, as if it had been used as a rack for guns, while on one side are large spikes driven in, as though it had been used for a raft.” (New York Times, August 4, 1861)

“… the fact of the entire mast having been used as a raft would go far to sustain the belief that the ship had been wrecked on some shoal, reef, rock or island, and not foundered, as is more generally believed; and in the former case there is still a chance that some of the ill-fated crew may yet survive or be heard of.” (New York Times, August 4, 1861)

Let’s look back a bit.

By the 1850s, both Honolulu and Lāhainā, on the island of Maui, had become the busiest ports for American whaling ships sailing in the Pacific Ocean. Hilo, on the Island of Hawaiʻi, was another important port.

Before the widespread use of petroleum oil, whale oil was the main source of fuel oil for illumination. At the time, it was also the best industrial lubricant for machinery.

Most whaling ships regularly sailed between New England and the Sea of Japan off the coast of Asia, then the prime hunting ground for sperm whales. Sperm oil was considered the finest whale oil and it often sold double or triple the value of other whale oils.

At the Hawaiian ports, incapacitated or sick sailors and whalers would disembark to recover. It was the duty of a Consul or an Agent to provide for their care or to send a destitute seaman home to America. (US Archives)

Hospitals had been established to serve sick and destitute sailors. The US Commercial Agent was responsible for recommending seamen to the hospital, keeping necessary papers and books, and handling the financial transactions.

A physician of the hospital had a contract with the US States Government which guaranteed him exclusive treatment of American seamen at US expense. The purveyor supplied food, clothing, shelter, maid service, laundry service and assorted other necessities. All of these services were charged to the US government. (Pyle)

The Levant, an 18-gun second-class sloop-of-war, had been sent to Hawaiʻi at the request of the State Department. Commodore William E Hunt, the ship’s captain, had been appointed to serve as a special commissioner to investigate charges of fraud among the US consular service and its employees at the US seamen’s hospitals in Hawaiʻi. (US Archives)

In addition, the US Commissioner in Hawaiʻi, James W Borden, participated in the investigations of the workings of the US hospital and consular system in Honolulu, Lāhainā and Hilo.

The investigators were blunt in terms of specific charges of fraud that were alleged to have taken place at the Honolulu consulate.

In part, Borden reported, “A careful examination of the evidence will, I believe, satisfy you that the Physician as well as the Purveyor, in this respect, and also in that of obtaining from the seamen blank receipts, have been engaged in defrauding the Government, and I have therefore no hesitation in recommending the removal of them both …” (Borden, April 27, 1860; US Archives)

After Hunt and Borden concluded their investigation, their reports were sent to the State Department. Hunt’s official report to the Secretary of State never arrived in Washington.

After spending four months in the Hawaiian Islands investigating at Honolulu, Lahaina and Hilo and receiving a state visit by King Kamehameha IV at Honolulu on May 7, 1860, Levant sailed for Panama on September 18, 1860, about 4,500 miles away to the south and east.

Unfortunately, that was the last day anyone ever saw the 23-year-old sailing ship intact or any of its 150 crew members alive. The ship never arrived at its destination.

The US Navy conducted a search for the vessel in early 1861, but no trace of the ship or its crew was found at that time. “The disaster must have been so sudden that no time was given to save the lives of those on board by taking to the boats or building a raft.” (US Archives)

Meantime, shortly after the failure of the Levant to arrive at Panama, and long before the finding of the above wreckage, two vessels of the US Navy (Saranac and Wyoming) had been sent from that port to the Hawaiian Islands.

But these and all similar efforts to solve the fatal mystery proving fruitless, Congress, by resolution duly adopted, fixed the date of June 30, 1861 to be reckoned as the day on which the Levant had foundered at sea, with the loss of all on board. (National Geographic Magazine, December, 1904, and March, 1907)

All ships that vanish at sea gather rumors in death as they collect barnacles afloat. But since Levant disappeared just prior to the outbreak of the Civil War, an unusual number of intriguing yarns surround her last voyage. Bits of evidence, too scanty to solve her mystery, have multiplied the myths. ((navy-mil)

Commodore Montgomery reported that a violent hurricane had occurred in September in a part of the Pacific Ocean which Levant was to cross. Some rumors had her running aground on an uncharted reef off California (or some other doubtful island of the Pacific.)

Others had her defecting to the Confederacy. Whatever her real fate, this ghostly heroine of colorful episodes in American naval history still sails the seas of imagination and legend. (navy-mil)

The disappearance of the Levant, with 210 aboard, was the second worst marine disaster in Hawaiian history. The greatest marine disaster in Island history was the loss of the Kamehameha, in 1829 or 1830, with High Chief Boki, Governor of Oʻahu, and 250 others that went down in a storm seeking sandalwood.

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