Peter T Young

May 5, 2016 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Libelle

Oral traditions claim that the Marshallese knew of Wake Atoll prior to contact with European navigators. The Marshallese name for the atoll was Eneen-Kio or Ane-en Kio, “Island of the kio flower.”

The atoll was a source of feathers and plumes of seabirds. Prized were the wing bones of albatross, from which tattooing chisels could be made. In addition, the rare kio flower grew on the atoll.

Bringing these items to the home atolls implied that the navigators had been able to complete the feat of finding the atoll using traditional navigation skills of stars, wave patterns and other ocean markers. (Spennemann)

Today, it is more commonly referred to as ‘Wake Island’ or ‘Wake Atoll’ (rediscovery of Wake and its naming is usually credited to Captain William Wake of the British trading schooner Prince William Henry, enroute from Port Jackson, Australia to Canton in China in 1792.) (NPS)

Wake Island, to the west of Honolulu, Hawaii, is the northernmost atoll in the Marshall Islands geological ridge and perhaps the oldest living atoll in the world.

Though it was substantially modified by the United States to create a military base before and after World War II, its major habitats are the three low coral islands consisting of shells, coral skeletons, and sand, supporting atoll vegetation adapted to arid climate. (FWS)

On the evening of March 5, 1866 under the leadership of captain Anton Tobias, Bremer Bark Libelle (Dragonfly,) bound for Hong Kong from San Francisco having last stopped in Honolulu, shipwrecked on Wake Island, one of the most remote, uninhabited atolls of the Central Pacific.

On board 16 passengers, men, women and children; also on board was a cargo valued at $300,000, including silver coins and quicksilver. (Quicksilver is otherwise known as mercury, the only metallic element that is liquid at standard conditions for temperature and pressure.)

Passengers included some famous people: Anna Bishop, one of the most famous singers and adventurous women of the time; Eugene Van Reed Miller, an American diplomat and pioneering the development of the Asian markets; Yabe Kisaboro, a Japanese officer. (Drechsler)

They were stranded on the atoll for approximately three weeks. On the futile search for drinking water, the fear of the impending end comes on. Should we really trust a tiny lifeboat and the attempt to reach the 1,300-nautical miles distant Marianas Islands? (Drechsler)

On March 27, twenty-two people crammed themselves about Libelle’s twenty-two foot longboat, piloted by Tobias’ first mate. The captain took four sailors and three Chinese on a twenty-foot gig. (Urwin)

The first mate and passengers travelled 1,300-miles and made it to Guam in 18-days. The Captains boat was never hear from again.

Salvage crews faced a similar fate as the Libelle.

“The wrecking party of the second expedition to Wake’s Island, returned by the British brig Clio last month. They sailed from Honolulu last September, in the schooner Moi Wahine, and landed on Wake’s Island, after a pleasant passage down of a month.”

“Capt English, Mr Thos Foster and nine Hawaiian divers’ were landed, with a part of their stores, and apparatus for distilling water.”

“The next day, towards night, the wind shifting, the schooner took her anchor and put out to sea, to avoid a lee shore. The vessel was never seen again afterwards.”

“The wind on the third day veered suddenly to the westward, and blew a living gale. On the Island its force was terrific, trees on ihe windward side were torn up, and carried quite across the lagoon and branches strewed the whole island. Captain Zenas Bent, the mate Mr. White, and seven Hawaiian seamen perished with the schooner.”

“The weather at Wake’s Island during the five months that the party were there, with the exception of the typhoon Thursday was pleasant and fair.”

“The lagoon abounds with fish, and from the middle of February, the birds made their appearance, and there was plenty of eggs. On these natural resources of the Island the wreckers managed to live without serious Inconvenience, while by distillation they procured as much water as they required.”

“Though it lies in the track of the China bound vessels, it is incorrectly laid down, and therefore they give it a wide berth, especially when passed on the windward side.”

“During the four months, only one vessel was communicated with – a brig that touched within two weeks after the party landed, and before they had given up hope for the return of their schooner. Several sail were seen at intervals, but they passed on without noticing the island, or the signals on the shore.”

“At length the Clio appeared, bound thither for wrecking purposes, not being aware that the Honolulu party were there. Near the Island the Clio spoke a bark, which was probably the vessel which had agreed, when leaving Honolulu for China, to touch at the Island and report upon the fate of the party, for whose safety, on account of long absence, serious fears were entertained here.”

“The Clio was chartered for Honolulu, and taking on board the party, the quicksilver and other material of the wrecked Libelle, arrived after a pleasant run of thirty days.” (Hawaiian Gazette, May 27, 1868)

“Two hundred and forty-six flasks of quicksilver, a quantity of copper, chains, anchors, &e, have been secured, which will repay the adventurers well for their enterprise.”

“The brig went there for the same purpose as the schooner, and was chartered by Mr Foster to bring the wrecked goods to this port.” (Pacific Commercial Advertiser, May 2, 1868)

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Similar Ship to the Libelle

May 1, 2016 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Common Stock

An often repeated (and unfounded/incorrect) statement is, “The missionaries came to do good, and they did very well.” (Suggesting the missionaries personally profited from their services in the Islands.)

A simple review of the facts show that the missionaries were forbidden to “engage in any business or transaction whatever for the sake of private gain” and they did not, and could not, own property individually.

The Prudential Committee of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM,) in giving instructions to the Pioneer Company of 1819, said:

“Your mission is a mission of mercy, and your work is to be wholly a labor of love. … Your views are not to be limited to a low, narrow scale, but you are to open your hearts wide, and set your marks high.”

“You are to aim at nothing short of covering these islands with fruitful fields, and pleasant dwellings and schools and churches, and of Christian civilization.” (Instructions of the Prudential Committee of the ABCFM, October 15, 1819)

Over the course of a little over 40-years (1820-1863 – the ‘Missionary Period,’) about 180-men and women in twelve Companies served in Hawaiʻi to carry out the mission of the ABCFM in the Hawaiian Islands.

To supply the mission members, a Common Stock system was initiated – it was a socialistic, rather than capitalistic, economic structure.

The Common Stock system was a community-based economic system designed to enable the missionaries to accomplish their goals without having to worry about finding sustenance and shelter.

The missionaries were constantly reminded of Matthew Chapter 6, verse 24: “No one can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon (money.)” (Woods)

The Laws and Regulations of the ABCFM stated, “No missionary or assistant missionary shall engage in any business or transaction whatever for the sake of private gain …”

“… nor shall anyone engage in transactions or employments yielding pecuniary profit, without first obtaining the consent of his brethren in the mission; and the profits, in all cases, shall be placed at the disposal of the mission.”

“The missionaries and assistant missionaries are regarded as having an equitable claim upon the churches, in whose behalf they go among the heathen, for an economical support, while performing their missionary labors …”

“… and it shall be the duty of the Board to see that a fair and equitable allowance is made to them, taking into view their actual circumstances in the several countries where they reside.” (Laws and Regulations of the Board, 1812)

So missionaries could devote their entire energies to developing a written language for the Hawaiian people, translating the Bible into Hawaiian and teaching native men, women and children to read it, the ABCFM supplied all the Hawaiian mission’s domestic needs through a Common Stock system administered by appointed secular agents for the mission.

“The kingdom to which you belong is not of this world. Your mission is to the native race,” ABCFM Secretary Rufus Anderson instructed the missionaries. Consequently, missionaries practiced rigid economy partly out of necessity, and partly out of a desire to appear trustworthy to the American churches upon whom they depended for total support. (Schulz)

The Mission was supported by donations to the ABCFM on the continent, “The free-will offerings of many churches, and many thousands of individuals are cast into one treasury, and committed, for application to the intended objects, to persons duly appointed to the high trust.”

“Upon these sacred funds and under this constituted direction, approved persons, freely offering themselves for the holy service, are sent forth to evangelize the heathen.”

“Your economical polity will be founded on the principle established by the Board, ‘That at every missionary station, the earnings of the members of the mission, and all monies and articles of different kinds, received by them, or any of them, directly from the funds of the Board, or in the way of donation, shall constitute a common stock …”

“… from which they shall severally draw their support in such proportions, and under such regulations as may from time to time be found advisable, and be approved by the Board or by the Prudential Committee.’” (Instruction to the Missionaries, October 15, 1819)

The Minutes of a meeting of the Pioneer Company on their way aboard the Thaddeus reinforced these instructions, “The property acquired by the members jointly or by individuals of the body either by grant, barter, or earnings shall also be subject to the disposal of the members jointly.”

“The property thus furnished or acquired, either divided or undivided, shall be devoted to the general purposes of the mission, according to the tenor of our Instructions from the A. B. Com. F. M. and according to our own regulations, not incompatible with those instructions.”

“No member of this mission shall be entitled to use or allowed to appropriate such property divided or undivided, in bying [sic], selling, giving, or consuming, etc. in any manner incompatible with our general Instructions, or contrary to the voice of a majority of the members.” (Minutes of the Prudential Meeting of the Mission Family, November 16, 1819)

The Mission’s secular agent, Levi Chamberlain, kept track of everything mission families received from the Depository, gifts from mainland friends or family members, and any presents from Native Hawaiians. Everything was counted against the equal distribution of goods.

Mission family members were allowed to keep personal gifts from family and friends as private property, but those gifts were subtracted from what they would otherwise be entitled to receive from the Depository. (Woods)

In 1836 the Mission wrote, “No man can point to private property to the value of a single dollar, which any member of the mission has acquired at the Sandwich Islands.”

Missionary Dwight Baldwin noted, “Every member, I think, to a man, has been engrossed in labors for the benefit of the people. And it is certainly true of nearly every one, that he has turned his attention to no provision whatever which his children might need in America.” (Schulz)

“In spite of the fact that they followed this community-based economic system, there is no doubt that the missionaries were capitalists. In 1838 William Richards took leave from the mission and then resigned to become the translator and advisor for King Kamehameha III.”

“At the King’s request Richards taught the chiefs about capitalism and constitutional government using a book he translated by Baptist pastor and Brown University President Francis Wayland, titled The Elements of Political Economy.”

“This class led directly to the establishment of the so-called Hawaiian Bill of Rights a few months later in 1839 that guaranteed rights to commoners that included rights to their own property.”

“The class also led to the establishment of the first constitution of Hawai‘i in 1840. The class may also have prepared the way for the Māhele in the late 18405 that established the right of private land ownership.” (Woods)

Two years after Kamehameha III created the first Hawaiian constitution, legislature, and public education system, the ABCFM aided the missionaries by transitioning to a salary system. The Board allotted each couple $450 per year and granted children under 10 an additional $30 and children over 10, $70 annually. (Schulz)

At their General Meeting in 1843, the Mission resolved, “That although we consider the salary allowed us by the Board a bona fide salary, still, in our character as missionaries, we are a peculiar people, having wholly consecrated ourselves to the Lord for the spread of the Gospel in the earth …”

“… and however it may be proper for other men to engage in speculations, and accumulate property, we cannot consistently with our calling engage in business for the purpose of private gain.” (Cheever)

The Depository continued as a purchasing agent for missionaries who could purchase their supplies at a discount from the Secular Agent, but all gifts or other earnings were still deducted from this salary. Land and herds continued to be owned jointly by the mission. (Woods)

Missionary parents could now give their children a New England education in the islands at O‘ahu College (Punahou, founded in 1841) and save their personal incomes for their children’s futures. (Schulz)

In 1863, the ABCFM withdrew financial support for the mission and the Missionary Period ended.

I encourage folks to visit the Mission Houses Historic Site and Archives, in the shadow of Kawaiahaʻo Church, on King Street. It’s a great way to learn the facts about the missionaries and the Missionary Period.

Docent guided tours (Tuesday through Saturday, starting on the hour every hour from 11 am with the last tour beginning at 3 pm) take about an hour and cost $10 ($8 Kamaʻāina, Seniors and Military,) Students $6 (age 6 to College w/ID;) Kamaʻāina Saturday (last Saturday of the month) 50% off for residents.)

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Mission_Houses,_Honolulu,_ca._1837._Drawn_by_Wheeler_and_engraved_by-Kalama

April 28, 2016 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Pan-Pacific Union

The first gathering from different Pacific countries met in Hawai‘i on August 2-20, 1920 in the First Pan-Pacific Scientific Conference. Later, the First Pan-Pacific Educational Conference was held in Honolulu, August 11-24, 1921. About this time the Bureau of American Republics was being organized into the Pan-American Union at Washington, DC.

“The Pan-Pacific Union, representing the lands about the greatest of oceans, is supported by appropriations from Pacific governments. It works chiefly through the calling of conferences, for the greater advancement of, and cooperation among, all the races and peoples of the Pacific.” (Pan-Pacific Union Bulletin, December 1924)

“In the beginning, the union may with justice be acclaimed the handiwork of one man, Alexander Hume Ford. He it was who in 1908 translated an idealistic dream of a brotherhood of Pacific races into an equally idealistic but more substantial organization dedicated to the furtherance of interracial good will and amity.”

“He it was who, after a long battle to gain the support of an at first skeptical Hawaii to the new Pan-Pacific Union visited the capitals of the oriental countries, the Australasian states, Canada and the United States, gaining pledges of support for the new movement from statesmen wherever he went.”

“And again it has been Ford who has fought for legislative appropriations to carry on the work, Ford who has personally fostered and built up a strong spirit of mutual respect and friendship among the diversified nationalities of Hawai‘i”. (Pan-Pacific Union Bulletin, July 1922)

‘Pan-Pacific Union’ was the local expression of the larger ‘Hands-around-the-Pacific’ movement, which embraced all countries in and about the vast western ocean – the future theatre of the world’s greatest activities. (The Friend, May 1, 1918)

Ford’s “‘The Mid-Pacific Magazine,’ published at the Cross-Roads of the Pacific, (served as a) Pan-Pacific publication, presenting monthly interesting facts, fictions, poetry and general articles concerning the lands in and bordering on the great ocean.”

The projected calling of a Pan-Pacific conference to meet in Hawaiʻi, the establishment of a Pan-Pacific commercial college in Honolulu and the project of a Pan-Pacific peace exposition here after the war was launched by a number of influential business men. (Mid-Pacific Magazine, 1918)

A Pan-Pacific commercial college was considered one of the best means to bring Hawaiʻi into closer communion with the countries of the Far East while the exposition and general conference would create a sentiment in the countries of the Pacific to make the Pacific independent in its resources and make Hawaiʻi a real cross-road of the Pacific. (Oregon News, June 26, 1918)

In 1924, the Mary Castle Estate allowed the Pan-Pacific Research Institute to use her former home, Puʻuhonua, in Mānoa for University of Hawai‘i student and other use to “tackle the scientific problems of the Pacific peoples, especially those of food production, protection and conservation.”

“The assistant students will, it is expected, attend the University of Hawai‘i, where they will take their degrees. Two such students from the mainland now with scientific party here, are expected to be the first of such entries in the University of Hawaii with others to follow from lands across the Pacific.”

“The gift will be used as the nucleus of the Pan-Pacific University, for which charter was granted some years ago. This will be graduate university chiefly for research work.”

“The chief work of the Pan-Pacific Research Institute will be along lines of research study of food resources of Pacific lands and of the ocean itself. It will be entirely Pan-Pacific Institute connected with no other body but cooperating with kindred bodies in all Pacific lands. It will be neither American, Hawaiian nor Japanese, but governed by scientists from all Pacific regions.”

“Conferences are being held with the heads of several delegations already here from Pacific lands, and cable invitations have been sent to others to hurry on and take part in the deliberations as to the work the institute shall undertake for the peoples of the Pacific area.” (Bulletin of the Pan Pacific Union, September 1924)

In the following 16-years the Pan-Pacific Union became a sort of early “think tank” capable of providing “perfect quiet for study, remote from disturbances, with ample room for visiting scientists to live and work.”

Many other institutions were happy to cooperate. The Bishop Museum lodged research fellows there, often for a year at a time. There was one charge for the lodgers: a visitor was expected to give at least one of the weekly public lectures.

A Junior Science Council was added. In 1933 Ford wrote that “twenty students of all races and from many localities, members of the Pan-Pacific Student’s Club who are attending the University of Hawai‘i, are occupying the barn and carriage house in a cooperative housekeeping arrangement and working out in their own way ideas which may promote happier international relations.” (Robb & Vicars)

The big house was finally torn down in 1941. The other associated structures lay empty, and gradually they disintegrated. Termites had long been a problem.

A combination of lack of attention to administrative detail, inadequate long-term funding arrangements, declining governmental support (compounded by the global economic depression,) and, perhaps above all, a shift in support on the part of Hawai‘i’s socio-economic leaders from the Pan-Pacific Union to the new Institute of Pacific Relations, resulted in the group’s slow decline.

By the advent of WW II, Pan-Pacific Union had withered into insignificance and, with Ford himself in rapidly declining health, it simply disappeared.

This does not mean the Pan-Pacific Union and Ford were at last irrelevant. (UH) As a local newspaper editorialized at the time of Ford’s death in 1946, he “did more than any other man to acquaint the whole wide world with the importance of Hawai‘i in the Pacific theater.” (Honolulu Advertiser, October 18, 1946; UH)

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Pan-Pacific Union-1921

April 27, 2016 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Jones Act

It’s called the Merchant Marine Act of 1920. The Act was introduced by Senator Wesley Jones from Washington, and thus carried his name.

The Jones Act is part of the post-World War I years, when the vulnerability of US shipping to German U-boats was still fresh in the public’s mind, to maintain a “dependable” merchant fleet for the next “national emergency” – as well as promote US shipping interests. (WSJ)

Part of the act deals with ‘coastwise (or domestic) trade’ – essentially the term applies to a voyage that beginning at any point within the US and delivering a type of commercial cargo to any other point within the US. (Maritime Law Center)

Another related term is ‘cabotage’ – this initially referred to shipping along coastal routes, port to port; now it is defined as the “transportation of passengers and goods within the same country” and “law or policy protecting transporters of passengers and goods within a country from competition from foreign carriers.” (American Heritage Dictionary)

The threshold question here is whether the carriage involves a move of an item of “merchandise” from one coastwise point to another when any part of the journey by sea or by land and sea occurs by vessel. If so, the movement is coastwise trade.

Merchandise is essentially any object, whether valuable or not, whether privately owned or owned by the US Government or by a state government or subdivision thereof, other than the carrying vessel’s own equipment and consumable supplies. (King)

The Jones Act was designed to protect the domestic shipping industry. It states that only ships made in the US and flying the country’s flags can deliver goods between US ports.

That means that a cargo ship filled with goods from China can only make one stop in the US at a time. It can’t stop in Hawaii to exchange goods before heading to Los Angeles. (Bussewitz)

This limitation is not new. After passage of the Constitution in 1789, the First Congress promptly exercised the sovereign powers of the US to protect the US merchant marine fleet from foreign flag competition in its domestic maritime trades.

The new Congress imposed a tax on foreign vessels operating in the domestic trades at a rate that, as a practical matter, precluded them from competing with the domestic merchant marine in those trades. Then, in 1817, Congress expressly prohibited foreign vessels from operating in the coastwise trades.

From 1817 to 1866, the US maritime cabotage laws prohibited the transportation of merchandise “from one port of the United States to another port of the United States in a vessel belonging wholly or in part to a subject of any foreign power.” (McGeorge)

The Jones Act revamped the US shipping laws governing cabotage, ship mortgages, seamen’s personal injury claims and more in the immediate aftermath of World War I. (King)

However, the bulk of the discussion on the Act deals with coastwise trade and cabotage and the fact that the law requires that all goods traded between US ports be transported by US-owned, US-built, US-flagged and at least 75 percent US-crewed ships. (Wilson)

The US is not alone in establishing and enforcing cabotage laws. Most trading nations of the world, according to Department of Transportation’s Maritime Administration (MARAD,) have or have had cabotage laws of some kind. (GAO)

But folks now-a-days, especially in the Islands, are suggesting the Act is inhibiting free trade – which results in higher prices for shipping (adding to the cost of almost everything we buy in the Islands.)

According to a 2014 report by the Congressional Research Service, the cost of a US-manufactured ship is about four times that of foreign competition, and crew costs for “Jones Act–eligible” vessels are several times higher than foreign counterparts. These higher operating costs make shipping between US ports as much as three times the rate of shipping to a foreign port. (Wilson)

The “significant measurable US import restraint on services is in the transportation sector. Complete liberalization of oceanborne domestic water transport (i.e. repeal of the Jones Act) results in a $656 million net welfare gain ….”

“More conservative estimates of foreign-cost advantages under free-trade conditions change the model results, showing significantly less import penetration in the US market and smaller welfare gains. Relaxing the domestic construction requirement alone is estimated to generate $261 million in net welfare gains …” (US International Trade Commission, 2002)

Another way to say the above is that “repealing the Jones Act would lower shipping costs by about 22 percent.” (Congressional Record)

By shutting out foreign competition, the law limits shipping capacity and inflates US freight rates. Like most forms of protectionism, it benefits a few (primarily labor unions and US shipbuilders) to the detriment of many.

US islands, such as Hawaiʻi (along with the state of Alaska,) feel the effects of the Jones Act more than most localities. (Bloomberg)

Jones Act waivers were granted during Hurricane Katrina due to the significant disruption in the production and transportation of petroleum and/or refined petroleum products in the region during that emergency and the impact this had on national defense. (USCG)

Some suggest waivers are evidence of the negative impacts of the law, but also say ending the Jones Act shouldn’t be a unilateral move. Dozens of other nations have similar protectionist laws, and the US should only allow competition from ships that are registered to nations that agree to reciprocal rollbacks. (Bloomberg)

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April 22, 2016 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Kahului Harbor

Before European contact, ‘Iao Stream served to irrigate lo’i in terraces that extended well up into ‘Iao Valley. Nearby is Kanaha Fishpond, which is said to have been built by Chief Kiha-Piʻilani, son of Piʻilani and brother-in-law of ʻUmi, (in about the 16th century.)

After contact, the port and town of Lāhainā was the first trading location to become established on Maui. As early as 1819, whaling lured thousands of sailors to Lāhainā. Meanwhile, even by 1837, Kahului was described as a settlement of 26-pili grass houses.

During King Kamehameha’s campaign to unify the Hawaiian Islands, the principal military encounter on Maui took place within Kahului Bay. For two days, there was constant fighting between the two sides until Kamehameha conquered them with the help of the western military expertise and firearms of his western advisors, John Young and Isaac Davis.

It was a bloody battle and by the time it was over, the beach between Kahului and Pāʻia was covered with the canoes and bodies of fallen warriors.

With the success of the first oil wells in Titusville, Pennsylvania, the whaling trade began to decline in the 1860s. It was about at this time when Maui turned to the emerging sugar industry to fill its economic void.

The isthmus between Haleakala and West Maui contained rich soils ideal for crop cultivation. Within a few short years, the region soon supported one of the largest sugar plantations in the world.

In 1876, following the Reciprocity Treaty, other Westerners gained interest in Maui’s agriculture potential, including Claus Spreckels (who came to Hawaiʻi from San Francisco.)

Spreckels leased land from the government and obtained the water rights needed to build a large irrigation ditch that provided water for crops. These events set the stage for the establishment of Maui’s first railroad system.

Rail transported cane from the fields to the harbor. Passenger cars were added to the rail system and in 1879 Thomas Hobron founded the Kahului Railroad Company, the first railroad in Hawaiʻi that provided passenger service between the population centers at Wailuku and Kahului Harbor.

Early development at Kahului Bay started in 1863 with the construction of the first western building, a warehouse near the beach.

In 1879, to facilitate the loading and unloading of goods and passengers, the first small landing was constructed in Kahului Bay. By the turn of the 19th century, Kahului supported a new customhouse, a saloon, a Chinese restaurant, and a small but growing population. (DOT)

When Bubonic Plague was noted in Kahului on February 10, 1900, “we found that the inhabitants of Chinatown, where the disease was discovered, had been moved to a detention camp some distance from the town, Chinatown destroyed by fire”. (Carmichael) The rebuilding of Kahului town coincided with the evolution of Kahului Bay into a full-scale commercial harbor. (Noda; DOT)

Kahului Commercial Harbor is a man-made port, dredged from naturally occurring Kahului Bay. As a harbor, its chief advantage was a narrow break in the coral caused by the fresh water from the Waikapu River, which emptied into Kahului Bay at one time. The break allowed ships to anchor inside the protecting reef.

The anchorage was less than ideal. It was exposed to the full force of the trade winds, there was very little deep water and a heavy surge as well. The harbor has a long history of development, including construction of breakwaters and harbor dredging dating back to the early 1900s. (DOT)

The development of the harbor began in earnest under the leadership of Henry Baldwin. During this time, the railroad and harbor depended on each other to provide service to the merchants and the sugar cane plantations. (Noda; DOT)

The harbor complex originated in 1900 when a 400-foot long east breakwater was constructed by the Kahului Railroad Company.

In 1901, the rail company purchased its first tugboat, the Leslie Baldwin, to tow lighters to and from vessels. Harbor development was initiated three-years later by Kahului Railroad Company, who was at the time a subsidiary of Hawaiian Commercial and Sugar Company.

“(T)he growing commercial importance of Kahului Harbor, a seaport of this Territory, in the Island of Maui, demands that adequate facilities be provided for the proper handling of freight and passenger traffic under government supervision and control”.

The Territorial Senate then addressed a Resolution, asking “That the sum of $100,000.00 be inserted in the Appropriation Bill for the purpose of defraying all costs incidental and necessary to condemn the new Claudine Wharf and moorings in Kahului Harbor, Maui, now owned and controlled by the Kahului Railroad Company, Limited”

“… whereby said wharf and moorings shall become the property of the Territory of Hawaiʻi; and also to construct a new wharf in said harbor at which large vessels may dock and load or discharge freight and passengers.” Wm T Robinson, Senator 2nd District; February 23, 1911.

Pier 1 was initially 500-feet in length and was constructed between 1921 and 1924, along with a pier shed that was 374 feet long. Subsequent construction lengthened Pier 1 to 929-feet.

The first 627-feet of Pier 2 was constructed in 1927 at the location of the old “Claudine Wharf,” and extended in 1929 by 894-feet.

The first involvement of the Army Corps of Engineers with the project came in 1913 when the east breakwater was extended 400-feet. The west breakwater was constructed to 1,950-feet in 1919, and the structures were extended to their current lengths in 1931. (DOT)

The harbor basin has been widened and deepened at various times to reduce navigational hazards due to increased traffic within the harbor and to accommodate larger vessels.

Kahului Harbor is one of nine commercial harbors (seven deep-draft and two medium-draft) found throughout the state. Because of Hawaiʻi’s geographic isolation, nearly all of its imported goods arrive via island ports.

Honolulu Harbor serves as the hub of Hawaiʻi’s commercial harbor system from where inter-island cargo distribution branches out to serve the neighbor islands. (Lots of information here is from Hawaiʻi DOT Harbors Master Plan.)

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