Economy | Page 206 | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

December 5, 2016 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Seth Parker

In 1933, radio broadcaster Phillips Lord purchased the schooner ‘Georgette,’ which he renamed as ‘Seth Parker’ after the character he played on his popular radio show, ‘Sunday Evening at Seth Parker’s.’ (The character ‘Seth Parker’ was a clergyman and backwoods philosopher based on his real-life grandfather.)

Lord first broadcast the program from his hometown of Jonesport, Maine, and then aboard the four-masted Seth Parker. With on-location reports from Lord each week, the program was billed as ‘The Cruise of the Seth Parker.’

Phillips Lord conceived an idea to sail his new ship to various exotic ports, with a team of celebrities, to broadcast his radio programs. The Seth Parker sailed from Portland Maine on December 5, (Woram) calling at various ports on the East Coast to broadcast the show. (Offshore Radio Guide)

The ship passed through the Panama Canal and sailed to the South Pacific. “For a while the plan worked. Then, mid-way between Samoa and Tahiti, the Seth Parker on Feb 8, 1935, ran into a storm. She radioed for help describing ‘mountainous’ waves breaking over the decks.”

“Next came a report from the schooner that the storm had subsided and ‘all’s well.’ (However,) On Feb 10 the Seth Parker was again in trouble, again calling for help.”

“The ‘Australia,’ 300 miles away by that time, returned to repeat her ‘rescue’ act. This time she took off the schooner’s nine crew members. Lord and four others remained aboard, and the vessel was towed by navy tug to Pago Pago.” (Advertiser, June 12, 1936)

The damage to the ship during the typhoons was so great that the radio crew ended any thoughts of further broadcasts aboard the wounded ship. (Offshore Radio Guide)

“About that time Hawaiian Tuna Packers, Ltd, decided to buy her as a bait boat and sent representatives to Samoa to inspect her. Upon hearing from scouts that the big schooner was in ‘good shape’ the company completed the purchase”. (Advertiser, June 12, 1936)

In April 1935, Hawaiian Tuna Packers took an option on the schooner. Chris Holmes had tanks fitted in the ship, with the idea of filling them with sardines to use as bait for tuna.

The ship was sold to Chris Holmes’ company for $10,000, a tenth of what it cost Phillips Lord to buy and outfit the Seth Parker for his exotic radio junkets. The vessel sailed for Honolulu on July 3. (Offshore Radio Guide)

“En route, the Seth Parker began to leak badly. Her new skipper radioed for help, and the coast guard cutter Tiger was dispatched to her assistance. The trip from Pago Pago to Honolulu took the schooner 64 days.”

“Reconciled to its bad bargain, Tuna Packers abandoned hope of putting the schooner to any use. It was then that Christian R Holmes, company president, decided to take the ship to Coconut Island.”

“And there she has been … bedded in concrete almost up to her waterline. At a glance, however, the ship seemed to be moored in a specially-constructed berth and ready at any time to take off again to the open seas.”

“For a long while she was immaculately groomed. Her hull was kept spotless white, her decks polished, her four masts ready for sails, but it was just a front.”

“Her whole interior was fitted with a bar, a theater and other entertainment, features for amusement of Mr Holmes’ guests on his fabulous island retreat.” (Advertiser, June 12, 1936)

Holmes bought the island from Bishop Estate to use as a tuna-packing factory. As he wasn’t satisfied with the size of the island, he decided to enlarge it to 28 acres, more than double its original size, using material taken from a sandbar in Kaneohe Bay.

Holmes had a vision of creating a private paradise, so while working on increasing the size of the island he also enhanced it by building a saltwater swimming pool and fishponds (which later became useful for HIMB) and adding numerous exotic plants and trees.

He also built a bowling alley, brought a shooting gallery from an amusement park in San Francisco, and built bars at several spots on the island. The boat was used in the movie ‘Wake of the Red Witch,’ starring John Wayne. (Parkvall)

The stately silhouette of the Seth Parker remained intact until Holmes’ death in 1944. The masts were removed around 1945. Some attempt was made to maintain the hull during the next few years, but the ship slowly rotted away.

A fire in the 1960s accelerated the ship’s demise. As the paint on the hull wore off, the original name Georgette and home port of San Francisco became visible. (Offshore Radio Guide)

“If you’ve ever seen a bleached and crumbling skeleton of some large animal on the sands of a mainland desert, you’ll have an idea what the Seth Parker looks like today.”

“Her masts are gone, her bow sprit has long since rotted away, her hull is drab and peeling, part of her deck rail has disintegrated and hunks have rotted out of her decks. Even the bar and theater and baubles that gave her her final claim to glory have been stripped away.” (Advertiser, June 12, 1936)

Today all that is left is a mound of green vegetation where the Seth Parker once was berthed. For many years the wheel of the ship was on display in the main house on Coconut Island, but the wheel was later donated to the Hawai‘i Maritime Center at Honolulu Harbor. (Offshore Radio Guide)

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Seth Parker – Moku O Loe – Coconut Island

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Coconut Island-Seth Parker in Background- 1940

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Seth Parket (lower left) Moku_o_Loe-Life-1937

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Aboard the Seth Parker-Spokane Daily Chronicle-Feb_17,_1934

Coconut Island Club International

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Wake of the Red Witch

December 2, 2016 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

‘Duke of Uke’

William ‘Bill’ Tapia was born in Liliha, Honolulu on New Year’s Day 1908. As a child he heard musicians playing at a neighbor’s house and became fascinated by the size and sound of the ukulele, which had been introduced to the Islands by Portuguese immigrants in the late 19th century.

He bought his first ukulele at age 7 for 75 cents from one of the first men to make them commercially. At 10 he came up with his own version of “Stars and Stripes Forever,” which he played for troops headed for duty in the last months of World War I.

Bill Tapia, Stars and Stripes Forever:

The youngest of five children, he had to help support his mother after his father, a barber, left the family. At 12, he dropped out of school to play in vaudeville shows in Honolulu.

“I worked in every theater on the islands. The Hawaiian Amusement Company ran almost all the theaters, the big ones. I worked in the Waikiki Theater, Princess Theater, every theater.”

“I was a kid and I had a car that drove me around. I had to be at this place at 8 o’clock, I’d go and play a couple of songs. People would laugh and scream. Then I had to get in the car quickly and the guy would drive me to another theater. We were going like mad!”

During the day, he hung out with beachboys in Waikiki and taught tourists and celebrities to play the uke. He was a traveling musician on ocean liners traveling between Hawai‘i and the mainland.

He taught tourists to play the ukulele and wrote an early instruction manual; among his pupils were movie stars like Shirley Temple and Clark Gable.

At 19 he performed at nightclubs and speakeasies in Hollywood and at parties at the home of Charlie Chaplin. At 21 he sat in with Louis Armstrong’s band at a Los Angeles nightclub. By this time he was playing the banjo and guitar, in addition to the ukulele, and was moving between Hawaii and the mainland.

When the Royal Hawaiian Hotel staged its grand opening in 1927, Mr. Tapia played ukulele in the orchestra. In 1933, the Royal Hawaiian hired him to drive one of its touring cars — a yellow-and-blue seven-passenger Packard — to ferry the wealthy and famous to scenic spots.

He played the ukulele for his passengers and threw in a lesson for anyone interested. His pupils included Jimmy Durante, Shirley Temple and the stars of the Our Gang comedies. He even claimed to have taught a lick or two to Arthur Godfrey.

During World War II, Mr. Tapia organized entertainment for serviceman in Honolulu. But after World War II he switched to the guitar to get jobs playing jazz, his favorite kind of music, and for a half-century had almost nothing to do with the instrument that had defined his youth and middle age.

By 1952, he and his wife had settled in the East Bay. He worked mostly in San Francisco and Oakland, performing in house bands at top nightclubs while augmenting his income teaching guitar, banjo and uke.

His life took a turn in 2001, after both his wife (Barbie) and their daughter (Cleo) died. By then living in Orange County to be closer to relatives, Tapia rediscovered the ukulele on a visit to a music shop to have a guitar restrung.

After playing with local ukulele clubs and taking on students, he began performing ukulele shows all along the West Coast and in Hawai‘i.

Tapia was “discovered” as a ukulele virtuoso at a time when the instrument was having a resurgence of popularity. He became a ukulele star, twice making the Top 10 on the jazz charts, wowing concertgoers by playing the ukulele behind his head à la Jimi Hendrix.

In 2004, when he was 96, he released an album of ukulele music, “Tropical Swing.” A year later he released another, “Duke of Uke.”

He was elected to the Ukulele Hall of Fame. “He is truly an amazing jazz soloist,” Dave Wasser, a director at the Ukulele Hall of Fame Museum, told The Times in 2007, three years after Tapia was inducted into the hall.

“He has a very smooth, graceful kind of style with the ukulele. It’s the kind of really soft, light touch that you get from somebody that has been with an instrument for many years.”

Tapia gave private ukulele lessons and continued performing live, including at the Warner Grand Theatre in San Pedro, where he celebrated his 100th birthday with a special concert. Bill Tapia died December 2, 2011 at the age of 103. (Lots of information here is from NY Times, LA Times, Star Advertiser, Reuters, Gordon, Spengler, Gilbert and Verlinde.)

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November 29, 2016 by Peter T Young 2 Comments

Timeline Tuesday … 1820s

Today’s ‘Timeline Tuesday’ takes us through the 1820s – arrival of the missionaries (Protestant & Catholic,) death of Keōpūolani, Liholiho and Kamāmalu. We look at what was happening in Hawai‘i during this time period and what else was happening around the rest of the world.

A Comparative Timeline illustrates the events with images and short phrases. This helps us to get a better context on what was happening in Hawai‘i versus the rest of the world. I prepared these a few years ago for a planning project. (Ultimately, they never got used for the project, but I thought they might be on interest to others.)

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November 28, 2016 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Waiākea Experiment

Toward the end of WWI a unique opportunity presented itself for a major homesteading experiment in Hawai‘i. A number of the long-term, thirty-year leases written during the closing years of King Kalākaua’s reign (1874-1891) were due to expire.

In anticipation of the expiration of these leases, and in keeping with the public land policies of President Wilson’s administration, preparations were undertaken for a large-scale homesteading experiment.

On June 1, 1918, shortly after Governor McCarthy took office, a lease of public land held by the Waiākea Mill Company on 7,261 acres of sugar cane land expired.

The Waiākea plantation had been one of the most profitable sugar corporations in the Islands from its inception until 1918, and there was every promise that homesteading could be successfully undertaken on a portion of the plantation’s land.

In March, 1919, and subsequently in February, 1921, a total of 216 lots in the Waiākea homestead tract were carved out of the plantation’s acreage and were conveyed to individuals under the terms of special homestead agreements.

These lots incorporated an area of 7,261 acres, of which approximately 6,300 acres, or 88 per cent, consisted of cane land. The balance of the acreage was a mixture of various kinds of land, some of which was suitable for other agricultural pursuits. The total appraised value of the land was more than half a million dollars. (LRB)

Applications for homestead lots in the Waiākea tract numbered over 2,000, far more than the number of lots available. To meet this problem, it was determined the homesteads would be awarded by a lottery …”

However, “without reference to whether the prospective homesteaders had any experience in farming, or any of the other qualifications that might have contributed to successful homesteading.”

“Nor did the territorial government plan to assist the homesteaders by providing trained agricultural agents, such as the county extension agents found on the mainland United States; neither did it assist the homesteaders with adequate roads or marketing facilities.”

“In short, virtually nothing was done to create conditions that would contribute to the success of this unique experiment in homesteading.”

“The inevitable outcome, of course, was that the Waiākea homesteading project was an immediate and overwhelming failure.”

“The majority of the Waiākea homesteaders’, unlike its pioneer American prototype, had no intention of tilling the soil. The recollection still lingers in many minds of “Waiākea No.1.” His intentions have been of the best but his agricultural background and qualifications were woefully lacking.”

“Forty percent of these homesteaders forfeited their land through failure to make their payments when due or for other breach of covenant.”

“Sixty percent, either directly or through their successors in interest, were strong enough, many as a result of legislative relief measures, to hold their lots and secure patents.”

“But forfeited or not, we find today nearly ninety percent of the original cane land again in the hands of Waiākea Mill Co. (5537 acres) for the production of sugar, partly as a result of direct leases with the Territory of forfeited lots and partly by direct lease agreements with the owners of the patented lots or lots still held for patent.” (LRB)

“What is considered by the territorial government and the Waiākea Mill Co. to be the only logical solution, under existing conditions, of the acute Waiākea homestead problem, was reached at a conference with Governor Wallace R. Farrington …”

“The Waiākea Mill Co. has agreed to take over the cultivation of the entire area of the Second Series Homesteads of the Waiākea tract, and to cancel all existing contracts with those homesteaders who desire to enter into the new agreement as now proposed.”

“Taking over of the homestead lands by the mill company will relieve the homesteaders of all responsibility with regard to cultivation, fertilization, harvesting, hauling, milling and care of stools.” (Louisiana Planter, 1922)

“The short-term results of the Waiākea experiment, then, were the ruin of many homesteaders, temporary disruption of the efficient functioning of a great and prosperous plantation, which suffered continued, substantial, financial losses until it was able to recapture most of its lost land, and a permanent loss of tax revenue to the territorial government.”

“In an effort to persuade him to resign as governor before the end of his term, some business leaders offered McCarthy an attractive position as general manager of the Hawaiian Dredging Company, even as others fulminated against his policies. He accepted the position, and Wallace Rider Farrington, a Republican, was appointed to succeed him as governor in 1921.” (LRB)

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Waiakea Experiment

November 22, 2016 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Timeline Tuesday … 1810s

Today’s ‘Timeline Tuesday’ takes us through the 1810s – Kamehameha and Kaumualiʻi negotiations, death of Kamehameha and the fall of the Kapu. We look at what was happening in Hawai‘i during this time period and what else was happening around the rest of the world.

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