Images of Old Hawaiʻi

by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Pono Pineapple

Kapa‘a was the final home of the legendary chief Mō‘īkeha. Born at Waipi‘o on the island of Hawai‘i, Mō‘īkeha sailed to Kahiki (Tahiti), the home of his grandfather, Maweke, after a disastrous flood. On his return to Hawai‘i, he settled at Kapa‘a, Kauai.

Kila, Mō‘īkeha’s favorite of three sons by the Kauai chiefess Ho‘oipoikamalanai, was born at Kapa‘a and was considered the most handsome man on the island. It was Kila who was sent by his father back to Kahiki to slay his old enemies and retrieve a foster son, the high chief La‘amaikahiki.

Mō‘īkeha’s love for Kapa‘a is recalled in the ‘olelo no‘eau: Ka lulu o Mo‘ikeha i ka laulã o Kapa‘a “The calm of Mō‘īkeha in the breadth of Kapa‘a ” (Pukui 1983: 157) (McMahon)

The sugar industry came to the Kapa‘a region in 1877 with the establishment of the Makee Sugar Company and subsequent construction of a mill near the north end of the present town. Cane was cultivated mainly in the upland areas on former kula lands

The first crop was planted by the Hui Kawaihau, a group composed of associates of King Exploration Associates Ltd. David Kalākaua. The king threw much of his political and economic power behind the project to ensure its success.

The Hui Kawaihau was originally a choral society begun in Honolulu whose membership consisted of many prominent names, both Hawaiian and haole.

It was Kalākaua’s thought that the Hui members could join forces with Makee, who had previous sugar plantation experience on Maui, to establish a successful sugar corporation on the east side of Kauai. Captain Makee was given land in Kapa‘a to build a mill and he agreed to grind cane grown by Hui members.

Kalākaua declared the land between Wailua and Moloa‘a, the Kawaihau District, a fifth district and for four years the Hui attempted to grow sugar cane at Kapahi, on the plateau lands above Kapa‘a.

Kapa‘a town was founded by immigrant sugar workers who left their sugar mill towns and set up small private businesses. It is one of only two towns on Kauai that sprang up independent of sugar production.

Pineapple became the next largest commercial enterprise in the region. In the early 1900s, to help with the growing plantation population, government lands were auctioned off as town lots in Kapa‘a.

The first pineapple company on the island of Kauai was established in 1906.  In 1913, Hawaiian Canneries Company, Ltd opened in Kapa‘a. Through the Hawaiian Organic Act, Hawaiian Canneries purchased land they were leasing, approximately 8.75 acres, in 1923.

Hawaiian Canneries Co. cultivated pineapple scattered over 35 miles from Hanamaulu to Hanalei and processed and canned its pineapple at Kapa‘a canneries (now the site of Pono Kai Resort). (McMahon)

The Kapa‘a Cannery provided employment for many Kapa‘a residents. By 1960, 3400 acres were in pineapple and there were 250 full time employees and 1000 seasonal employees for the Kapa‘a Cannery.

On August 21, 1929, a US trademark registration was filed for ‘Pono’ by Hawaiian Canneries. The description provided to the trademark for Pono is ‘canned sliced and crushed pineapple and pineapple juice used for food-flavoring purposes’. (Trademarkia)  By 1956, the cannery was producing 1.5 million cases of pineapple.

Factory by-products – the crowns & skins from the processed pineapples – were loaded onto train carts and hauled up the coast to a pier.  The pineapple rubbish was then dumped into the ocean from the end of the pier. (Kauai Path)

As canned pineapple from other countries began filling the market, Hawaiian canneries began to close and plantations, once located on Maui, Oahu, Molokai, Lanai, and Kauai, began to shrink.

In 1962, Hawaiian Canneries went out of business due to foreign competition. (Exploration) Other smaller Kauai and Maui pineapple companies closed in the late-1960s.

In 1969, Hawaiian Fruit Packers (which was formed in 1937 by the reorganization of a company initially started by a group of ethnic Japanese growers) on Kauai, the last cannery remaining there, announced plans to cease planting. The cannery was closed in October 1973.  (Bartholomew etal)

Del Monte cannery closed in 1985, and Dole cannery in Iwilei closed in 1991. The Kahului cannery of Maui Land and Pineapple Company was the last remaining pineapple cannery in Hawai‘i.

The Hawaiian pineapple industry has gone from its early days as a primarily fresh product, through most of the 20th century as principally a canned product and a major supplier of the worlds canned pineapple market, to the 21st century when it is once again grown mostly for fresh consumption.  (HAER)

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by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Edgar Young

The year was 1900 when William and Herb Young arrived in Hawai’i to enter this promising new line of business.

At the tum of the century, Honolulu’s waterfront was well known throughout the Pacific, being as the Territory of Hawai‘i had been annexed to the United States in 1898, and its largest city was the port of call for vessels east- and west-bound.

Ships came around the Horn laden with general merchandise; vessels from the West Coast might be carrying produce or livestock, while those from Australia carried coal.

In Honolulu, they would discharge their cargoes, then load up with sugar bound for distant ports.  Interisland trade was serviced by local steamship companies with a combined fleet of eighteen vessels, plus a “mosquito fleet” of independent operators that owned interisland vessels.

The Young brothers weren’t strangers in the harbor life that awaited them. The family hailed from San Diego – four boys, Herb, William, Jack and Edgar, and older sister, Edith. The family patriarch, John Nelson Young, was a sailor.

The boys must have inherited this nautical bent because, at an early age, they were hiring themselves out for fishing trips using a small skiff that they sailed around the bay.

In the summer of 1899, all four boys ran a glass-bottomed boat excursion at Catalina Island. After the season ended, Herb landed a berth on a schooner bound for the Hawaiian Islands, and William decided to join him on what he would later call ‘the great adventure.’

They had made passage on the Surprise, a two-masted schooner engaged as an interisland carrier to serve the Kona Sugar Company. Twenty-nine year old Herb had served as chief engineer during the ten-day journey from San Francisco, while William, then age twenty-five, served before the mast.

The company that was to become Young Brothers began as a an enterprising series of small jobs utilizing skills that Herb and William added to along the way.

By the end of the year, Young Brothers was becoming established as a small but prospering harbor business. Younger brother Jack, age eighteen at the time, had arrived on October 16, 1900, to join the growing partnership.

Then steps in a fledgling Hawaiʻi company, also seeing expansion opportunities, and it was through shipment of Libby’s pineapple from Molokai to Libby’s processing plant in Honolulu that Young Brothers expanded into the freight business.

In the early years of the company, the brothers carried supplies and sailors to ships at anchor outside the harbor, as well as run lines for anchoring or docking vessels.  They also gave harbor tours and took paying passengers to participate in shark hunts.

Libby’s need to ship fruit from the growing area on Molokai, to pineapple processing on Oʻahu created an opportunity for the brothers.  The brothers, using their first wooden barges, YB1 and YB2, hauled pineapples from Libby’s wharf to Honolulu.  “That’s how (Young Brothers) started the freight.”  (Jack Young Jr)

Youngest of all, Edgar (who was born January 21, 1885 in San Diego), arrived in July 1901, but being only fifteen at the time, he attended Honolulu High School.  (YB 100 yrs)

Graduating high school in 1904, Edgar then sailed aboard the ‘Alameda’ on July 27, 1904 for San Francisco to attend Cooper Medical Cooper.  Newspaper accounts note that Edgar reported safe from the 1906 earthquake and fire.

(In 1908, Cooper Medical College was transferred to Stanford University. Instruction by Stanford University began in 1909 and continued in San Francisco until 1959, at which time the Stanford School of Medicine opened on the Stanford campus.)

On Marcy 9, 1907, Edgar married Eunice Mae Hilts.  Then, Edgar returned to the Islands, “Dr. Young is a graduate of the Cooper Medical School of San Francisco, and while in that city he had a laboratory of his own.”

“Dr. Edgar Young, who graduated eight years ago from the Honolulu High School, and well known in Honolulu by the young people of the city, has taken up practise at Kahului.”

“He is under regular appointment by the railroad and will be given some of the work of Puunene plantation, which was too heavy for one physician to carry alone. It is likely, too, that when he can spare the time, he will be called to Wailuku to assist in that part of Maui, where the work also is unusually exacting, and demands more time than one physician can usually give.”

“His coming to Maui is much appreciated by the other physicians here as well as the people as a whole. He has brought with him his wife and child. A new house will probably be erected in Kahului on the beach on the Wailuku side of the cottage occupied by Elmer R. Bevins.” (Star Bulletin, August 12, 1912)

Edgar later substituted for Dr Durney at the Kula Sanitarium. (SB, Sept 19, 1917)  Edgar went to Kauai and in addition to general medical practice, he was superintendent of the 35-bed Lihue Hospital (American Medical Directory (1921)).

“He practiced in Hawaii for many years [on Kauai (including Lihue Plantation) and Maui (including Kahului RR Co)]. He left Honolulu for California just before outbreak of war in December, 1941. Owing to ill health, he had been inactive for the past four years.” (Star-Bulletin, Dec 27, 1943)

Edgar Young died on December 23, 1943 (polio ‘finished him’ (Jack Young Jr), in San Diego, at the age of 58, and was buried in Cypress View Mausoleum And Crematory in San Diego.

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by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Animal Drawn Streetcars

In the quarter century from 1872 to 1896 the population just about doubled in the kingdom from 57,000 to 109,000; Honolulu doubled from 15,000 to 30,000.

The increase of the population of Honolulu was taken care of in two ways: (1) more people crowded into Chinatown (the area between Fort Street and Nuʻuanu stream makai (seaward) of Beretania Street and (2) area of settlement was pushed outward and “downtown” enlarged.  (Kuykendall)

This extension of settlement combined with the growing attraction and popular resort use in Waikīkī meant transportation became more of a problem.

People who could afford them had horses and buggies; independent buggy served as available on a limited basis and mass production of the gas automobiles didn’t get underway until the turn of the century, so a more organized public transportation system was needed.

The earliest public transit was the Pioneer Omnibus Line, with a horse-pulled vehicle serving parts of Honolulu for a few years beginning in the spring of 1868.  (Schmitt)

In 1884, the legislature passed a law “granting to William R. Austin and his associates the right to construct and operate a street railroad upon certain streets of the city of Honolulu.” Later amended, the law granted authority the Hawaiian Tramways Company, Limited (from England.)  (Kuykendall)

An April 14 1888 London public offering prospectus to raise £130,000 by selling 26,000 shares at £5 each noted, “The following are the routes of the proposed lines of Tramway, viz.;

(1) From Nuuanu Street, the chief residential quarter, through the business part of the City skirting the Docks and Custom House, to the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, and thence along Beretania Street, touching the extensive Portuguese quarter, to a point where at several closely populated Avenues converge.

(2) Starting from the densely-populated Chinese quarter, past the King’s Palace, the Legislative Chambers, the Opera House, and the Native Church, to the principal pleasure resorts and residential district of the well to-do classes in the southern suburbs.

The total length of the above lines, including sidings and crossings will be about 12 miles.”

On May 19, 1888, ground was broken and track laying started for a street railway system.  On New Year’s Day 1889, a mule or horse-drawn tram along King Street between Pālama and Pawaʻa became the first streetcar in Honolulu with four open cars, bringing what was later described as “Honolulu’s first real transit service.”  (Schmitt)

The Pacific Commercial Advertiser grumbled that it was “a very unsatisfactory service for the public, however, as hundreds waited at the corners for the belated cars …. The company should have had double the cars on the line that it had.”  (Kuykendall)

The tramcars were well patronized, first as a novelty and then as a proven convenience. The speed limit for the cars was eight miles per hour. By July 1889, the trams speeded along King Street from Kalihi to Waikīkī, Beretania from Nuʻuanu to Punahou.

The streetcar tracks added to the traffic problem on Honolulu’s main streets, none of which were wide enough. As far back as 1880, a newspaper article gave an entertaining description of traffic conditions then existing.

“The traffic in ours streets has increased five-fold within the last three or four years, but the streets are no wider than before. It therefore behooves the police to keep a sharp lookout. …”

“In all great cities which we have visited, it is held to be a most important function of the police, to render locomotion as easy and safe as possible, by forbidding unnecessary stoppages, keeping drivers on their own side of the street, seeing that no heavy drays or wagons are allowed to move unless the drivers have sufficient control over their beast.”  (Kuykendall)

The animal-powered service was short-lived, making its last run on December 23, 1903; Hawaiian Tramways, Ltd. was taken over in 1900 by the Honolulu Rapid Transit & Land Co.

Honolulu Rapid Transit operated electrically powered buses on Honolulu streets.  Power came from overhead wires. Ten new buses began service on August 31, 1901, replacing the horse and mule drawn cars which had in service 33 horse cars, 113 horses and 194 mules.

Eventually more comfortable, speedy gasoline-powered buses replaced other means of mass transit for Honolulu and rural Oʻahu.

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by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Hero of a Hundred Passages

“Resolved, That, in consideration of the long and meritorious services of Capt John Paty, as a ship master out of Honolulu, and the valuable assistance rendered by him in the furtherance of commercial intercourse between the Hawaiian Islands and adjacent ports in foreign countries, as evidenced by the accomplishment of his one hundredth passage across the Pacific,”

“We, American residents and others, in Honolulu, in meeting assembled deem him entitled to be hailed as the Commodore of the Merchant Marine, at the Sandwich Islands, and as such to fly some ensign, emblematical of the rank thus bestowed upon him … on his arrival from San Francisco, and that on its presentation, he shall be saluted with the customary salute of 13 guns.”  (The Friend, November 1, 1860)

“Capt. Paty is a native of good old Plymouth, Mass., and for aught we know, the blood of the master of the May Flower runs in his veins.  (He) is one of those Cape Cod boys, of whom it has been eloquently said, ‘They leap from the cradle to the shrouds without holding on to their mother’s apron strings.’”  (The Friend, November 1, 1860)

They presented him with a commodore’s broad pennant of blue silk, with the figure 100, encircled by ten white stars representing the ten Hawaiian Islands, and with a chronometer; tokens of the community’s appreciation of his years of reliable service.  (Hackler)

Let’s look back.

John Paty was born February 22, 1807 in Plymouth, Massachusetts. His father was a seaman and his mother came of a seafaring family; his father died when John as 7 and his mother, when he was 11.

His first sea-voyage was made in 1821 (at the age of 15,) in the Brig Gov. Winslow, from Boston to Amsterdam with his uncle, Captain Ephraim Paty.  He quickly learned the rigors of life aboard ship, for his relative showed him no favors.

Looking back on his early days at sea, “But when I got on board ship with a hard old shell-back, I found the contrast very great, and my feelings were such, at times, as to induce me to commit almost any deed of violence for the sake of revenge. At other times I wished that I had never been born.”  (Paty; Day)

“His earlier voyages were to the Mediterranean and West Indies, and, it is said, young as he then was, the owners for whom he sailed reposed so much Confidence in his integrity, good judgment, and nautical skill, that they were in the habit of giving him no instructions other than the general and verbal one, to act according to his own discretion.”  (Daily Alta California, February 3, 1869)

He was married in the year 1831 (to his childhood sweetheart, Mary Ann Jefferson of Salem, Massachusetts;) they made their home in Plymouth.  Two years later John’s younger brother Henry returned from the Sandwich Islands. He persuaded John to buy a part interest in the brig Avon and sail in it to Hawai’i.

In 1834, John and Mary Ann sailed for the Sandwich Islands, in the brig Avon, of which he was master and part owner, accompanied by his wife and brother, and arrived at Honolulu in June of that year.  (They had three children while in Hawaiʻi, John Henry Paty (1840,) Mary Francesca Paty (1844) and Emma Theodora Paty (1850.)

He took various voyages back and forth to the continent; on one, he landed in San Francisco in December, 1837 (it was part of Mexico at the time.)  The only buildings in San Francisco were an unfinished adobe belonging to Capt. Wm. Richardson (an Englishman,) and a board shanty near it owned by Jacob P. Leese (an American.)  These two were the only foreign residents there.  (Day; Hesperian)

“Since that time, with the exception of one or two voyages to Atlantic ports previous to 1839, he had been constantly employed in the Pacific, and, principally, between the Hawaiian Islands and parts of Mexico and California.”  (Daily Alta California, February 3, 1869)

In 1857 King Kamehameha IV asked Paty to take the Manuokawai on a voyage of exploration, in the course of which he took possession of Laysan, Necker, Gardener’s Islands and Lysiansky Islands for the Hawaiian Kingdom.  He also corrected old charts, “… a considerable portion of my time has been consumed by calms and looking for banks and islands which do not exist, or are erroneously marked ….”  (Paty; Hackler)

After 168 crossings, in command of the Don Quixote, the Frances Palmer, the Yankee, the Speedwell, the Young Hector, and the Comet, Paty could assert with pride that he never lost a passenger or a seaman, never lost a ship, and never had a serious accident at sea.  (Hackler)

“Old salt,” Capt. John Paty, so long and favorably known throughout the Pacific as one of the most obliging and successful shipmasters that ever commanded a vessel … He has been employed in almost every kind of sea service, in nearly every part of the world, and has universally given most unqualified satisfaction.”  (Polynesian, October 13, 1860)

“Those sailing with him always considered themselves fortunate and secure; and his quiet, amiable disposition, unalloyed good-nature, and uniform courtesy and kindness of manner, made it a pleasure to be a passenger and guest on board the vessel where he was master and host.”  (Daily Alta California, February 3, 1869)

Paty had his home, ‘Buena Vista,’ in Nuʻuanu (on the east side of Nuʻuanu Avenue at Wyllie Street).  (That site is now covered by the Nuʻuanu-Pali Highway interchange.)

John Paty continued to ply the Pacific until four months before his death from cancer, on November 11, 1868.

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by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Bully Hayes

Among all the rough men who made life hideous on the seas the figure of an American skipper stands pre-eminent – Captain “Bully” Hayes, who never knew fear.  (Hawaiian Star, November 11, 1911)

Born in 1827 in Cuyahoga County, Cleveland Heights, Ohio, his father is said to have kept either a tavern or an ordinary grog-shop.  There is no direct word of his boyhood, but there is ground for the assumption that he grew up as a reckless desperado.  (Johnstone, Thrum)

The Honolulu Advertiser of September 24th, 1859 gives an interesting, history of the “Consummate Scoundrel.” About the year 1852, he was “unfortunate as to mistake a few horses belonging to a neighbor for his own, and sold them accordingly, pocketing the cash.” Unfortunately again for the world, he escaped prison by a flaw in the indictment and fled from danger.

The young Hayes received his education at Norfolk, Virginia, and later was appointed to a cadetship in the US Revenue Service, where he served with honor and promotion.

Subsequently, he resigned and became Captain of one of the Great Lake steamers, but afterwards – about the year 1854 or 1855 – he joined the US Navy, where he is reported to have served with credit under Admiral Farragut.

It has been alleged he was a man of aliases, however, these seem to be limited to “Captain Henry Hayes,” “Captain William H Hayes,” and “Captain W. H. Hayston,” as he was called throughout the South Pacific and officially announced in the reports of the British Admiralty for the years 1874-1875.

His well-known nicknames were “Bully” Hayes and “Bully”‘ Hayston.  (Johnstone, Thrum)

His first venture in crimes on the seas was typical of much to follow.  On a trip to San Francisco, he had so hypnotized a fellow-passenger (it seems he was a gentleman of means ready for an investment) that he agreed to establish Hayes’ “wife” (who afterwards remained there) in the liquor business, which, it seems, was quite to her taste.

But to leave his “wife” in a convenient establishment at a port of return was only a part of his plan. In the end, his scheme was brought to fulfillment by the friendly capitalist fitting out a ship for the China trade; it was not long afterwards that the bark sailed away with Hayes as Master, which was the last the owner ever saw of his ship. (Johnstone, Thrum)

He would often employ the ploy of ordering and having items delivered to his ship in port.  The merchant came aboard on sailing-day for his money; he was politely received.

Then, the ship would cast off and while sailing out of the harbor, Hayes would note, ”But you see, Sir, it is inconvenient that I should pay you now. I shall return shortly and settle the account, but at this moment I am going to sea, so you must either return at once in your boat, or sail with me.”

It was near the middle-1850s when Captain Hayes first appeared in the Pacific; he arrived in Honolulu in 1858: over six feet in height, big, bearded, and blond, with a soft voice and a persuasive smile – 240-pounds of intriguing manner and sly scheming.  (Gessler)

“(H)e and his first officer were put ashore at Honolulu from the ship Orestes. He was at that time accompanied by his wife, who was lately living with his children on the Navigator islands. In all his travels he was accompanied by women, whom he picked up and dropped as the fancy took him.”  (Evening Bulletin, October 7, 1895)

“Since Bully Hayes touched here first in the fifties … he will be remembered by the oldest residents only. Yet there was that in the man and his acts which is worth preserving, and this brief record of his early career in the North Pacific seems due to the life and memory of the urbanest scoundrel that ever sailed a sea on evil deeds intent.”  (Johnstone, Thrum)

“Eventually he commenced his career as a trader among the South Sea Islands.  After raiding and robbing stations for a couple of years, Bully Hayes was arrested by the British Consul at Upolu … he readily won the hearts of men and officers, who began to believe that he was a most worthy and much injured man.”

“Within three days he was not only set free, but supplied with all he required for another sea trip, upon which he left with the best wishes of the captain and officers.”  (Evening Bulletin, October 7, 1895)

“Of all the hard lives a man ever lived in the South Sea and I’ve been sailor, whaler and trader among the best of ’em – “blackbirding” was the worst. A man had good times ashore and the like of that, but when he worked he carried his life in his hands.  It was so aboard ship as well as when he went ashore after labor recruits.”

“I don’t know who gave that business the name of “recruiting,” for we know it to be almost always downright kidnapping that generally ended in slavery. No wonder the natives resisted every recruiting crew that landed.”   (Hawaiian Gazette, January 9, 1917)

Blackbirding is the recruitment of people through trickery and kidnappings to work as laborers.  The practice occurred between 1842 and 1904. Those ‘blackbirded’ were from the indigenous populations of nearby Pacific islands.

Hayes had ship after ship, but title for each was often questionable.  Over the years, he traveled the Pacific Ocean between California, Hawaiʻi, Australia, New Zealand and the Caroline Islands and would cause islanders to hide in fear of being kidnapped and shipped off to be a laborer on some distant plantation.

“Merciless to those who opposed him, he had bursts of generosity unknown to his rivals. He recognized that the invasion of the South Sea kingdom by the missionaries meant the coming of law and order, which, in turn, meant the death of his reign of violence.”

“So he strove to thwart the proselyting band, and until his end in the late-70s, with the Pacific as his shroud, he successfully combated the missionaries.”  (Hawaiian Star, November 11, 1911)

“After a half century of notoriety in the Pacific, during which the voice of the investigator has ever been raised against him in condemnation, “Bully”, Hayes has at least one old acquaintance who paints him lens black than most. This is Captain Callaghan”.  (Hawaiian Gazette, January 9, 1917)

“Bully Hayes was not as bad as nearly every one says he was,” said Captain Callaghan yesterday. ‘He dealt squarely with men until he was cheated and when he was he became a very bad customer indeed.’”   (Hawaiian Gazette, January 9, 1917)

Hayes was a fascinating companion, who sang in fine voice the songs of the German classical composers, was an accomplished performer on piano and violin, and spoke at least four languages (besides various Polynesian dialects) with much fluency.  (Johnstone, Thrum)

Hayes received a fatal stab (or shot) in the heart from one of his crew (the ship’s cook Peter Radeck or Dutch Pete, responding to threat’s from Hayes) and died on March 31, 1877 in Hawaiʻi at just 47 years old.   (Evening Bulletin, October 7, 1895)

Hayes (and glimpses of his story) was later portrayed by actor Tommy Lee Jones in the 1983 film, “Nate & Hayes”.

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