Images of Old Hawaiʻi

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June 17, 2022 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Ke Ana O Ke Kiʻi

The ancient Hawaiian religion, kapu, was an oppressive system of prohibitions. The law of kapu was extended to every act in life, and it even followed the believer beyond the grave.  (Bishop Museum)

Heiau (temples) were so numerous in the thickly settled country near the shore that from the walls of one the next was plainly to be seen. Ellis (1823) tells us that from Kailua to Kealakekua on Hawaiʻi there was at least one heiau to every half-mile along the trail.  (Brigham)

While Kū, Kāne, Lono and Kanaloa were the great gods, almost every man had his private deity, while his wives had others. There was Laka (hula dancers,) Kuʻula (fishermen,) Hina (the wives,) Laʻamaomao (the winds) and so on that were worshipped.

Anything connected with the gods and their worship was considered sacred, such as idols, heiau and priests.  Because chiefs were believed to be descendants of the gods, many kapu related to chiefs and their personal possessions.

The features of their religion were embodied in idols which were of every variety imaginable, from hideous and deformed sculptures of wood, to the utmost perfection of their art.  (Jarves)

Idols were made of different materials; some of the wooden idols were carved from the ʻōhia tree.  In cutting the haku ʻōhia, as the idol was first called, many prayers were uttered and tedious ceremonies lasted days or even weeks if the omens were unpropitious.

In the making of an idol, a suitable ʻōhia tree had previously been selected, one that had no decay about it, because a perfect tree was required for the making of the haku-ʻōhia idol; and when they had reached the woods, before they felled the tree, the kahuna haku ʻōhia approached the tree by one route, and the man who was to cut the tree by another; and thus they stood on opposite sides of the tree.  (Malo)

This intricate system that supported Hawai‘i’s social and political structure directed every activity of Hawaiian life, from birth through death, until its overthrow by King Kamehameha II (Liholiho).

Shortly after the death of Kamehameha I in 1819, King Kamehameha II (Liholiho) declared an end to the kapu system.  In a dramatic and highly symbolic event, Kamehameha II ate and drank with women, thereby breaking the important eating kapu.

When the meal was over, Liholiho issued orders to destroy the heiau and burn the idols, and this was done from one end of the kingdom to the other.  (Kuykendall)

This changed the course of the civilization and ended the kapu system, effectively weakened belief in the power of the gods and the inevitability of divine punishment for those who opposed them.

The end of the kapu system by Liholiho (Kamehameha II) happened before the arrival of the missionaries; it made way for the transformation to Christianity and westernization.

Later, in 1831, Kaʻahumanu visited all of the islands to encourage the people to learn to read and write; she also pronounced certain laws orally about which she wished to instruct the people, including “Worshiping of idols such as sticks, stones, sharks, dead bones, ancient gods, and all untrue gods is prohibited. There is one God alone, Jehovah. He is the God to worship.”  (Kamakau)

However, not all agreed.  There were a large number who refused to cast aside their old practices; and many idols, instead of being burned, were merely hidden from sight. Even among those who outwardly conformed to the new order were many who secretly clung to their idols; the old gods of Hawaiʻi had their devotees for a long time after 1819.  (Kuykendall)

In part, this was evidenced in 2005, when a North Kona lava tube containing more than 30 kiʻi (Hawaiian religious images) were discovered during the construction at what was then known as “The Shores of Kohanaiki.”  Some believe the cave served as storage or a hiding place. Some have also suggested that it might have been a secret place of worship.

The discovery is regarded as especially significant because there were no human remains found with the objects, leading many to believe that they were hidden away after the abolishment of the ‘ai kapu system in 1819.  (OHA)

An initial chamber about 12-feet high and 60-feet long leads to a second, smaller chamber containing the wooden images and stone uprights.  “(A)side from the initial puncture point in the ceiling, the cave interior appears to be structurally sound and does not present a threat of collapsing at this time.”

“About three-dozen of the wooden images are made from limbs of varying dimensions, carved with slits for eyes and a mouth. They were left in this natural state with no other carved or stylistic features.”

“They are all similar and may have been carved by the same person or personages who were schooled under the same priestly order. A few of the kiʻi retain the ‘Y’ shaped fork created by the outgrowth of two branches, with eyes and mouth carved below the split.”  (OHA)

This isn’t the first such find.

The Pacific Commercial Advertiser reported (September 23, 1876,) “Recently some of the employees of Dr Trousseau in North Kona Hawaiʻi discovered a lot of wooden idols of the olden time, in a cave on the mountain.  They were in a good state of preservation and had doubtless been undisturbed in their hiding place since the time when they were deposited there to escape the general destruction of idols by order of Kaahumanu”.

This earlier discovery on the side of Hualālai was the first reported discovery of such a large clutch of images, under circumstances suggesting either the survival of a secret cult, or a shrine predating the abrogation of the traditional religion.  (Rose)

All were carved from ʻōhia logs; the bark was removed and both ends were roughly hacked to blunt points.  Although some individuality was in each carving, several similarities stand out: wide grooves and shallow cuts to delineate circular eyes and mouths.

King Kalākaua acquired the great majority of the images from the Mt Hualālai cave; it is not clear whether he actually visited the cave.  Despite, or perhaps because of, their relative simplicity, they share some claim to be numbered among the most unusual of all Hawaiian carvings.  (Rose)  Of the total 26 or so post images taken from the Mt Hualālai cave, 12 are preserved in three museums in Europe and the US.

The two finds noted here, although both in North Kona, were in significantly different areas: Kohanaiki near the shoreline (that cave with all the kiʻi has been sealed in 2006) and the other is way up the side of Hualālai (all of the contents of that cave were removed by 1885.)  Some have labeled these caves as “Ke Ana O Ke Kiʻi” (The Cave of Images.)

© 2022 Hoʻokuleana LLC

Filed Under: Hawaiian Traditions, Prominent People Tagged With: Ke Ana O Ke Kii, Hawaii, Hawaii Island, Kii, Kapu, Kaahumanu, Liholiho, Cave of Images, Georges Trousseau

June 16, 2022 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Boaz Mahune – Declaration of Rights (1839)

Born in the early-1800s, Boaz Mahune was a member of the lesser strata of Hawaiian nobility, subordinate to the high chiefs or aliʻi.  He was a cousin of Paul Kanoa, who served as Governor of Kauai from 1846 to 1877.

He adopted the name “Boaz” after a figure in The Book of Ruth in the Bible, after his conversion to Christianity (it was sometimes spelled Boas.)

Boaz Mahune was a member of the first class at Lahainaluna Seminary, graduating in 1835 after four years there.  His classmates included historian David Malo and royal diplomat Timothy Haʻalilio.

He was considered one of the school’s most brilliant scholars and was one of the ten chosen to remain as monitors, teachers in the children’s school and assistants in translating.

Mahune (with others from Lahainaluna) drafted the 1839 Hawaiian Bill of Rights, also known as the 1839 Constitution of Hawaiʻi.  This document was an attempt by King Kamehameha III and his chiefs to guarantee that the Hawaiian people would not lose their tenured land, and provided the groundwork for a free enterprise system.

It laid down the inalienable rights of the people, the principles of equality of between the makaʻāinana (commoner) and the aliʻi (chiefs) and the role of the government and law in the kingdom.

Many refer to that document as Hawaiʻi’s Magna Charta (describing certain liberties, putting actions within a rule of law and served as the foundation for future laws.)  It served as a preamble to the subsequent Hawaiʻi Constitution (1840.)

It was a great and significant concession voluntarily granted by the king to his people. It defined and secured the rights of the people, but it did not furnish a plan or framework of the government.  (Kuykendall)

After several iterations of the document back and forth with the Council of Chiefs, it was approved and signed by Kamehameha III on June 7, 1839 – it was a significant departure from ancient ways.

As you can see in the following, the writing was influenced by Christian fundamentals, as well as rights noted in the US Declaration of Independence.

Ke Kumukānāwai No Ko Hawaiʻi Nei Pae ʻĀina 1839 (Declaration of Rights (1839)

“God hath made of one blood all nations of men to dwell on the earth, in unity and blessedness. God has also bestowed certain rights alike on all men and all chiefs, and all people of all lands.”

“These are some of the rights which He has given alike to every man and every chief of correct deportment; life, limb, liberty, freedom from oppression; the earnings of his hands and the productions of his mind.”

“God has also established governments and rule for the purpose of peace; but in making laws for the nation it is by no means proper to enact laws for the protection of the rulers only, without also providing protection for their subjects; neither is it proper to enact laws to enrich the chiefs only, without regard to enriching their subjects also, and hereafter there shall by no means be any laws enacted which are at variance with what is above expressed, neither shall any tax be assessed, nor any service or labor required of any man, in a manner which is at variance with the above sentiments.”

“These sentiments are hereby proclaimed for the purpose of protecting alike, both the people and the chiefs of all these islands, while they maintain a correct deportment; that no chief may be able to oppress any subject, but that chiefs and people may enjoy the same protection, under one and the same law.”

“Protection is hereby secured to the persons of all the people, together with their lands, their building lots, and all their property, while they conform to the laws of the kingdom, and nothing whatever shall be taken from any individual except by express provision of the laws.  Whatever chief shall act perseveringly in violation of this Constitution, shall no longer remain a chief of the Hawaiian Islands, and the same shall be true of the Governors, officers and all land agents.”

The Declaration of Rights of 1839 recognized three classes of persons having vested rights in the lands; 1st, the Government; 2nd, the Chiefs; and 3rd, the native Tenants. It declared protection of these rights to both the Chiefly and native Tenant classes.

Mahune is more specifically credited with nearly all the laws on taxation in the introduction to the English translation of the laws of 1840, not published until 1842.

Later he was Kamehameha III’s secretary and advisor.  When the king attempted to start a sugar cane plantation at Wailuku on Maui, Mahune was the manager. The project was not a success.

Mahune returned to Lāhainā, where he acted as a judge for a time.  About 1846 he went back to his home in Honolulu to work for the government. Mahune died in March 1847.

© 2022 Hoʻokuleana LLC

Filed Under: Ali'i / Chiefs / Governance, Missionaries / Churches / Religious Buildings, Prominent People Tagged With: Kamehameha III, Lahainaluna, Timothy Haalilio, William Richards, Paul Kanoa, Declaration of Rights (1839), David Malo, Hawaii, Boaz Mahune, Maui, Lahaina, Kauikeaouli

June 15, 2022 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Dreadnought

The most famous guitars in the world trace their origins to Hawai‘i. (Kealakai Center for Pacific Strings)

The Dreadnought guitar is a larger bodied acoustic guitar that was developed by the Martin Guitar Company in 1916.  Martin invented the Dreadnought shape and it has since become one of the most popular shapes for many guitar manufacturers.

It was named after a British Royal Navy battleship ‘Dreadnought’ launched in 1906 (the first of a new class of large battleships); the vessel was a turning point in naval history, bettering its rivals in terms of armament, speed, size and firepower.  The HMS Dreadnought famously sunk the German SM U-29 submarine in 1915.

Early Martin designs were based on smaller body sizes but, before amplification, as the demand for more volume and projection grew and musical styles and genres evolved, larger bodied guitars were introduced.  (Martin)

(Size matters; the larger the guitar, the more it can project its sound to the admiring audience.)

Over time the Dreadnought has become a signature design for the Martin guitar company and played by countess well-known musicians from Johnny Cash to Eric Clapton to Neil Young to Bob Dylan and many others.  (Bernstein)

It started with Mekia Kealaka‘i.

Kilin Reece contends that a Hawaiian musician should be credited with an active role in the evolution of the modern acoustic guitar – Mekia Kealaka‘i.

“Martin Guitar has been producing ukuleles for over 100 years, and the roots of the iconic Dreadnought guitar started in Hawaii, which may people do not know.” (Amani Duncan, Martin’s Vice President of Brand Marketing in Martin Journal of Acoustic Guitars, 2016)

It goes back to July of 1916, when Hawaiian music was all the rage following its introduction to a large portion of the American public at the Panama Pacific Exposition in Chicago the previous year.

“Following the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exhibition (which, with 18 million visitors, was a major turning point in the popularity of Hawaiian music), one of the most talked about performers from the event’s ‘Hawaiian Pavilion’ took his band on a tour of the United States.”

“Traveling to venues across the United States, Mekia ‘Major’ Kealakai’s Royal Hawaiian Sextette was a smash hit, with crowd thronging to witness the band’s exciting, steel-stringed sound.”

“Finding a guitar loud enough to reach these growing mainland audience soon became a problem for Major.  To solve it, Kealakai reached out to America’s prominent guitar manufacturer to talk about something different – and something bigger.”

“[T]he craftspeople at Martin Guitar devised a steel-string instrument large enough to suit the needs of the Royal Sextette’s sound – and the largest guitar Martin ever produced.”  (Walsh, Martin Journal of Acoustic Guitars, 2020)

“Mekia Kealakai was the first person to ask Martin to make a jumbo steel-string guitar.  He was one of only four people at that point that the Martin Guitar Company made a guitar for, and they called it the Kealakai model.”

“Those templates were used to make the first dreadnought guitar, the most imitated and widely used acoustic guitar in the world.” (Kilin Reece)

“CF Martin & Co. made its Kealakai model in 1916, one year after the exposition. The standard size for a guitar was smaller then, more suited to the parlor than the stage.”

“Kealakai, seeking a stronger projection when he played Hawaiian lap steel, asked for a bigger-bodied instrument.”

“The resulting design was repurposed in an order for Oliver Ditson and Company, which has long been understood, inaccurately, as the originators of the dreadnought guitar.” (Reece: Hanahou article by Nate Chinen)

“Mekia Kealakai is a crucial part of that legacy. Born into poverty, the son of a sergeant major in the Royal Guard (hence the name “Mekia,” which means “major”), he received rigorous musical training in reform school, where he’d been sent for truancy at age 12.”

“His teacher – Henry Berger, then the conductor of the Royal Hawaiian Band – trained him in the European concert tradition. Mekia entered the band in his teens as a trombonist and flutist.”  (Reece, Hanahou)

“[A]t age 15, [he] joined the Royal Hawaiian Band as Berger’s star protege, and within a short time was composing songs with Liliʻuokalani and Kalākaua, eventually leading the Royal Hawaiian Band in a tour across the United States in 1895.” (Reece, Ka Wai Ola)

“During a Mainland tour in 1895, Kealakai caught the ear of the composer and bandleader John Philip Sousa, who wanted to hire him.” (Reece, Hanahou)

“[He] toured the U.S. continent as a member of Ka Bana Lahui; at the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo he demonstrated a “triple-tongue” technique so accomplished that John Philip Sousa called him the “greatest flutist” he had “ever heard.” (Kīkā Kila)

“But Kealakai turned him down and remained in Hawaiian string bands for the next ten years, playing up and down the West Coast from Portland to San Francisco before touring America and Europe and with his own act, Major Kealakai’s Royal Hawaiian Sextette.”

“He met his future wife, the noted hula dancer Mele Nawaaheihei, at the 1901 World’s Fair in Buffalo, New York.” (Reece, Hanahou)

He eventually returning home to take over the leadership of the Royal Hawaiian Band, complete with a glee club, largely, as he put it, “to help preserve Hawaiian music.”  (Kīkā Kila)

https://www.loc.gov/item/jukebox-15049/

© 2022 Ho‘okuleana LLC

Filed Under: General, Prominent People, Economy Tagged With: Mekia Kealakai, Major Kealakai, Martin Guitars, Dreadnought, Kealakai

June 14, 2022 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

1850

“When I found I had crossed that line, I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything; the sun came like gold through the trees, and over the fields, and I felt like I was in Heaven.” Harriet Tubman

Born into slavery on Maryland’s Eastern Shore in 1822, she was named Araminta by her enslaved parents, Ben and Rit Ross. Nearly killed at the age of 13 by a blow to her head, “Minty” recovered and grew strong and determined to be free.

Changing her name to Harriet upon her marriage to freeman John Tubman in 1844, she escaped five years later when her enslaver died and she was to be sold. One hundred dollars was offered for her capture.

In 1849 Harriet Tubman learned that she and her brothers Ben and Henry were to be sold. Financial difficulties of slave owners frequently precipitated sale of slaves and other property.

The family had been broken before; three of Tubman’s older sisters, Mariah Ritty, Linah, and Soph, were sold to the Deep South and lost forever to the family and to history.

Despite additional dangers resulting from the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, Tubman risked her life and ventured back to the community where she was born to rescue family, friends, and others.

The act required the reporting and arrest of anyone suspected of being a runaway slave, eliminated protections for suspected runaways, and provided economic incentives to kidnap people of African descent.

In September of 1850, Harriet was made an official “conductor” of the Underground Railroad. This meant that she knew all the routes to free territory and she had to take an oath of silence so the secret of the Underground Railroad would be kept secret.

Vowing to return to bring her family and friends to freedom, she spent the next ten years making about 13 trips into Maryland to rescue them. She also gave instructions to about 70 more who found their way to freedom independently.

Through the Underground Railroad, Tubman learned the towns and transportation routes characterizing the South—information that made her important to Union military commanders during the Civil War.

As a Union spy and scout, Tubman often transformed herself into an aging woman. She would wander the streets under Confederate control and learn from the enslaved population about Confederate troop placements and supply lines.

Tubman helped many of these individuals find food, shelter, and even jobs in the North. She also became a respected guerrilla operative. As a nurse, Tubman dispensed herbal remedies to black and white soldiers dying from infection and disease.

A lifelong humanitarian and civil rights activist, she formed friendships with abolitionists, politicians, writers and intellectuals. She knew Frederick Douglass and was close to John Brown and William Henry Seward.

She was particularly close with suffragists Lucretia Coffin Mott, Martha Coffin Wright, and Susan B. Anthony. Intellectuals in New England’s progressive circles, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Lloyd Garrison, Bronson Alcott, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Franklin B. Sanborn, and Mrs. Horace Mann, befriended her, and her work was heralded beyond the United States.

Tubman showed the same zeal and passion for the campaign to attain women’s suffrage after the American Civil War as she had shown for the abolition of slavery.

Harriet Tubman died in 1913 in Auburn, New York at the home she purchased from Secretary of State William Seward in 1859, where she established the Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged. She was buried with military honors at Fort Hill Cemetery.  (NPS)

In the Islands …

In 1848, King Kamehameha III fundamentally changed the land tenure system to a westernized paper title system through the Māhele.  The lands were formally divided among the king and the chiefs, and the fee titles were recorded in the Māhele book.

In 1850, a law was passed allowing these “native tenants” to claim fee simple title to the lands they worked.  Those who claimed their parcel(s) successfully acquired what is known as a kuleana.

Deeds executed during the Māhele conveying land contained the phrase “ua koe ke kuleana o na kānaka,” or “reserving the rights of all native tenants,” in continuation of the reserved tenancies which characterized the traditional Hawaiian land tenure system.  (Garavoy)

Contemporary sources of law, including the Hawai‘i Revised Statutes, the Hawai‘i State Constitution, and case law interpreting these laws protect six distinct rights attached to the kuleana and/or native Hawaiians with ancestral connections to the kuleana.

These rights are:

  • reasonable access to the land-locked kuleana from major thoroughfares;
  • agricultural uses, such as taro cultivation;
  • traditional gathering rights in and around the ahupua‘a;
  • a house lot not larger than 1/4 acre;
  • sufficient water for drinking and irrigation from nearby streams, including traditionally established waterways such as ‘auwai; and
  • fishing rights in the kunalu (the coastal region extending from beach to reef).

The 1850 Kuleana Act also protected the rights of tenants to gain access to the mountains and the sea and to gather certain materials.

The Kuleana Act did not allow the maka‘āinana to exercise other traditional rights, such as the right to grow crops and pasture animals on unoccupied portions of the ahupua’a. The court’s interpretation of the act prevented tenants from making traditional use of commonly cultivated land.  (MacKenzie)

Kawaiaha‘o Church Clock

Kawaiahaʻo Church (Stone Church) generally marked the eastern edge of town; it was constructed between 1836 and 1842.  The “Kauikeaouli clock,” donated by King Kamehameha III in 1850, still tolls the time to this day.

Honolulu Streets Named

It wasn’t until 1850 that streets received official names. On August 30, 1850, the Privy Council first officially named Honolulu’s streets; there were 35‐streets that received official names that day (29 were in Downtown Honolulu, the others nearby.)

At the time, the water’s edge was in the vicinity of what we now call Queen Street.  Back in those days, that road was generally called ‘Makai,’ ‘Water’ or Ali‘i Wahine.’  (Gilman)

Beginning of the Mormon Mission

“The Mormons are said to have commenced their mission in 1850. Their converts are scattered over all the islands.   They number about nine per cent of all those who in the census returns have reported their religious affiliations.  This mission owns a small sugar plantation at Laie, on the island of Oʻahu.”  (The Friend, December 1902)

The Church traces its beginnings to Joseph Smith, Jr.  On April 6, 1830 in Western New York, Smith and five others incorporated The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Fayette, New York.

In the summer of 1850, in California, elder Charles C Rich called together more elders to establish a mission in the Sandwich Islands.  They arrived December 12, 1850.  Later, more came.

Honolulu Fire Department

Alexander “Alick” Cartwright worked as a clerk for a broker and later for a bank, and, weather permitting, played variations of cricket and rounders in the vacant lots of New York City after the bank closed each day.

Rounders, like baseball, is a striking and fielding team game that involves hitting a ball with a bat; players score by running around the four bases on the field (the earliest reference to the game was in 1744.)

Cartwright played a key role in formalizing the first published rules of the game of baseball, including the concept of foul territory, the distance between bases, three-out innings and the elimination of retiring base runners by throwing batted baseballs at them.

The man who really invented baseball spent the last forty-four years of his long life in Hawai‘i and laid out Hawai‘i’s first baseball diamond, now called Cartwright Field, in Makiki.  Cartwright went on to teach people in Hawai‘i how to play the game; and, he did a lot more when he was here.

In Hawaiʻi, he continued the volunteer fire fighting activities he had learned as a member of the Knickerbocker Engine Company No. 12 in New York City – and, he was part of Honolulu’s first Volunteer Fire Brigade.

Shortly thereafter, the Honolulu Fire Department was established on December 27, 1850, by signature of King Kamehameha III, and was the first of its kind in the Hawaiian Islands, and the only Fire Department in the United States established by a ruling monarch. Cartwright was appointed Chief Engineer of the Department and shortly thereafter, he became Fire Chief.

“The ordinance by Kamehameha III, December 27, 1850, establishing the Honolulu Fire Department, required each householder

to keep at least two buckets hanging handy, for fire use exclusively, and further ordered that they be brought to every fire.”

“The bucket part was probably the most effective, as the only other equipment at that time was a hand engine and 150 feet of homemade canvas hose through which, by constant relays on the pump handles, water could be thrown some sixty feet.”  (Thrum)

Aside from his duties at the Honolulu Fire Department, Cartwright also served as advisor to the Queen.  Cartwright was the executor of Queen Emma’s Last Will & Testament, in which she left the bulk of her estate to the Queen’s Hospital when she died in 1885.  Cartwright also served as the executor of the estate of King Kalākaua.

Post Office Established in Honolulu

The first mention of a postal system in Hawaii was an enactment of the Legislature on April 27, 1846, relating to the handling of inter-island mails. It was entitled “An Act to Organize the Executive Departments of the Hawaiian Islands,”

With the US Post Office initiating a regular mail service by steamship between the east coast and California and Oregon, and a subsequent treaty between the US and Hawaii (ratified August 9, 1850) in which an article provided for the safe transmission of the mails between the two countries, the Hawaiian government decided that the 1846 statute governing internal correspondence was insufficient to handle foreign mails.

The Privy Council, therefore, passed a decree on December 20, 1850, and the 1851 Legislature enacted a law that established a Post Office in Honolulu (temporarily in the Polynesian Office). The Council appointed a Postmaster, Henry M. Whitney, and set up rates for renumeration to ships’ captains for carrying the mails.  (DAGS)

© 2022 Ho‘okuleana LLC

Filed Under: Place Names, Prominent People, Economy, General, Buildings, Missionaries / Churches / Religious Buildings Tagged With: Rights of Native Tenants, 1850, Harriet Tubman, Honolulu, Kawaiahao, Mormon, Honolulu Streets, Great Mahele, Polynesian, Alexander Cartwright, Post Office, Postal Service, Baseball

June 12, 2022 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Captain Jacob Brown

Captain Jacob Brown was “a follower of the sea from his twentieth year”.

The whalers of New Bedford and the other Eastern Ports fished the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.  They were hunting for whale products that were in high demand – whale oil was used for heating, lamps and in industrial machinery; whale bone was used in corsets, skirt hoops, umbrellas and buggy whips.

In the Pacific, rich whaling waters were discovered near Japan and soon hundreds of ships headed for the area.   The central location of the Hawaiian Islands between America and Japan brought many whaling ships to the Islands.

Whalers needed food and the islands supplied this need from its fertile lands.

William Rotch, the owner of several whaling vessels, was reportedly Nantucket’s greatest whaling merchant; he later moved to New Bedford. One of his ships was the Honqua (sometimes spelled Hoqua.)

Crew list records from the New Bedford ships’ registries show that Jacob Brown was First Mate on the Honqua on an Atlantic whale hunt from July 19, 1841 to June 29, 1843.

Then, on a September 1, 1843 to April 13, 1846 hunt into the Pacific, Brown was Captain.  He later captained another Honqua Atlantic whaling ground sail from 1846 to 1849.

It’s not clear if there were intervening sailings, but on a whale hunt in the North Pacific, Brown captained one of “seven sails of this fine fleet of 1851, the Honqua, the New Bedford, the Arabella, the America, the Armata, the Mary Mitchell, and the Henry Thompson, (that were) wrecked there, and left behind as monuments of the dangers which meet these hardy mariners in their adventurous calling.”

“The Honqua, in 1851, was totally wrecked on a sunken rock in that sea (near Cape Oliver (Sea of Ochotsk, Russia – near the Arctic Circle.”))

Brown and his wife Cordelia Hastings Brown were shipwrecked and spent four months in the Siberian snows before being rescued by a whaling ship.

All was not lost,  the rescuing Captain of the whaleship Canton, Captain James Allen Towners, purchased the salvaged  whale oil of the Honqua (1,100 bbls of oil saved, however sold at a heavily discounted price.)

From Siberia, Brown and family were eventually brought to Hawaiʻi, by way of China.

After making a trip to his home in New Bedford, Massachusetts, Captain Brown returned to Hawaiʻi a year later, his family joining him in Honolulu six years later, and remained to take a part in the development of the islands.

He retired from the sea in 1852 to assume a government position in Honolulu which placed him in charge of all government wharves and buoys at the port.

He was also captain of the towing tug “Pele.” The “Pele” was the first steam tug used in Hawaiʻi (screw tug with thirty-horse power,) called into service in 1854.

Its primary use was for towing vessels in and out of the harbor and replaced the use of men or animals to bring ships into the harbor against the prevailing northeast tradewinds.

“Prior to the launching of this vessel primitive power was used to bring the craft through the passage to an anchorage; a rope of great length was used, and it was a never-to-be-forgotten sight to see yokes of oxen, teams of horses and natives tugging at the rope. A time was consumed in making a start, but when once in motion, it was a steady walk-away.”

Richards Street was aligned as a straight path used by groups of men, and later oxen, to pull ships through the narrow channel into the harbor.

In 1856, the Pele was also used to tow barges about the harbor in connection with the Honolulu Harbor dredging operations. Pele served, with short interruptions, as the sole tug for shipping at Honolulu until after 1882.

Brown is later noted as registered owner or partner in several boats in Honolulu: Warwick, Jenny, Haunani, James Makee and CR Bishop.  These were typically used for inter-island movement of people and goods.

One of the partners was Thomas R Foster, an initial organizer of the Inter-Island Steam Navigation Company which was later incorporated on February 19, 1883.   (Brown, a friend of Foster’s, was one of the original promoters of the Inter-Island Steam Navigation Company.)  That company founded a subsidiary, Inter-Island Airways, that later changed its name to Hawaiian Airlines.

Born in 1815 to Jacob Brown and Ruth Morgan Brown, Captain Jacob Brown died on July 3, 1881 in Boston, Massachusetts, at the age of 66.  He and members of his family are buried at Oʻahu Cemetery.

He was survived by three children, Jacob F Brown (Civil Engineer and Manager of Hawaiian Abstract & Title,) Arthur M Brown (Attorney, High Sheriff in the Territory of Hawaiʻi (1898-1906,)) and Minnie H (Brown) Gilman; his oldest child, Sarah M Brown, born at sea, later died at the age of 22.

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Filed Under: Prominent People, Sailing, Shipping & Shipwrecks, Economy Tagged With: Jacob Brown, TR Foster, Honqua, Hawaii, Oahu, Whaling, Inter-Island Steam Navigation, Inter-Island Airways, Hawaiian Airlines, Honolulu Harbor

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