Prominent People | Page 98 | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

December 9, 2018 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Robinson Wharf

“The oldest firm in Honolulu, that of James Robinson & Co … was commenced in 1822, and the shipyard located on the point (Pākākā) in 1827, where by patient industry, close application to the business, and prudent management of their affairs”.

“The commencement of this firm was through a common friendship and common misfortune—the result of one of those accidents which give a turn to human life, and wholly divert it from its former course. In 1821, Mr. Robinson and Mr. Lawrence, both young men, left England to seek their fortunes in the distant and then imperfectly known Pacific Ocean.”

“They sailed in the Hermes, reaching Honolulu in the spring of 1822. The Japan whaling-ground having been just brought into notice, the Hermes, together with the British ship Pearl, started the same day from this port to cruise there.”

“Twenty days out, on the same night, both vessels ran upon an unknown reef and were totally lost. More than sixty persons were thus thrown upon a desolate, barren lagoon island, in an unfrequented part of the ocean, with no prospect of succor except through their own management and skill.”

“Mr. Robinson commenced to build a schooner from the wreck of the ships, in which, with eleven others, he subsequently reached these islands in October, 1822. Before the completion of the schooner, an English whaler made the reef, and took away all the men except Mr. Robinson’s party of six, and six sailors, who would neither go away nor work for their own deliverance.”

“Four months were spent upon the reef – now known as the Pearl and Hermes Reef – and the schooner, short of water and provisions, started for Honolulu.”

“A long passage of ten weeks, with no other nautical instrument than an old quadrant and a pinchbeck watch to determine their position, brought them in sight of Hawaii with scarcely any provisions left, and only three gallons of fresh water on board.”

“Mr. Robinson and Mr. Lawrence, thus thrown upon this Island as waifs from the sea – their original plans entirely broken up, had really, by their indomitable energy and thrift, made the wreck on the Pearl and Hermes Reef the foundation of their subsequent business and financial success.”

“Their schooner was sold here for two thousand dollars, and Mr. Robinson found immediate engagement to put up others, imported about that time from the East.”

“They found that a shipyard was already a necessity of the port, and they entered upon the business. In 1827 they obtained from Kalaimoku, Pākākā – the Point – then nothing more than a coral reef, on which they established their shipyard and built the first wharves able to take alongside coasters and ships.” (Hawaiian Gazette, September 16, 1868)

“(A)t that time (they were) the only ship builders and repairers on the islands and in fact in the Pacific.” (Gilman; Cultural Surveys)

In 1840, the Polynesian commended the partners and their shipyard: “Honest, industrious, economical, temperate, and intelligent, they are living illustrations of what these virtues can secure to men. …”

“Their yard is situated in the most convenient part of the harbor has a stone butment and where two vessels of six hundred tons burthen can be berthed, hove out, and undergo repairs at one and the same time. There is fourteen feet of water along side of the butment.”

“The proprietors generally keep on hand all kinds of material for repairing vessels. Also those things requisite for heaving out, such as blocks, falls, etc. On the establishment are fourteen excellent workmen, among whom are Ship Carpenters, Caulkers and Gravers, Ship Joiners, Block-makers, Spar-makers, Boatbuilders, etc.”

In mid-September 1830, Joseph Elliott moved to The Point to open a hotel with Robinson. Lawrence and Holt, Robinson’s partners, appear to have specialized in the hotel and liquor business, which also featured a boarding house. The Shipyard Hotel had the advantage of being a “first chance – last chance” operation.

Years rolled on, and the firm of James Robinson & Co. (including Robert Lawrence and Mr. Holt) was a significant success and carried on a business that employed a large number of ship-carpenters and caulkers. More whaling ships were repaired at their establishment than at any other in the Pacific.

“In April 1847, James Robinson & Co. opened a butcher shop on the new wharf opposite the custom house. In September, W. H. Tibbey, butcher, began to operate in a shop on the government wharf.”

“In February 1848, the Sandwich Islands News complained of a ‘filth hole’ near the meat market on the wharf. Pedestrians waded knee-deep through the mire while their noses absorbed the terrible smell.” (Greer)

“(I)n December 1850 new sanitary regulations upped the pressure. Notices in Hawaiian and English went to all butchers and were posted in town; they strictly prohibited cow slaughtering at any place within the city limits, on any highway leading thereto, and on the banks of or over any stream used for drinking.” (Greer)

“Through the long period of forty-six years this firm has identified itself with the business interests of the Islands, and its name and financial resources have become familiarized to all our residents.”

“The partnership that existed was not one founded on legal forms or written conditions. It was commenced and has been carried on these long years through the simple force of individual character and confidence in personal integrity.”

“That either member of the firm insisted upon a business transaction or as investment contrary to the opinion of the others, was an unknown fact.”

“The firm has always been a unit in its plans and transactions, keeping their affairs to themselves and continuing steadily prosperous.” (Hawaiian Gazette, September 16, 1868)

This partnership lasted until 1868, when Mr. Lawrence died. For many years their building was one of the sights of the town, being decorated with the figurehead from an old vessel.

Robinson became so wealthy; reportedly, he lent substantial funds to the Hawaiian government during the 1850s and maintained a close relationship with the kingdom’s leaders until his death in 1876.

Hawaiians called him Kimo (James) Pākākā as Honolulu Harbor grew up around his shipyard. In 1843, James Robinson married Rebecca Prever; they had eight children: Mark, Mary, Victoria, Bathsheba, Matilda, Annie, Lucy and John.

Mr. Robinson died at his residence in Nuʻuanu valley August 8, 1876. However, his legacy lived on through his children.

His descendants became a well-known island family and his fortune founded the Robinson Estate. His son, Mark, was a member of Queen Liliʻuokalani’s cabinet (Minister of Foreign Affairs) during the chaotic last months of the monarchy as factional battles separated the royal government. He was a founder of First National Bank of Hawai’i and First American Savings.

His daughter Lucy married a McWayne (apparently, Robinson’s ship facility eventually became McWayne Marine Supply at Kewalo Basin – some old-timers may remember that later name.)

Daughter Victoria married a Ward. Their residence was known as Old Plantation, and included the current site of the Neil F. Blaisdell Center. Her estate, Victoria Ward Ltd, had other significant holdings in Kakaʻako.

Daughter Mary married a Foster. Her husband Thomas Foster was an initial organizer of the Inter-Island Steam Navigation Company. That company founded a subsidiary, Inter-Island Airways, that later changed its name to Hawaiian Airlines.

Foster had also purchased the estate of the renowned botanist William Hillebrand, which was bequeathed to the city as Foster Botanical Garden at the death of his wife Mary.

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December 1, 2018 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Piracy – Honolulu Captured and Sacked by an Armed Force

The headline of a December 15, 1884 front page story in the Daily Alta California in San Francisco suggested, “on the afternoon of Dec. 1st, (Honolulu was ransacked) by a pirate vessel’s crew.” There was more …

The Most Audacious Piratical Raid on Record.
No Attempt at Resistance.
The King, Public Treasury and Merchants Despoiled.
Over Three Millions in Coin and Plate Carried Off.
Capture of the Palace.
The Town in Possession of the Pirates for Nine Hours.
Not a Blow Was Struck Nor a Shot Fired.
Bishop’s Bank Plundered.
The Piratical Band Supposed to Have Organized in this City.

In explicit detail, we learn that “At 2 o’clock of the afternoon of December 1st a strange vessel was sighted off Diamond Head. The Alameda had passed out, and was well into the Molokai Channel by this time. [As the memoranda of the Alameda made no mention of this incident, she could not have seen her. — Ed.]”

“The craft, which was rigged like a steam whaler, after standing close along shore, shaped her course to the southward, and was soon a mere speck on the horizon. Towards evening, however, she was observed to go about and steer direct for Honolulu.”

“At 9 p. m., or thereabouts, the stranger hove to just outside the reef, and a boat, containing Colonel Curtis Iaukea, the recently appointed Collector of the Port, and four men, pushed off for her. About half an hour afterwards a second boat was sent from the Custom House, as the one containing Iaukea had not returned.”

“At 10 o’clock five boats, filled with armed men, pushed off from the strange craft and came alongside the Oceanic Steamship Company’s wharf. A few natives who were engaged in catching the red fish, a shoal of which had come into the harbor, ran up town with the intelligence that the wharf was thronged with armed men.”

“Mr. Brown, a reporter of the Pacific Commercial Advertiser, met them, and, doubting the information, walked down to the water front. He found himself at once Surrounded by an Armed Force”

“Who bound him hand and foot and left him in charge of a dozen of their number, while the rest, about seventy or eighty, marched up Fort street in solid column.”

“All had Winchester repeating rifles, revolvers and cutlasses. Nine ‘o’clock in Honolulu sees the streets almost deserted, with the exception of a few natives and policemen.”

“‘The leader, a tall man with a long, red beard, walked deliberately towards us with a cocked pistol in his hand. We stood in the porch, sort of paralyzed. No one thought of making any resistance then, and I tell you the rifles looked mighty wicked in the light of the lamps of the hotel ground.’”

“‘Now, gentlemen,’ said the Captain, “’ don’t want any foes. We have not come here to play at soldiers, and we don’t intend to get hurt. If any of you show a weapon or make a threatening motion, we’ll fire on you. We have not come here to rob you; you ain’t going to be a dollar out, but we will not be interfered with.’”

“‘Never you mind,’ said the Captain. ‘Give me the keys of the house.’ They gave them to him, and I was locked up with the rest. There was a sentinel posted at each entrance, and we sat in our rooms looking out of the windows, for no one knew how many men were on the island, or exactly what they wanted, for that matter.”

“That the leader was a man well acquainted with the town there can be no doubt, and, indeed, Dexter identified him as a person who had once been employed as a steward on board the Mariposa, and who had worked his passage in the steward’s mess. So far, no one in the upper portion of the town, except the hotel people, knew anything about the invasion.”

“The ‘King’s Own,’ a company of about forty men, Kalakaua’s special guard, were in their barracks, near the Palace, and the sentries were posted in their usual places at the Palace gates. The filibusters marched directly from the hotel to the Palace.”

“The king had a dinner party that evening, and was entertaining his Ministers … They were immediately surrounded, but in the confusion that followed General Hayley managed to slip through the hall and to the barracks, through the rear entrance of the palace.”

“Mr. Gibson was about to address the leader of the gang when the King pushed him aside and demanded haughtily what the meaning of all this was. ‘It means, sir,’ said the leader, that we’ve just taken possession of this little kingdom of yours, and we mean to hold it, too, by G – d !’”

“The Palace now being in possession of the filibusters, they proceeded to raid it in the most systematic manner. The feather cloak of the Kamehamehas, which is prized by the Hawaiians as a sacred relic, was carried off.”

“The presents of silver plate which the King had received in his European trip were also taken off in addition to the silver service in daily use in the Palace.”

“Mr. Frank Pratt, the Public Registrar, who keeps the keys of the Treasury, was seized at his residence on Beretania street, dragged to the public building on Aeolani Hale, and forced to open the vaults.”

“Here were $700,000 in Hawaiian currency – silver dollars and half-dollars – and $200,000 in American gold and silver. All the money the pirates sacked up and sent down to their boats.”

“Their next proceeding was an attack on the residence of Mr. C. R. Bishop, the well-known banker. Mr. Bishop, who lost his wife recently, and who is in ill health, was taken from his bed and forced to open the safe in his bank on Merchant street. Here the filibusters bagged in the neighborhood of $500,000 in gold, silver and greenbacks.”

“The door of the business house of W. G. Irwin & Co. was forced, where some $300,000 which Mr. Irwin had sent from San Francisco several weeks ago, rested. This money was taken off with the rest.”

“At daybreak the next morning the leader withdrew his men from the town, and released the King and the other prisoners who were confined in the Palace and the barracks.”

“Not a blow had been struck on either side and no one was injured or insulted except Colonel Judd, who was bruised and kicked by the sentinel left in charge of him. General Hayloy had his left wrist broken in a fall over the breach of one of the Krupp guns in on attempt to escape from town after the first alarm.”

“The utterly defenceless condition of Honolulu, and the perfect practicability of such a scheme, removes all doubt about the matter. Moreover, the names Moran has given are those of well-known Honolulu citizens.”

“That the filibustering expedition was fitted up in this city and sailed from here with the express purpose of sacking those islands, knowing how easily it could be accomplished, is evident. They laid their plans cleverly.”

“No matter how small, who had the nerve and purpose for the job. It does not seem remarkable, in view of all this, that the raid should have been so easily accomplished. Where the vessel sailed for, or what her name was, Moran did not hear. She was away by daybreak, and possibly sailed for the Gilbert group, or perhaps Tahiti.”

Interestingly, none of the local papers carried the story. Rather, they soon concluded it was a hoax.

“An hour’s sensation was produced, upon the arrival of the Alameda, by an imaginary account, in the Alta California of the date the steamer left, of the capture and sacking of Honolulu, on the afternoon of Dec. 1st, by a pirate vessel’s crew.”

“Whether the motive was amusement, profit or political effect, the hoax can hardly fail to have injurious results, of more or less
degree and duration, upon Hawaiian securities abroad.”

“The work is generally ascribed to Mr. Dan O’Connell, late editor of the Advertiser, an opinion that is strengthened by the issue of an extra with the article, in similar type to the original, from the office of that paper, within an hour after the steamer’s arrival.” (Daily Bulletin, Dec 23, 1884)

A closer look at the Daily Alta supports the conclusion – hidden in the middle of page four was the disclaimer, “The narrative on the first page shows what might be accomplished in the Hawaiian Kingdom by a small body of desperadoes.” (Daily Alta California, December 15, 1884)

“The whole thing appears very much like an attempt to help the Government here to get forward a grand military scheme; in fact it is the army bill once more coming to the fore.” (Hawaiian Gazette, December 24, 1884)

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November 28, 2018 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Kahuā

“Kahuā means the beginning, the source, the foundation and this is what our property has been built on.” (Monty Richards)

Another meaning of the word Kahuā is place of encampment. This definition makes historic sense because Kamehameha I trained his warriors for battle on the steep slopes of cinder cones near Kahuā’s main ranch house. Also, the ranch may have been named after a star, kahu‘a.

Kahuā 1 was awarded to Lot Kapuāiwa (later Kamehameha V) and Kahuā 2 was awarded to his sister, Victoria Kamāmalu. Cattle have probably been found on the lands of Kahuā for 100 years or more. About 1880 the lands were controlled by Allen and Stackpole. (UH)

“The main house on (the) Ranch is over a hundred years old and there aren’t many of these old places left around here. The original house was built around 1870 or 1880.” (Monty Richards)

On January 1, 1879, Queen Emma signed a lease with Allen and Stackpole for nearby land at Kawaihae; a new agreement was signed on July 1st, 1883.

Kahuā Ranch had its beginnings with George Frederick Holmes at about the 3000’ elevation. In April 1886, the Ranch was purchased by three English brothers, Godfrey, Ernest and Fred Burchardt, and John McGuire, “partners under the style of the Kahuā Ranch Company”. (Hawai‘i Supreme Court)

In 1891, Maguire bought out the Burchardt share of the ranch, when they returned to England. In 1895, Maguire sold a half interest in the property to Frank Woods, who later purchased the remaining interest.

Frank Woods invested heavily in a new scheme to turn Kahuā into a sugar plantation. What he needed was water, and he knew where to get it.

About ten years earlier, Kohala sugar planters built Kehena Ditch to funnel water from the mountain forests above Pololu Valley to their thirsty plantations along the coast.

Kahuā had the right to siphon off a little water, but Woods planned a major waterway, some eight feet wide and four feet deep, capable of diverting a virtual river of water his way.

Woods was within one hundred feet of tapping into the Kehena Ditch when the Kohala sugar planters, alarmed and angry, stopped him. Woods was not able to keep the ranch.

Ronald von Holt had been ranching at Hono‘uli‘uli on the Ewa Plain for Oahu Railway & Land Company. His grandfather, Hermann von Holt from Hamburg, arrived in Hawai’i in 1851 and stayed to open a successful store.

Ronald wanted to get into ranching on his own and was looking for a start. Atherton Richards was also searching for a ranching opportunity, preferably on an outer island.

When news of Frank Woods’ dilemma reached O’ahu, Ronald approached Atherton Richards about the possibility of buying Kahuā Ranch.

Ronald Von Holt partnered with brothers Atherton Richards and Herbert Montague Richards, to buy Kahuā and the lease in 1928. They named it Kahuā Ranch Limited.

Ronald Von Holt was grandson of a German immigrant to Hawai‘i. Brothers Atherton Richards and Herbert Montague Richards were grandsons of an early missionary pioneer to Hawaii.

Herbert Montague Richards, moved up to Kahuā with his wife to try his hand at ranching. In 1929, Herbert Montague ‘Monty’ Richards, Jr. was born at Kahuā, and Ronald von Holt was asked to be his godfather.

Although the Richards family returned to Honolulu in 1931 when Monty was just a youngster, he enjoyed summer visits at the big ranch house later in his childhood.

“In 1956, Atherton Richards moved to Kahuā to manage the ranch. After two years, he turned the operation over to Monty who has skillfully run the ranch ever since. With his trademark sweatshirt, baseball cap, suspenders and ever-present radio, Monty Richards has pushed Kahuā well into the next century.”

“A first time visitor to Kahuā Ranch has a difficult time knowing what to look at — the gorgeous cattle, the woolly sheep, the greenhouses filled with carnations and lettuce, or the spinning windmills generating electricity for the entire ‘Kahuā village.’”

“Soon there will be a Ranch Store (housed in a converted slaughterhouse), a pistol range and a spanking new Paniolo Porch for tour group picnics and ranch parties.”

“‘Monty is a very open, diversified thinker,’ said Pono von Holt, talking about his former boss. ‘That’s how Kahuā ended up with sheep, wind farms and tomatoes.’” (Melrose)

In the mid 1980s the IRS stated that a single business must have a single corporate structure and the families decided to split the ranch to become Kahuā Ranch Ltd and Ponoholo Ranch Ltd. Both ranches still work together in operations as well as joint ventures. (Kahuā) (Monty Richards recently passed away.)

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November 27, 2018 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

‘Bingham Kick’

Football got an early start in America, “Colonists kicked and threw inflated bladders or sawdust-filled leather balls around long before they decided to fire on the whites of the redcoats’ blue eyes.”

“(B)y the latter part of the 18th Century, football had found its way onto the college campuses. Infrequent matches joined fisticuffs (and) wrestling”.

As happened at England schools, each American school developed its own form of the sport. “Early games appear to have had much in common with the traditional ‘mob football’ played in England. The games remained largely unorganized until the 19th century, when intramural games of football began to be played on college campuses.” (Smith)

At Princeton, they were playing a version called ‘ballown’ by 1820. At Harvard, the entire freshman and sophomore classes constituted sides for ‘rushes’ in which a soccer ball was used.

Yale and others each had individual variations. Yale students by 1840 were staging soccer rushes on the New Haven Green. The American style of play resembled circa medieval. The young gentlemen attacked each other in most ungentlemanly ways. (PFRA Research)

“The New York Evening Post was moved to observe that one such game would ‘make the same impression on the public mind as a bull fight. Boys and young men knocked each other down, tore off each other’s clothing. Eyes were bunged, faces blacked and bloody, and shirts and coats torn to rags.’” (PFRA Research)

A notable football-related moment at Yale was when Hiram Bingham Jr, who demonstrated skill not only in academic pursuits but in sporting achievements as well, became the first student to kick a football over the old courthouse on the New Haven green (it became known as the ‘Bingham Kick’).

This wasn’t his only athletic achievement. On one college vacation he paddled a canoe down the Connecticut River from the Canadian border, three hundred miles to Long Island Sound.

“These pursuits satisfied not only his sense of adventure but, more importantly, his need for achievement and attention from others. It was also, however, a reflection of the age in general, when a young man was expected to compete and achieve success.” (Rennie)

His parents had worried from an early age, that ‘he does not often enough think of his Savior,’ and that he was growing up without being governed by ‘the principles and feelings of a renewed nature’ – which presumably meant he did not at all times have a proper sense of guilt.” (Bingham)

Hiram Bingham Jr was the son of Rev. Hiram Bingham, who with Rev. Asa Thurston led the first company of missionaries to thes Islands in 1820. With his parents and sisters he came to America in 1840 and prepared for college at New Haven.

The younger Bingham was born in Honolulu, August 16, 1831, in the old Mission home which still stands on King street; he was probably the first Hawaii-born Yale graduate.

He entered Yale University in 1850. By this time, he had reached his full height of six feet four inches. The liberal arts course at Yale was of four years’ duration.

In the first three years, the students took Greek, Latin, Mathematics and a smattering of Geography, History, Science, Astronomy, English Expression and Rhetoric.

The Senior year concentrated more on Metaphysics, Ethics, Natural Theology and Moral Philosophy. The course was structured ‘not to teach that which is peculiar to any one of the professions, but to lay the foundation which is common to them all’.

By the 1850s Yale was becoming increasingly conservative. Its identity with the religious life of the country was also waning. Bingham won first prize for his studies in Astronomy in 1853.

At this stage, there was no conflict between science and religion. Charles Darwin did not publish his Origin of the Species until 1859. Not until the following year did public debate erupt when on June 30, 1860 Thomas Henry Huxley, defender of Darwinism, confronted Bishop Samuel Wilberforce. (Rennie)

At his commencement in 1853, Bingham delivered an honors oration, ‘Civilization and Destiny of the Hawaiian Islands.’

Hiram studied theology at Andover Seminary and in October 1856 was ordained and married to Minerva Clarissa Brewster, a teacher in Northampton. He took a missionary post in the Gilbert Islands, in the western Pacific.

The couple worked there until they returned to Hawai‘i in 1875, where their son was born. Hiram III graduated from Yale in 1898 and later became Yale’s first professor of South American history, gaining worldwide fame for his exploration of Machu Picchu. (Yale Alumni Mag)

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November 24, 2018 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

‘Riding the Surfboard’

The first article of the first volume of the first issue of Mid-Pacific Magazine, June 1911 was an article on surfing. It was written by ‘Duke Paoa’ – we knew him as Duke Kahanamoku. In part, he wrote:

“I have never seen snow and do not know what winter means. I have never coasted down a hill of frozen rain, but every day of the year, where the water is 76, day and night, and the waves roll high, I take my sled, without runners, and coast down the face of the big waves that roll in at Waikiki.”

“How would you like to stand like a god before the crest of a monster billow. always rushing to the bottom of a hill and never reaching its base, and to come rushing in for half a mile at express speed, in graceful attitude, of course, until you reach the beach and step easily from the wave to the strand?”

“Find the locality, as we Hawaiians did, where the rollers are long in forming. slow to break, and then run for a great distance over a flat, level bottom, and the rest is possible.”

“Perhaps the ideal surfing stretch in all the world is at Waikiki beach, near Honolulu, Hawaii. Here centuries ago was born the sport of running foot races upon the crests of the billows, and here bronze skinned men and women vie today with the white man for honors in aquatic sports once exclusively Hawaiian, but in which the white man now rivals the native.”

“I mastered the art of riding the surfboard in the warm Hawaiian waters when I was a very small child, and I never gaze out upon the ocean in any part of the island that I do not figure out how far each wave, as it comes rolling in, would carry me standing on its crest.”

“There are great, long, regular, sweeping billows, after a storm at Waikiki that have carried me from more than a mile out at sea right up to the beach; there are rollers after a big kona storm that sweep across Hilo Bay, on the Big Island of Hawaii, and carry native surfboard riders five miles at a run, and on the Island of Niihau there are even more wonderful surfboard feats performed.”

“A surfboard is easy to make. Mine is about the size and shape of the ordinary kitchen ironing board. In the old days the natives were wont to use cocoanut logs in the big surf of Diamond Head, and sometimes six of them would come in standing on one log, for, of course, the bigger and bulkier the surfboard the farther it will go on the dying rollers …”

“… but it is harder to start the big board, and, of course, on the big logs one man, the rear one, always had to keep lying down to steer the log straight with his legs.”

“At Waikiki beach, Queen Emma, as a child, had a summer home, and always went out surfing with a retainer, who stood on the board with her.”

“Today it is seldom that more than one person comes in before the wave on a single board, although during the past year some seemingly wonderful feats have been attempted.”

“I have tried riding in standing on a seven-foot board with a boy seated on my shoulders, and now I find it not impossible to have one of my grown companions leap from his board, while it is going full speed, to mine, and then clamber up and twine his legs about my neck.”

“Lately I have found a small boy, part Hawaiian, who will come in with me on my board, and when I stand, he stands on my shoulders, and even turns round. But all this is as nothing when we read in Thrum’s annual for 1896, of the feats of the old Hawaiians, and as this is about the best article ever prepared on ancient surfing, I shall quote from it:”

“Among the favorite pastimes of ancient Hawaiians that of surfriding was a most prominent and popular one with all classes. In favored localities throughout the group for the practice and exhibition of the sport …”

“… ‘high carnival’ was frequently held at the spirited contests between rivals in this aquatic sport, to witness which the people would gather from near and far; especially if a famous surf-rider from another district, or island, was seeking to wrest honors from their own champion.”

“Native legends abound with the exploits of those who attained distinction among their fellows by their skill and daring in this sport; indulged in alike by both sexes.”

“Necessary work for the maintenance of the family, such as farming, fishing, mat and kapa making and such other household duties required and needing attention, by either head of the family were often neglected for the prosecution of the sport.”

“Betting was made an accompaniment thereof, both by the chiefs and the common people. Canoes, nets, fishing lines, kapas, swine, poultry and all other property were staked, and in some instances life itself was put up as wagers, the property changing hands, and personal liberty. or even life itself sacrificed, according to the outcome of the match in the waves.”

“There are two kinds of boards for surfriding; one is called the olo and the other the a-la-ia, known also as omo. The olo was made of wiliwili – a very light, buoyant wood …”

“… some three fathoms long, two to three feet wide, and from six to eight inches thick along the middle of the board, lengthwise, but rounding toward the edges on both upper and lower sides.”

“It is well known that the olo was only for the use of the chiefs; none of the common people used it. They used the a-la-ia, which was made of koa, or ulu. Its length and width was similar to the olo, except in thickness, it being but of one and a half to two inches thick along its center.”

“The line of breakers is the place where the surf rises and breaks at deep sea. This is called the kulana nalu. Any place nearer or closer in where the surf rises and breaks again, as it sometimes does, is called the ahua, known also as kipapa or puao.”

“There are only two kinds of surf in which riding is indulged; these are called kakala, known also as lauloa, or long surf, and the ohu, sometimes called opuu. The former is a surf that rises, covering the whole distance from one end of a beach to the other.”

“This, at times, forms in successive waves that roll in with high, threatening crest, finally falling over bodily.”

“Surfboard riding is an art easy of accomplishment to the few and difficult to the many. It is at its best when the rollers are long in forming, slow to break, and, after they do, run for a great distance over a flat, level bottom, such as the coral beds at Waikiki,
which is perhaps the all-year-round ideal surfboarding bit of water in the whole world.”

“There are three surfs at Waikiki: the ‘big surf’ toward Diamond Head, in front of Queen Liliuokalani’s summer residence, where the most expert surf-board riders and the native boys disport themselves …”

“… the ‘canoe’ surf, nearly in front of the Moana Hotel, where the majority of those who stand on the board dispute rights with the outrigger canoes that come sliding in from a mile out at sea before the monster rollers …”

“… and the beginners, or cornu copia surf – a series of gentle rollers before the Outrigger Canoe Club’s grounds and the Seaside Hotel. Here, as a rule, beginners learn the art of balancing on the board.” (Kahanamoku, Mid Pacific Magazine, January 1911)

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