Sailing, Shipping & Shipwrecks | Page 18

October 1, 2022 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Pearl Harbor Yacht Club

In 1888, the legislature gave Benjamin Franklin (Frank) Dillingham an exclusive franchise “for construction and operation on the Island of O‘ahu a steam railroad … for the carriage of passengers and freight.”

Ultimately OR&L sublet land, partnered on several sugar operations and/or hauled cane from Ewa Plantation Company, Honolulu Sugar Company in ‘Aiea, O‘ahu Sugar in Waipahu, Waianae Sugar Company, Waialua Agriculture Company and Kahuku Plantation Company, as well as pineapples for Dole.

Passenger travel was an add-on opportunity that not only included train rides; they also operated a bus system. However, the hauling for the agricultural ventures was the most lucrative.

In addition, OR&L (using another of its “land” components,) got into land development. It developed Hawai‘i’s first planned suburban development and held a contest, through the newspaper, to name this new city. The winner selected was “Pearl City” (the public also named the main street, Lehua.)

The railway owned 2,200-acres in fee simple in the peninsula. First, they laid-out and constructed the improvements, then invited the public on a free ride to see the new residential community. The marketing went so well; ultimately, lots were auctioned off to the highest bidder.

Excursion trains filled with passengers traveled to Pearl City on weekends and the area became a favorite place for pleasure seekers and picnic parties.

“Boarding a train at the O‘ahu Railway and Land Company depot at King and Iwilei streets I we rode to Pearl City and transferred to a small section-train known as The Dummy for the short peninsula ride to within a few steps from our destination.”

“Usually the section-locomotive trailed one passenger car but when it trailed a flat car instead we were elated. We could sit on its edge and dangle our legs.” (Henrietta Mann, Watumull Oral History)

Wealthy families visited the peninsula on weekends or during the summers, maintaining mansions on the peninsula and enjoying parties and yacht races in Pearl Harbor. Dillingham promoted sail boat races, a large dancing pavilion, and many forms of entertainment and recreation. (Aiea Pearl City Livable Communities Plan)

The local paper reported, “A new sporting club is being organized by a number of Honolulu men. It will be called “The Pearl Harbor Yacht Club” and will have a handsome club house on the lochs”. (Pacific Commercial Advertiser, December 4, 1899) There was even talk of building an ‘ark’ (a barge with a house on it), noting , “In San Francisco Bay … there are many ‘arks’. (Honolulu Republican, September 3, 1900)

“In 1901 the Hawaii Yacht Club was chartered and built a boat house near the west end of Aloha Avenue, about where the ferry landing was later built. The club later reorganized at the Ala Wai. Many of the wealthy families had yachts or other vessels for recreation, which joined the utilitarian fishing and ferry boats on the waters around the peninsula.”

The Pearl Harbor Yacht Club “became known for the many sail boat races it held. The Yacht Club had a wooden L-shaped pier at the end of Lanakila Avenue and a marine railway to pull boats out of the water. (Historic Context Study)

The Pearl Harbor Yacht Club (PHYC) had two earlier locations on Pearl City Peninsula before it was established north of Lanakila Avenue in the late 1920s.

The first club house, called the “old Parker Place,” faced on Middle Loch and was loaned to the club by R.W. Atkinson, one of the club’s charter members and owner of that property.

The club purchased the “Jones Place” in November 1925, remodeling the house, and building a pier and “runway for hauling boats”.

In March 1928 the two-story residence of Albert F. Afong was purchased and “turned into a clubhouse for the Yacht Club”. The clubhouse was situated on the lot abutting the pier and some of its foundation is still visible. (HAER HI-55)

“[Pearl Harbor] Yacht Club [property] was owned by this Chinese guy, Afong. And then, when Afong, in 1929, stock crash, he went bankrupt (I heard), and he had to get rid of all his land. That’s when the yacht club bought his home. It was a big yard, big home.”

“The Pearl Harbor Yacht Club originally bought the Ted Cooke home, but that was a smaller place. The building was big, big, two-story building. Originally that was built by the Jones Family. And then they sold it to the yacht club, and the yacht club first started in the peninsula over there. Then it was too small, so they took the Afong place.” (Asada Oral History)

“Pearl Harbor was a great thing, for instance. In the late twenties and early thirties the Pearl Harbor Yacht Club was very active. A whole bunch of us young people had what we called eighteen-footers; they were center-board boats.”

“We’d go down virtually every weekend in the summer months and usually stay at Ben Dillingham’s grandmother’s house, we boys. And the girls would stay with the Theodore [Atherton] Cookes, both of whom had lovely homes right on the peninsula there.”

“We would go into these races and have just a glorious time. Of course all of that’s gone now, except over at Kaneohe; they’ve more or less continued the tradition. Honolulu, in our youth, was a small, simple, quiet, slow-moving town, which is no longer.” (James Judd Jr, Watumull Oral History)

“[M]y dad liked sailing very much. He must have started sailing competitively when I was, oh I guess, around twelve or fifteen years old. Pearl Harbor Yacht Club was inside Pearl Harbor. There was a wonderful yacht club there and there were no limits. You could sail around Ford Island and all the way down West Loch, et cetera because the U. S. Navy hadn’t set up any restricted areas.”

“Every once in a while there’d be a naval exercise. Wonderful races with several classes of sailboats were what I participated in. My dad raced a star class boat and I had a little moon boat.”

“I can remember seeing all the great ships of the Navy there, and I’d just be sailing my own little twelve-foot sail boat and be looking at the Lexington and the Saratoga … and George Patton.”

“The great General Patton was a sailor, he was at Schofield, and he was a sailor. He was a very wealthy person. He had a schooner, about a seventy-foot black-hulled gorgeous schooner and he’d sail around Pearl before he’d go out the entrance and here we were just kids taking it all in.” (Stanley Kennedy Jr, Watumull Oral History)

“The pre-war club was a place for Hawaii’s leading families and members of the Big 5 commercial and plantation companies. They included the Dillinghams, Frears, Castles, Cookes, Dowsetts, Spauldings, McInernys, Mott-Smiths, Wilders, Atkinsons, Damons, James Dole and Princess Kawananakoa.”

“Pearl Harbor Yacht Club was also a magnet for local and national celebrities in those heady days of the late 1920s and through the 1930s.” (Dean Smith; Sigall)

“Through the years, membership in the Pearl Harbor Yacht has included Shirley Temple, Duke Kahanamoku and Harold Dillingham, who sailed the 1934 Pearl Harbor Yacht Club’s entry into the biannual Trans-Pacific Yacht Race aboard ‘Manuiwa’ and won.” (Ho’okele)

“Duke was quite an avid yachtsman and he belonged to the Pearl Harbor Yacht Club, which was at Pearl City at that time. We had raced up on Saturday to Waikiki and the following Sunday, which was December 7, we were supposed to race back again to Pearl City. Well, naturally, we couldn’t because the war started that morning.” (Nadine Kahanamoku, Watumull Oral History)

Today, Pearl Harbor Yacht Club provides recreational and competitive boating opportunities for Active Duty, Reserve, Retiree, DoD personnel and their families, as well as the community at large. It is situated at 57 Arizona Memorial Drive in Pearl Harbor.

September 28, 2022 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Herman Melville

Herman Melville was born in New York City on August 1, 1819. The family name was Melvill, and he added the “e” to the name. His father was a merchant from New England. His mother came from an old, socially prominent New York Dutch family.

Melville lived his first 11 years in New York City. After the collapse of the family’s import business in 1830 and Allan Melvill’s death in 1832, Herman’s oldest brother, Gansevoort, assumed responsibility for the family and took over his father’s business.

After two years as a bank clerk and some months working on the farm of his uncle, Thomas Melvill, Herman joined his brother in the business. About this time, Herman’s branch of the family altered the spelling of its name.

Inexperienced and now poor, Melville tried a variety of jobs between 1832 and 1841. He was a clerk in his brother’s hat store in Albany, worked in his uncle’s bank, taught school near Pittsfield, Massachusetts.

In 1839, at the age of 20, Melville took his first voyage across the Atlantic sea as a cabin boy on the merchant ship the St. Lawrence. After this expedition and a year exploring the West, Melville joined the crew of the whaling ship Acushnet in January of 1841.

He later sailed for a year and a half aboard the Acushnet; Melville and a fellow seaman deserted the ship, only to be captured by cannibals in the Marquesas Islands, the Typee. But the natives turned out to be gentle hosts.

More than five months after deserting the Acushnet, Melville’s adventures were not over. He later joined the crew of whaler Charles and Henry, where he worked as harpooner.

When the Charles and Henry anchored in Maui Island five months later in April of 1843, Melville took up work as a clerk and bookkeeper in a general store in Honolulu.

On August 17, 1843, he enlisted as a seaman on the frigate “United States,” flagship of the Navy’s Pacific Squadron.

His four years during his twenties (1841-1845) working on whaling ships provided him with material for his first three novels. Melville was also able to communicate the fear and terror of a whale hunt, a feat that would make his greatest work, Moby Dick, a literary tribute to the whaling industry.

Melville returned to his mother’s house determined to write about his adventures. His subsequent writings borrowed from his own experiences as well as other peoples’ fantastic stories that he heard during his travels.

The books that recounted his experiences and made his reputation were Typee (1846); Omoo (1847); Mardi (1849), a complex symbolic romance set in the South Seas; Redburn (1849) and White-Jacket (1850).

Melville then began Moby-Dick, another “whaling voyage,” as he called it, similar to his successful travel books. He had almost completed the book when he met Nathaniel Hawthorne (The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables, etc.) Hawthorne inspired him to radically revise the whaling documentary into a novel of both universal significance and literary complexity.

Melville had a brief stay in Hawaiʻi.

In 1843, he spent four months in Hawaiʻi; at some point early in his stay he worked in a Honolulu bowling alley as a pinsetter. He also spent time beachcombing in Lāhainā.

He describes surfing in passages of Mardi and a Voyage Thither (his first pure fiction work – reportedly based on his travels linked to his brief stay in the Islands:)
“Past the break in the reef, wide banks of coral shelve off, creating the bar where the waves muster for the onset, thundering in water bolts that shake the whole reef till its very spray trembles. And then is it that the swimmers of Ohonoo most delight to gambol in the surf.”

“For this sport a surfboard is indispensable, some five feet in length, the width of a man’s body, convex on both sides, highly polished, and rounded at the ends. It is held in high estimation, invariably oiled after use, and hung up conspicuously in the dwelling of the owner.”

“Ranged on the beach, the bathers by hundreds dash in and, diving under the swells, make straight for the outer sea, pausing not till the comparatively smooth expanse beyond has been gained. Here, throwing themselves upon their boards, tranquilly they wait for a billow that suits.”

“Snatching them up, it hurries them landward, volume and speed both increasing till it races along a watery wall like the smooth, awful verge of Niagara. Hanging over this scroll, looking down from it as from a precipice, the bathers halloo, every limb in motion to preserve their place on the very crest of the wave.”

“Should they fall behind, the squadrons that follow would whelm them; dismounted and thrown forward, as certainly would they be run over the steed they ride. ’Tis like charging at the head of cavalry; you must on.”

“An expert swimmer shifts his position on his plank, now half striding it and anon, like a rider in the ring, poising himself upright in the scud, coming on like a man in the air.”

“At last all is lost in scud and vapor, as the overgrown billow bursts like a bomb. Adroitly emerging, the swimmers thread their way out and, like seals at the Orkneys, stand dripping upon the shore.” (Herman Melville)

Melville died September 28, 1891. (The inspiration and information, here, is primarily from pbs-org)

September 23, 2022 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Future Captains

Captain James Cook set sail on three voyages to the South Seas. His first Pacific voyage (1768-1771) was aboard the Endeavour and began on May 27, 1768. It had three aims; go to Tahiti to record the transit of Venus (when Venus passes between the earth and sun – June 3, 1769;) record natural history, led by 25-year-old Joseph Banks; and search for the Great South Land.

Cook’s second Pacific voyage (1772-1775) aboard Resolution and Adventure aimed to establish whether there was an inhabited southern continent, and make astronomical observations.

Cook’s third and final voyage (1776-1779) of discovery was an attempt to locate a North-West Passage, an ice-free sea route which linked the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. Cook commanded the Resolution while Charles Clerke commanded Discovery. (State Library, New South Wales)

“Every Fighting Service has, and must have, two main categories – ‘Officers’ and ‘Men.’ The Royal Navy in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was no exception. The distinction existed: was indeed more than ordinarily marked. It was not only a naval distinction, but a sharp social one too.”

“‘Officers’ as contemporary society used that word, came from one walk of life, ‘Men’ from another: and, as it was not easy in Society to pass from a lower stratum to a higher, so in the Navy, it was not easy for a ‘Man’ to become an Officer. But it was possible.” (Captain Cook Society)

“Cook had chosen his subordinates well or had been lucky. The officers of the third voyage were a remarkably intelligent group of men.” (Captain Cook Society)

“All the great remaining voyages of the eighteenth century drew on Cook’s officers. Bligh, Portlock, Vancouver, Colnett, Riou, and Hergest all got their commands and served with great distinction. These men then passed on their skills to a second generation of men such as Flinders and Broughton.” (Mackay, Captain Cook Society)

We’ll look at three of these familiar names, here in the Islands, as well as the Pacific – Portlock, Bligh and Vancouver.

Nathaniel Portlock was born in Norfolk, Virginia in about 1748. At about the age of 24, he entered the Royal Navy as an able seaman on the St Albans. On March 30, 1776, he served as master’s mate on Captain James Cook’s third Pacific voyage aboard the Discovery. Portlock was transferred to the Resolution, also on the expedition, in August 1779.

Then, in 1785, a group of London merchants formed the “King George’s Sound Co” (also known as Richard Cadman Etches and Company,) for the purpose of carrying on the fur trade from the western coast of America to China, bringing home cargoes of tea from Canton for the East India Company. They bought two boats; Portlock and George Dixon were selected to sail them (Dixon also previously sailed with Cook to Hawai‘i.)

That year, the two traveled to the North Pacific. Portlock commanded the 1785-1788 expedition from the ship King George, while Dixon captained the Queen Charlotte. The purpose of the expedition was to investigate the potential of the Alaskan fur trade and to resume Cook’s search for a Northwest Passage through the continent.

The pair left England on August 29, 1785, and took nearly a year to reach Alaska, rounding Cape Horn and touching at Hawaiʻi on the way. During the course of their 3-year expedition, they made three trips to Hawaiʻi, first arriving off the coast of Kaʻū, May 24, 1786.

A favorite anchorage on Oʻahu for Portlock was at Maunalua Bay, between Koko Point and Diamond Head (which Portlock named King George’s Bay.)

Maunalua was thought to be well-populated in ancient times. Maunalua was known for its offshore fishing resources, a large fishpond, and sweet potato cultivation. Taro was farmed in wet areas, sweet potato was grown in the drier regions and a series of fishing villages lined the coast. (McElroy) Part of that area now carries the Portlock name.

William Bligh was part of the Cook’s crew on its third voyage. Bligh later captained the Bounty on a voyage to gather breadfruit trees from Tahiti and take them to Jamaica in the Caribbean. There, the trees would be planted to provide food for slaves.

According to a legend, the chief Kahai brought the breadfruit tree to Hawaiʻi from Samoa in the twelfth century and first planted it at Kualoa, Oʻahu. Only one variety was known in Hawaiʻi, while more than 24 were distinguished by native names in the South Seas. (CTAHR)

“This tree, whose fruit is so useful, if not necessary, to the inhabitants of most of the islands of the South Seas, has been chiefly celebrated as a production of the Sandwich Islands; it is not confined to these alone, but is also found in all the countries bordering on the Pacific Ocean.” (Book of Trees, 1837)

Bligh didn’t make it back on the Bounty, his crew mutinied (April 28, 1789;) one reason for the mutiny was that the crew believed Bligh cared more about the breadfruit than them (he cut water rationing to the crew in favor of providing water for the breadfruit plants.) Bligh’s tombstone, in part, reads he was the “first (who) transplanted the bread fruit tree.”

In the introduction to Captain George Vancouver’s journals of his voyage to the Pacific, his brother John wrote, “that from the age of thirteen, his whole life to the commencement of this expedition, (to the Pacific) has been devoted to constant employment in His Majesty’s naval service.” Vancouver was one of the seamen and midshipman who had travelled with Cook on his second and third voyages.

In 1791, Vancouver later entered the Pacific a dozen years later in command of the second British exploring expedition. (HJH) Vancouver visited Hawaiʻi three times, in 1792, 1793 and 1794.

On the first trip, Vancouver’s ships “Discovery” and “Chatham” first rounded the Cape of Good Hope, South Africa, and traveled to Tahiti, via Australia and New Zealand, and then sailed north to the Hawaiian Islands.

On his second trip in February 1793, the “Discovery” and “Chatham” first circled and surveyed the Island Hawaiʻi. From a meeting he had with Kamehameha, he noted in his Journal, that he was …

“… agreeably surprised in finding that his riper years had softened that stern ferocity, which his younger days had exhibited, and had changed his general deportment to an address characteristic of an open, cheerful, and sensible mind; combined with great generosity, and goodness of disposition.” (Vancouver, 1798)

When Kamehameha came aboard the ship, taking Vancouver’s hand, he “demanded, if we were sincerely his friends”, to which Vancouver answered in the affirmative. Kamehameha then said “he understood we belonged to King George, and asked if he was likewise his friend.”

“On receiving a satisfactory answer to this question, he declared the he was our firm good friend; and according to the custom of the country, in testimony of the sincerity of our declarations we saluted by touching noses.” (Vancouver, 1798)

In the exchange of gifts, after that, Kamehameha presented four feathered helmets and other items, Vancouver gave Kamehameha the remaining livestock on board, “five cows, two ewes and a ram.”

The farewell between the British and the Hawaiians was emotional, but both understood that Vancouver would be returning the following winter.

Just before Vancouver left Kawaihae on March 9, 1793, he gave Isaac Davis and John Young a letter testifying that “Tamaahaah, with the generality of the Chiefs, and the whole of the lower order of People, have conducted themselves toward us with the strictest honest, civility and friendly attention.” (Speakman, HJH)

George_Vancouver-arriving_at_Kealakekua_Bay

Mutiny_HMS_Bounty

Kahai-The_Grandson_of_Moikeha-(herbkane)

Transplanting_of_the_bread-fruit_trees_from_Otaheite,_1796

ohn Ellis, the Bread-fruit-1775

Bligh’s_survival_voyage_after_the_mutiny-(HerbKane)

William Bligh’s tombstone-(first_transplanted_breadfruit)

Cook_-_Bligh_Map_of_Hawaii_-_Geographicus_-_Hawaii-cook-1785

Nathaniel_Portlock-(WC)

Portlock-China_Walls

Maunalua_Bay-(bishopmuseum)

Koko_Marina-05-26-52

King_George-Queen_Charlotte-(Raymond Alistair Massey-maunalua-net)

George_Vancouver-(WC)

George_Vancouver’s_Discovery

George_Vancouver_statue-(WC)

September 22, 2022 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Hobo Hat

In 1922, an imaginative shipping clerk at the Delaware & Hudson freight station in Wilkes-Barre (Pennsylvania) decided to take an old straw hat and send it on a trip of its very own to see how far it could go. (Luzerne County Historical Society)

(It was not a completely original idea; word of a traveling hat was found in a North Carolina newspaper from 1908. However, this Hobo Hat was the first to travel around the world.)

Patrick Fagan started the Hobo Hat send off for the Pacific Coast on September 5, 1922, as a way to advertise the good shipping and handling service of the freight line.

Fifty post cards were attached, along with a note asking those freight agents who received the hat to send back a card telling of its travels, and to please keep the hat going.

Mr. Fagan received postcards from Massachusetts, Chicago, and California, before receiving word that the hat was going to be traveling to the Orient via Hawaii, thanks to some friendly staff at the Matson Navigation Company freight office across the country.

In March 1923, Mr. Fagan received a post card from freight agents at Yokohama, Japan telling of the arrival of the hat in good condition, and that it was being sent next to Hong Kong.

The hat also traveled to West Australia, Java in the Dutch Indies, South Africa, and Brazil, before coming back to Hawaii after two years.

By this point, “Mr. Hobo Hat” was a famous world traveler and was traveling aboard the ships of the Dollar Steamship line. (Luzerne County Historical Society)

“The famous ‘Hobo Hat’ sent on a trip around the world by Patrick Fagan, employee of the Delaware & Hudson freight station, in September 1923, and which is now making its third tour of the globe, was las heard of at Honolulu.”

“Mr Fagan yesterday received a card from MW Mitchell, agent of the Dollar Steamship line, to the effect that the hat had arrived at Honolulu on the SS Garfield February 21 and was presented to the Hon. Wallace R Farrington, governor of the Territory of Hawaii at the executive building.”

“The fame of the hat had probably reached the territory before the hat itself and legislative business was suspended in the Senate and the House of Representatives, temporarily in order that the ‘world tourist’ might be viewed before it started again on the journey.”

“Mr Mitchell said that the hat was decorated and left with the Aloha of Hawaii (the best of luck0 on board the SS President Garfield which departed for Japan on the same day.”

“The owners of the Dollar Steamship Line has a specially made hat box prepared for the hat. It is a leather case on which has printed’ Mr Hobo Hat’ in large letters and with the words ‘Round the World’ at the bottom.”

“The ‘Hobo Hat,’ an old straw lid, the property of Patrick Fagan of this city, was started on its first trip around the world three years ago for the D&H station yards in this city and is now on its third tour of the world.” (Wilkes-Barre Record (Pennsylvania, March 23, 1925)

“On the last lap of his third trip around the world. ‘Mr. Hobo Hat’ accompanied by ‘Uncle Joe’ Fordney, former chairman of the House ways and means committee, has landed in this country and is en route to the Capital to pay his respects at the White House to the President.”

“This hobo hat is a battered straw ‘lid’ that started on its wanderings from Wilkes-Barre, Pa., on September 12, 1922. It went first to New York, thence across the continent to the Pacific coast, next to the Orient. It traveled on the steamers President Adams and President Hayes, and its last voyage was on the President Garfield, traveling ‘de luxe’ with a special ticket personally indorsed by Capt. Robert Dollar, president of the Dollar Steamship Co.”

“Mr. Hobo Hat wears many tags in token and testimony of his around the globe voyaging, which now aggregate more than 100,000 miles. In each country and in many important cities, Mr. Hobo Hat has called upon the most prominent persons in political and social life.” (The Sunday Star (DC), May 10, 1925)

When Hobo Hat finally returned home after all his travels, he was displayed in the window of MacWilliam’s Store in Wilkes-Barre in June 1925 to coincide with Poppy Day for the American Legion, which raised money for the wounded veterans of World War I and their families.

After that, the Hobo Hat was in 1935 when he came to the Wyoming Historical and Geological Society (for Wyoming Valley, PA; now the Luzerne County Historical Society) to be displayed, along with his “entourage” of hat box, autographed ticket, postcards, luggage tags and photographs, and ended up staying to become a permanent part of the collection (donated in 1959 by Patrick Fagan).

In addition to various foreign dignitaries, President Calvin Coolidge’s name is among the now-faded signatures to be found on the ticket, testifying to the widespread popularity that Mr. Hobo Hat once enjoyed. (Luzerne County Historical Society)

September 20, 2022 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Lehi IV

According to the Book of Mormon, “An account of Lehi and his wife Sariah and his four sons, being called, (beginning at the eldest) Laman, Lemuel, Sam, and Nephi.”

“The Lord warns Lehi to depart out of the land of Jerusalem, because he prophesieth unto the people concerning their iniquity and they seek to destroy his life.”

“He taketh three days’ journey into the wilderness with his family. Nephi taketh his brethren and returneth to the land of Jerusalem after the record of the Jews. The account of their sufferings.”

“They take the daughters of Ishmael to wife. They take their families and depart into the wilderness. Their sufferings and afflictions in the wilderness. The course of their travels. They come to the large waters. Nephi’s brethren rebel against him. He confoundeth them, and buildeth a ship.”

“They call the name of the place Bountiful. They cross the large waters into the promised land, and so forth. This is according to the account of Nephi”. (Book of Mormon)

DeVere Baker, a Mormon, sought to establish the authenticity of his church’s views on the first peoples to visit American shores by making a series of daring raft trips over a 30-year period.

From 1952 to 1979, he sailed – sometimes successfully, sometimes not – in an attempt to show that the Book of Mormon is correct and that members of some of the Lost Tribes of Israel had crossed the sea to North America.

Unlike primitive rafts, Baker’s were equipped with electronic navigation gear and could be propelled by outboard motors.

On Lehi IV in 1958, he managed to successfully drift to Hawaii from California to prove that crossing oceans by raft was an ancient probability.

(The Lehi reference generally refers to one of six or seven craft launched from California to try to help prove the story from the Book of Mormon about Lehi sailing from the Middle East to Central America.)

The Lehi IV didn’t have a favorable start, “The raft Lehi IV, in the tradition of its predecessors, met with bad luck yesterday as it headed out to sea for a tentative start to Hawaii.”

“Four miles out of Redondo Beach a tow line broke and the raft poked a hole in the yacht Quest, which was to tow it to Santa Catalina Island. The Quest then towed the Lehi IV to Los Angeles Harbor instead.”

“Lehi skipper Devere Baker, undismayed, said he would try to get started again tomorrow. Baker had planned to go only to Catalina, approximately 22 miles off the coast, on the first stage of his ocean voyage.”

“Three previous tries by Baker to accomplish a transoceanic drift ended in failure. Baker said he would stay at Catalina several days, taking on additional provisions and trying to arrange for someone to tow the raft 200 miles westward.” They left July 5, 1958.

“He hoped there to pick up currents favorable for drifting to Hawaii. Baker, 42, who sold his shipyard 12 years ago to devote himself to early inhabitants of this hemisphere drifted on currents across the Pacific from Asia.”

“The 18 by 28-foot raft has a sail, a cabin, two-way radio and an outboard motor for harbor maneuvering. Baker’s crew this time includes Milt Farney, 29, photographer; Larry Foglino, 31, psychologist; Don McFarland, 27, student at the University of New Mexico, and Ed Kekaula, 27, a native of Samoa.” (San Bernadino Sun, July 6, 1958)

Of this voyage, a newspaper reported, “An adventurous Mormon elder and his three young crewmen — who drifted to Hawaii from California aboard the raft Lehi IV …”

“The raft arrived off Maui Saturday afternoon (September 20, 1958) after a 69-day voyage from Long Beach, 2,100 miles to the east. When Baker and his bearded crew and their dog Torgoroa were sighted, they were down to their last four cans of spinach and tomatoes.”

“The raft was towed into port at Kahului by a tuna boat. All the mariners were in good condition.”

“Asked what his trip proved, Baker told newsmen: ‘The Coast Guard put it very nicely when they congratulated us on proving Hawaiians thousands of years ago came from the Americas, the same way we did.’”

“With Baker were Larry Foglino, 31, a UCLA psychologist; Don McFarland, 27, University of New Mexico student, and Ed Kekuala, 27, a Brigham Young University dental student.” (Nome Nugget, Sep 24, 1958)

Baker wrote a series of books on his faith and his adventures, many of which ended in Coast Guard rescues. In 1980, he made a brief bid for the nation’s presidency as a world peace candidate, but withdrew after a loss in the Democratic primary in New Hampshire. (Los Angeles Times)