Hawaii | Page 2 | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

May 12, 2026 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Kalapueo

The Kaupō flow, a feature of Ko‘olau volcano south of Waimanalo, is the product of a “dry” rejuvenation-stage eruption along the Koko Rift, some 50,000 to 100,000 years ago (estimates vary).

The area around the vent is now even more evident because it has become a preferred launching point for parasailers, and their foot traffic has trompled all the vegetation.

Kaupō means to land a canoe at night. Makapu‘u means bulging eyes (literally, eyes like hills), and refers either to an image in a cave nearby, or to a woman who longed for her home in Kahiki (Tahiti) and said she was able to see it from here. (UH Manoa Geology & Geophysics Dept-Southeast Oahu and Kawainui Field Trip-2004)

The Kaupō flow formed Kalapueo. “Kalapueo (the area where the coastal flats narrow and the cliffs draw near to the shore [Kalapueo means owl proclamation (owls called on others here to battle)]); Kukui (the former fishing village on the east side of Pāhonu) …”

“… Muliwai‘ōlena (the drainage basin the enters the sea near the vicinity of the present-day Waimānalo Beach Park); Waimānalo (the area fed by the stream which forms Pūhā) — all locations on the shore of Waimānalo Ahupua‘a, were fortified and that battles were fought.” (Maly)

“Kauai legends say that the sound of the drum of the owl-king was so penetrating that it could be heard across all the channels by the owls on the different islands. In one day the owls of Hawaii, Lanai, Maui and Molokai had gathered at Kalapueo (a place east of Diamond Head).”

“The owls of Koolau and Kahikiku, Oahu, gathered together in Kanoniakapueo (a place in Nuuanu Valley). The owls of Kauai and Niihau gathered in the place toward the sunset — Pueohulu-nui (near Moanalua).” (Westervelt)

“There lived a man named Kapoi, at Kahehuna, in Honolulu, who went one day to Kewalo to get some thatching for his house. On his way back he found some owl’s eggs, which he gathered together and brought home with him … [the owl said] ‘Give me my eggs.’ Kapoi then told the owl to come and take them.”

“The owl, having got the eggs, told Kapoi to build up a heiau, or temple, and instructed him to make an altar and call the temple by the name of Manua. Kapoi built the temple as directed ; set kapu days for its dedication, and placed the customary sacrifice on the altar.”

“News spread to the hearing of Kakuihewa, who was then King of Oahu, living at the time at Waikiki, that a certain man had kapued certain days for his heiau, and had already dedicated it.”

“This King had made a law that whoever among his people should erect a heiau and kapu the same before the King had his temple kapued, that man should pay the penalty of death. Kapoi was thereupon seized, by the King’s orders, and led to the heiau of Kupalaha, at Waikiki.”

“That same day, the owl that had told Kapoi to erect a temple gathered all the owls from Lanai, Maui, Molokai, and Hawaii to one place at Kalapueo.”

“All those from the Koolau districts were assembled at Kanoniakapueo, and those from Kauai and Niihau at Pueohulunui, near Moanalua.”

“It was decided by the King that Kapoi should be put to death on the day of Kane. When that day came, at daybreak the owls left their places of rendezvous and covered the whole sky over Honolulu; and as the King’s servants seized Kapoi to put him to death, the owls flew at them, pecking them with their beaks and scratching them with their claws.”

“Then and there was fought the battle between Kakuihewa’s people and the owls. At last the owls conquered, and Kapoi was released, the King acknowledging that his Akua (god) was a powerful one. From that time the owl has been recognized as one of the many deities venerated by the Hawaiian people.” (Thrum)

Later, “At the death of Ka-hekili in 1793 Ka-‘eo-ku-lani became ruling chief of Maui, Molokai, and Lanai. Ki‘ikiki‘ and Kai-‘awa were his counselors, and they had chiefs and governors under them.”

“He ruled a little over a year and showed kindness to the common people, but at the end of that time he grew homesick for his friends on Kauai and set out with his chiefs and warriors to return to his own people, stopping at Molokai to enjoy its fat fish and kukui-nut relish.”

“Now Ka-lani-ku-pule and his younger brother Koa-la u-kani, heard that Ka-‘eo-ku-lani was returning to Kauai. Not knowing what his plans might be they made preparations for war, digging trenches and throwing up earthworks at Kukui, Kalapueo, and Waimanalo [on Oahu].”

“At Kukui a severe battle was fought in which one of the favorites, a war leader of Ka-lani-kupule, was shot by Mare Amara at the stream of Muliwaiolena as he stood with a feather cloak about his shoulders directing the battle with his hand.”

“Two days and two nights Ka-‘eo-ku-lani lay out at sea, then Ka-lani-ku-pule called off the fighting and the two had a friendly meeting at Kalapawai in Kailua, Ko’olaupoko. It was a day of mingled joy and weeping-joy for the ending of war, weeping for the dead in battle and also for the death of Ka-hekili.” (Kamakau, Ruling Chiefs)

May 11, 2026 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Hawaii 50th Staters

“In basketball’s storied history, there may be no single organization more synonymous with the game than the world-famous Harlem Globetrotters.” (Basketball Hall of Fame)

The Harlem Globetrotters began in 1926 under the banner of the South Side’s Giles Post of the American Legion and then became known as the Savoy Big Five after Chicago’s Bronzeville’s Savoy Ballroom hired the team to play as pre-dance entertainment. Most of the players were from Wendell Phillips High School in Chicago’s South Side.

They started touring small farm towns in the Midwestern US. For Midwest audiences, the game of basketball was still novel and, from early on, this team brought an entertaining style of play to the sport. (History)

Seizing on a golden opportunity, sports promoter Abe Saperstein purchased the team and became the manager and coach. Saperstein, a short-statured Jewish man from Chicago’s North Side, even pitched in as a player from time to time when a team member was ill or injured.

At a time when only whites were allowed to play on professional basketball teams, Saperstein decided to promote his new team’s racial makeup by naming them after Harlem, the famous African American neighborhood of New York City.

On January 7, 1927, the Harlem Globetrotters basketball team traveled 48 miles west from Chicago to play their first game in Hinckley, Illinois. (History)

Before they became known for their on-court antics, the Globetrotters were highly competitive in professional basketball and introduced a flashy, schoolyard style of play. They popularized the slam dunk, the fast break, emphasized the forward and point guard positions, and the figure-eight weave.

The Globetrotters won 101 out of 117 games that first season and introduced many Midwestern audiences to a game they had not seen played before.

By 1936, they had played more than 1,000 games and appeared in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Michigan, Montana, Washington and North and South Dakota. (The Globetrotters didn’t actually play a game in Harlem until the late 1960s.) (History)

“The world-famous Harlem Globetrotters were the first professionals to play in Hawaii. Coach Abe Saperstein’s team made their debut at Honolulu’s Civic Auditorium in April of 1946 against the Coca-Cola Athletic Club. The Cokes were no match for the Trotters …”

“Island players gained revenge the following year when [the] Hawaii All-Stars, led by the scoring of Red Rocha, broke the Globetrotters’ 128-game winning streak with a 44-41 win at the Civic.” (Ephraim ‘Red’ Rocha, a graduate of Hilo High, was Hawaii’s first player to play in the National Basketball Association.) (Cisco, Hawai‘i Sports)

Then, “Coach Art Kim and his Honolulu Surfriders will open their ninth annual basketball tour with the famed Harlem Globetrotters October 28, at Des Moines, Iowa.”

“The Surfriders, who will be publicized as the Hawaii 50th Staters this year, will play a 130-game schedule in most of the major cities on the Mainland and also in Canada during the next five-and-a-half months.” (SB, Oct 11, 1958)

“America’s sporting scene once more is being graced by the colorful Honolulu Surfriders basketball team and its accompanying troupe of hula dancers and entertainers, all scheduled to be part of the big show at Greenwood YMCA. … They are part of the 4-team show featuring the Globe Trotters.”

“These annual tours of the islanders have come to be looked forward to by mainlanders, who find in the visitors from the Paradise of the Pacific a refreshing sports tonic. The add considerably to every program, they grace with stylish basketball playing, interesting appearance and the enchanting presentation of the entertainers.”

“Hawaiian teams have been coming over to the mainland for some years now … Again at the helm is coach and manager Art Kim, veteran mentor formerly cage coach at the University of Hawaii, who has brought over the last half dozen or so teams from the islands. …”

“They come from various islands of the Hawaiian group and for a veritable all-star team of the best players.” (Index-Journal, South Carolina, Feb 22, 1954)

“Coach Kim said last night that the Surfriders will be playing against fabulous Wilt (The Stilt) Chamberlain, the Kansas Jayhawk All-American who has left school to headline the Harlem Globetrotters.” (SB, Oct 11, 1958)

“The 7-foot Chamberlain, twice an All-America at the University of Kansas, quit school as a junior to turn pro for Abe Saperatein’s Globetrotters. He made his first appearance as a pro in this area Thursday night and scored 30 points as the Globetrotters defeated the Hawaii 50th Staters 69-59.” (Herald-Palladium, Michigan, Oct 31, 1958)

The Harlem Globetrotters have historically used various designated opponents that toured with them to stage their exhibition games. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the “Hawaii 50th Staters” made the tour; they became the New York Nationals, and the Washington Generals. (Association for Professional Basketball Research)

Over the years, the team losing to the Globetrotters was called the Boston Shamrocks, the New Jersey Reds, the Atlantic City Gulls, the New York Nationals, International Elite, and Global Select.

None of these were real teams: Just costumes the Generals wore to give the appearance that they were playing a slew of opponents rather than just the same retreads. (SB Nation)

May 8, 2026 by Peter T Young 3 Comments

Kamehameha Death

“E oni wale no ‘oukou i ku‘u pono ‘a‘ole e pau.”
“Endless is the good that I have given you to enjoy.”
(Kamehameha)

Don Francisco de Paula Marin made numerous notations in his diary from 1818 to 1825 of the epidemics of colds and flu among the Hawaiians and reported, ‘many people died.’ (Van Dyke) Both Kamehameha and Ka’ahumanu may have come down with it. (Parker)

It was Kamehameha’s intention to remain on O‘ahu until his death, but he became suspicious of conspiracies among the younger chiefs. Even if they were sons of his old advisors, and they took the place of their fathers on the council, he was not confident in their loyalty.

They were gaining more and more agricultural land and followers in the districts allotted them. Trading with the foreigners also increased their personal arsenals. This power shifting alarmed the great chief and so in the year 1812 he decided to move his capitol back to Kona with him.

Kamehameha required all weapons to be placed on his own western vessel, the Keoua (formerly the Fair American) for transport to Hawaii Island. The chiefs were allowed two attendants each and were told to follow his vessel in separate vessels. (Parker)

“The view of the king’s camp was concealed only by a narrow tongue of land, consisting of naked rocks, but when we had sailed round we were surprised at the sight of the most beautiful landscape.”

“We found ourselves in a small sandy bay of the smoothest water, protected against the waves of the sea; on the bank was a pleasant wood of palm-trees, under whose shade were built several straw houses …”

“… to the right, between the green leaves of the banana-trees, peeped two snow-white houses, built of stone after the European fashion, on which account this place has the mixed appearance of a European and Owhyee village”.

“(T)o the left, close to the water, on an artificial elevation, stood the morai (heiau) of the king, surrounded by large wooden statues of his gods, representing caricatures of the human figure.” (Kotzebue, visiting in 1816)

‘I‘i describes that the “King erected three houses thatched with dried ti leaves,” a sleeping house (hale moe) and separate men’s (hale mua) and women’s (hale ‘āina) eating houses.”

Kamehameha first moved into the former residence of Keawe a Mahi. He then built another house on the seaward side of that residence, that was referred to as hale nana mahina ‘ai.

This house was built high on stones and faced directly upland toward the planting fields of Kūāhewa. Like an observation post this house afforded a view of the farm lands and was also a good vantage point to see canoes coming from South Kona and from the Kailua vicinity. (Rechtman)

Fishing was the occupation of Kamehameha’s old age at Kailua. He would often go out with his fishermen and when there had been a great catch of aku or ‘ahi he would give it away to the chiefs and people, the cultivators and canoe makers. (Kamakau)

At the onset of his illness, Kamehameha was treated by his kahuna. When the illness would not yield to their treatment, a ship was sent to Honolulu for Marin, a Spaniard who had no formal medical training, but had some basic Western medical knowledge.

Marin, noted in his diary, April 15, that a ship arrived at Honolulu that day from Hawaii seeking him ‘to cure the king;’ Marin reached Kailua four days later and stayed there until after the death of the king; his services proved ineffectual. (Kuykendall)

During Kamehamehaʻs illness the kahuna had suggested human sacrifices to appease, or pacify, the gods so that they might prolong Kamehamehaʻs life. To this Kamehameha said, “No! The men are kapu [sacred] for the king!” By king he meant his son and heir, Liholiho. (Williams)

About ten o’clock he took a mouthful of food and a swallow of water. Ka-iki-o-‘ewa then asked him for a last word, saying. “We are all here, your younger brothers, your chiefs, your foreigner (Young.) Give us a word.”

“For what purpose?’ asked the chief. “As a saying for us” (I hua na makou.) “E oni wale no ‘oukou i ku‘u pono ‘a‘ole e pau (Endless is the good that I have given you to enjoy.”)

Nearby, crouched sadly in silence, were John Young, his friend for almost thirty years; High Chief Hoapili; High Chief Kalanimōku; Queen Ka‘ahumanu; the heir Liholiho and others close to the king. Hours later, at two o’clock on the morning of May 8, 1819, Kamehameha passed away at Kamakahonu, Kailua-Kona. (Williams)

Fourteen years Kamehameha fought to unite the islands and he ruled twenty-three years. When he died his body was still strong. his eyes were not dimmed, his head unbowed, nor did he lean upon a cane; it was only by his gray hair that one could tell his age. (Kamakau)

The period of mourning began in Kailua-Kona. It lasted about ten days and was called kūmākena (‘to mourn loudly for the dead.’) When the people learned that Kamehameha I was dead, many fell to their knees, crying and wailing. They became hysterical and expressed their grief in painful ways.

The kapu was not enforced at this time so there was not only sadness and grief but disorder and confusion, as well. The kapu normally governed what the people could and could not do. (Williams)

Immediately after the death of the Kamehameha, his son Liholiho, heir to the throne, went away with his personal attendants to Kawaihae, Kohala, where he remained until Kailua, defiled by death, had been purified. After about a week, he returned for the purpose of being proclaimed king. (Kuykendall) (Image by Brook Parker.)

May 7, 2026 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Boeing Wonderland

Maj. John F. Ohmer, Jr., of the Office of the Chief of Engineers, an expert in camouflage, found that almost nothing had been done to conceal military installations in the US. (Corps of Engineers)

The art and science of camouflage had infatuated Ohmer for years. After joining the Army in 1938, he combined his love of magic and photography to find inventive ways to fool the eye and the lens.

When Ohmer went overseas to study Britain’s wartime concealment efforts, he marveled as German attackers wasted their bombs in open fields brilliantly attired to appear as vital targets. (Popular Mechanics)

During the Battle of Britain, which lasted from July until October 1940, the Luftwaffe rained thousands of bombs over England. One of Germany’s main goals for the constant bombing was to destroy the Royal Air Force.

The Luftwaffe had a long list of important targets that included aircraft factories and airfields. The British covered their factories, warplanes and tanks with camouflaging materials and paint, and put fake airplanes and tanks in fields far away from civilization. The Luftwaffe bombed hundreds of fake targets, leaving the real targets intact. (Mishpacha)

As commander of the Army’s 604th Engineer Camouflage Battalion, Ohmer campaigned to demonstrate his craft by obscuring Hawai‘i’s Wheeler Field in 1941. His superiors rejected his proposal because of the $56,210 price tag (nearly $900,000 today).

Then on December 7, 1941, Japanese attackers bombed and strafed Oahu’s exposed airfields, along with the naval base at Pearl Harbor. Wheeler alone lost 83 warplanes, each one nearly worth the cost of Ohmer’s proposed cover-up. (Popular Mechanics)

Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Ohmer received an urgent call from the US Army. The threat of further attack led Ohmer’s superiors to reassess the value of his vision.

The most visible and vulnerable targets were a dozen or so distinctive, wooden aircraft assembly buildings. Military leaders were concerned that just a few air-dropped incendiary bombs would burn them to the ground. The loss of just one major airplane-producing facility could lengthen the war considerably. (Popular Mechanics)

Ohmer’s assignment … he had to make everything worth bombing, from San Diego to Seattle, disappear. The long list included airfields, oil depots, aircraft warning stations, military camps, and defensive gun batteries.

“He was a Hollywood art director and designer who worked on classic musicals of the late 1930s, ones with Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney, Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald and Busby Berkeley choreographed extravaganzas, the kind of movies that lit up the theater.”

“He was an art director at Golden Age MGM, and was nominated for an Oscar in 1940. He married one of the screen’s biggest stars – Veronica Lake. John Stewart Detlie was right at the heart of Tinseltown glamour.” (Cascade PBS)

Ohmer created illusions for America’s five largest aircraft manufacturers situated in California and Washington. These manufacturing plants – from Douglas Aircraft Co., Consolidated Vultee (now Convair), North American Aviation, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing – were transformed to look like cities or towns from the air. (CoffeeOrDie)

Ohmer turned to Hollywood to find the most adept civilian workers, raiding movie studios to leverage the skills of set designers, art directors, painters, carpenters, and landscape artists for the urgent task, along with a handful of willing animators, lighting experts, and prop designers.

The crown jewel of Ohmer’s concealments took place near Seattle, where Boeing’s Plant 2 sprawled over 700,000 square feet of floor space. Inside, thousands of men and women churned out a new B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber roughly every 90 minutes.

Ohmer placed his top movie studio recruit on the Boeing project, architect John Detlie. He was pure Hollywood, married to movie star Veronica Lake. Before Detlie joined the war effort, he was an Oscar-nominated art director and set designer at MGM.

In Seattle, Detlie assembled 13 architects and draftsmen, eight commercial artists, seven landscape architects, five engineers, and a soil-management expert.

Thwarting an enemy reconnaissance flier took more than simply covering the factory building. A sharp-eyed scout might zero in on the adjoining airfield, parking lots, or ramp areas. Making Boeing’s entire production facility disappear meant sowing confusion over several square miles of land. (Popular Mechanics)

Located at 7755 East Marginal Way S. in Tukwila on the banks of the Duwamish River, Boeing’s Plant 2 (also known as Air Force Plant 17) was a factory building built in 1936 by The Boeing Company in Seattle, Washington – the factory goal was to build early prototypes of the B-17 Flying Fortress and the Boeing 307 Stratoliners.

By the time of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the plant had been expanded to 1,776,000 square feet. In total, 6,981 B-17s were produced in Plant 2.

Boeing Plant 2 gave birth to some of the world’s most significant aircraft and a home to ‘Rosie the Riveter’ – women who built thousands of World War II planes.

Plant 2 was so critical that Boeing camouflaged its roof with faux streets and houses of fabric and plywood, making it nearly vanish into nearby neighborhoods. Beneath the plant, tunnels led to cafeterias, restrooms and classrooms, innovations to make life easier for workers and keep them close to their jobs. (Fox)

The idea was to blend the facility into the surrounding neighborhood across the river. This elaborate pretend town was nicknamed the “Boeing Wonderland” by the Seattle Daily Times on July 23, 1945. (RareHistoricalPhotos)

Workers obscured the heart of Boeing’s facility with 26 acres of camouflage netting stretched across the roof to create the appearance of a new faux ground level elevated roughly 50 feet above the surrounding landscape.

The building’s uneven bays and distinctive saw-tooth profile required the netting to be supported by wooden scaffolding or steel cables in low spots.

Reinforced catwalks, sometimes masquerading as sidewalks, included wood and wire handrails to keep a distracted maintenance man from straying off the supported path and plunging through the netting. (Popular Mechanics)

Disguising the active runways and taxiways as an innocuous urban scene called for a two-dimensional solution to not impede aircraft operations. Planners envisioned a pattern of visual noise composed of lawns, buildings, and roads crisscrossing the active airfield.

First, builders mixed finely crushed rock into bitumen, an asphalt-like substance, and applied it to areas heavily trafficked by aircraft. The mixture provided a dull texture to the airfield’s large, flat concrete surfaces. In non-traffic spaces, the men added wood chips and cement to absorb light. (Popular Mechanics)

Over the rough texture, workmen used paint to create an intricate top-down view of a typical neighborhood, devised by Detlie’s crew. Its pigment, developed by Warner Brothers, was reputed to “resist disclosure of the camouflage through infra-red photography.”

Oil mixed with the custom paint helped establish a convincing cross-hatch of artificial roads. On the airport’s infield, men constructed six-inch-high false buildings made from concrete blocks.

From overhead, the small structures cast realistic shadows and gave just a small amount of depth, giving more life to the scene. The finished deception looked amazingly impressive from the “attacker’s-eye-view” at five to ten thousand feet. Only as a pilot came in low for landing did the hidden runway lose its illusion. (Popular Mechanics)

The strange, house-filled neighborhood could be seen in the middle of an industrial area from the air. The “neighborhood” was completed in 1944 and removed a year after the war. (Seattle Times)

Fortunately, the enemy bombers never came. (AirMailNews)

May 6, 2026 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Kings and Queens

Hawaiian Dynasties

Using stratigraphic archaeology and refinements in radiocarbon dating, studies suggest it was about 1000-1200 AD that “Polynesian explorers first made their remarkable voyage from central Eastern Polynesia Islands, across the doldrums and into the North Pacific, to discover Hawai‘i.” (Kirch)

“(I)n the earliest times all the people were alii … it was only after the lapse of several generations that a division was made into commoners and chiefs” (Malo) Kamakau noted, in early Hawaiʻi “The parents were masters over their own family group … No man was made chief over another.” Essentially, the extended family was the socio, biological, economic, and political unit.

The arrival of Pā‘ao from Tahiti in about the thirteenth century resulted in the establishment (or, at least expanded upon) a religious and political code in old Hawai`i, collectively called the kapu system.

Fornander writes that prior to the period of Pā‘ao “… the kapu (forbidden actions) were few and the ceremonials easy; that human sacrifices were not practiced, and cannibalism unknown; and that government was more of a patriarchal than of a regal nature.”

Until European contact, Hawai‘i was a highly stratified society with strictly maintained castes. The ali‘i (chiefs) headed the social pyramid and ruled over the land. Highly regarded and sometimes feared, the kahuna (professionals) were experts on religious ritual or specialists in canoe-building, herbal medicine, and healing.

The maka‘āinana (commoners) farmed and fished; built walls, houses, and fishponds; and paid taxes to the paramount chiefs and his chiefs. Kauwā, the lowest class, were outcasts or slaves. (NPS)

Each Hawaiian was born into a class of people, and at the top were the rulers, a small but powerful class of chiefs, known as the aliʻi and in those days, the aliʻi was the government.

Of all the people, it was the ali‘i who held the greatest respect and the one whom no one questioned. But this class of royalty did not just consist of the chief and his family, the aliʻi or the government system was more complicated and consisted of more than what most people think of when they hear of the Aliʻi. (Seleska)

When Kamehameha I unified the islands under a single rule, dynasties emerged and references of “King” and “Queen” were given to these new monarchies.

The Kamehameha Dynasty ruled for nearly a century from the late 1700s to the late 1800s, while the Kalākaua Dynasty ruled from 1874 to 1893. These Ali‘i monarchs continued to rule Hawai‘i until Queen Lili‘uokalani was forced out of rule and the Hawaiian Monarchy was overthrown.

Kamehameha I, Kamehameha the Great (reign 1782-1819)

Born in North Kohala on the Big Island, Kamehameha united all the major islands under one rule in 1810.

Kamehameha II, Liholiho (reign 1819-1824)

The son of Kamehameha and his sacred wife Keopūolani, Liholiho overthrew the ancient kapu system by allowing men and women of the court to eat together. At the same time, he announced that the heiau (temples) should be destroyed.

Kamehameha III, Kauikeaouli (reign 1825-1854)

Born in Keauhou, the younger brother of Liholiho had the longest reign. He was not yet a teenager when he was proclaimed king in 1825 under a regency with Ka‘ahumanu, his father’s favorite queen.

Kamehameha IV, Alexander Liholiho (reign 1854-1863)

The nephew of Kauikeaouli, Alexander Liholiho was the grandson of Kamehameha I. He ascended to the throne after the death of his uncle in December of 1854.

Kamehameha V, Lot Kapuaiwa Kamehameha (reign 1863-1872)

Four years older than his brother Kamehameha IV, Lot would also rule for just nine years. Lot Kamehameha did not name a successor, which led to the invoking of the constitutional provision for electing kings of Hawai‘i.

William Charles Lunalilo (reign 1873-1874)

The grandson of a half-brother of Kamehameha I, Lunalilo defeated David Kalākaua to become the first king to be elected. He offered many amendments to the Constitution of 1864, such as abolishing the property qualifications for voting.

David Kalākaua (reign 1874-1891)

Kalākaua was the first king in history to visit the United States. “The Merry Monarch” was fond of old Hawaiian customs, and he attempted to restore the people’s lost heritage. King Kalākaua built ‘Iolani Palace.

Queen Lydia Kamakaeha Lili‘uokalani (reign 1891-1893)

In 1891, upon the death of her brother, King Kalākaua, Queen Lili‘uokalani succeeded to the throne. Queen Lili‘uokalani was the last monarch of the Hawaiian Islands.

British Royalty

The origins of kingship in England can be traced to the second century BC when Celtic and Belgic tribesmen emigrated from continental Europe and settled in Britain, displacing or absorbing the aboriginal inhabitants. The settlers established a number of tribal kingdoms.

Celtic Britain moved through the Roman invasion to the Norman Conquest of 1066 and the establishment of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and the coming of Christianity and the unification of England. (National Portrait Gallery)

Fast forward to 1701, the British Parliament passed a law called the Act of Settlement. The law stipulated that only a Protestant could be king or queen of Britain. Roman Catholics were removed from the line of succession.

Then came the house of Hanover, a British royal house of German origin. The dynasty descended from George Louis of Hanover (a region of Germany), who succeeded to the British crown as George I in 1714.

The dynasty also provided the monarchs George II, George III, George IV, William IV, and Victoria. The six Hanoverian monarchs ruled Great Britain between 1714 and 1901. The dynasty was succeeded by the house of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, which was renamed in 1917 the house of Windsor.

George II (reign 1727-1760)

George II was the son of George I. George II became known for his bravery during military conflicts, such as the War of the Spanish Succession. George II played a key role in military engagements, including the French and Indian War, where British successes shaped a pivotal era in British history. His reign also witnessed significant advancements in the economy, culture, and the establishment of cabinet government, balancing the powers of the Crown and Parliament.

George III (reign 1760-1820)

George III succeeded his grandfather, George II, in the midst of the Seven Years’ War/French and Indian War (1756–63). Having ascended to the throne at just 22, George III’s dramatic reign included the American Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, and expansion of the British Empire.

However, his reign is often most remembered for the illness that plagued his later life. He was declared unfit to rule in 1810, when his son George IV – one of 15 children – became Regent. (Britannica)

George IV (reign 1820-1830)

Son of George III, George IV was known for his extravagant spending, gambling and womanizing. Once married in secret to a Roman Catholic, his only legitimate heir with his second wife Caroline, Princess Charlotte, died in 1817 while he was still on the throne.

William IV (reign 1830-1837)

The brother of George IV, William never expected to become king. As a young man he served in the Royal Navy during the American War of Independence, and as king he oversaw major parliamentary reform. He was determined to live long enough to see his niece, Victoria, reach her majority, ensuring she would accede the throne directly.

Victoria (reign 1837-1901)

Niece of William IV, Victoria inherited the throne through her father Edward, the fourth son of George III. Victoria’s was the second longest reign in British history. (Queen Elizabeth II was longest over 70 years, 214 days.) Remembered for her strict moral values, she oversaw further expansion of the British Empire and the Industrial Revolution, and with her beloved Prince Albert.

For an expanded discussion, including interactions between the Hawaiian and British monarchs, go here: https://imagesofoldhawaii.com/wp-content/uploads/Hawaiian_and_British_Royalty.pdf