It is called Breakwater (or Breakwaters), not because it served as a breakwater – it actually was a quarry site that produced some of the boulders that helped form the Hilo Bay breakwater. It’s below Kukuihaele, just before you get to the Waipi‘o Valley lookout and the road down to Waipi‘o.
It’s a place name noted by John Clak in his Hawaiʻi Place Names: Shores, Beaches, and Surf Sites as, “Breakwater. Fishing site, Kukuihaele, Hawai’i. Small peninsula at the base of the sea cliffs between Kukuihaele Light and Waipi’o Valley.”
“The name is linked to the construction of the 2-mile long breakwater in Hilo Bay, which was started in 1908 and completed in 1929. Boulders from the peninsula were loaded on barges and towed to Hilo Bay, where they were used in the construction of the second phase of the breakwater.”
“The basaltic lava flows of Hawaii, where little weathered and sound, furnish an unlimited supply of rock suitable for crushing and for use as coarse aggregate in concrete.”
“Basalt is not so hard in respect to cutting tools as granite, but it is an exceedingly tough rock with a high resistance to impact. In the production of any grade of stone from basaltic lava flows, there is much loss through the necessity for handling the clinkery layers of unsuitable material which lie between the dense parts of successive flows …”
“… and this expense becomes prohibitive in attempting to produce large size dimension stone in most quarries, as well as in production of breakwater stone of large size.”
“Such stone has in some instances been shipped by barge from one Island to another owing to the difficulty of finding suitable local material.” (Historic Inventory of the Physical, Social and Economic, and Industrial Resources of the Territory of Hawaii, 1939)
“The United States entered into a contract in the amount of $400,000 with Delbert E Metzger, on June 12, 1908, for constructing a breakwater at Hilo Harbor, Hilo, Hawaii, the price being $2.48 ½ per ton of 2,000 pounds of stone put in place.”
“The specifications call for a jetty of the rubble mound type, but as it is being built, it resembles more a huge sloping wall of carefully laid masonry. It has a uniform top width of 15 feet, eleven feet so that their longest dimension is perpendicular to the slope.”
“The stone used below three feet below low water must weigh 130 pounds per cubic foot, or more, and all stone above this plane must weigh 150 pounds per cubic foot.”
“This specified weight for the stone sent the contractor nearly thirty miles, to Puna, on the east point of the island, to open a quarry, for while the whole island is virtually built of flows of lava rock and the breakwater itself rests on a reef of it …”
“… there are comparatively few places on the slopes of Mauna Loa where rock of this weight may be found in large quantities.” (Overland Monthly, July 1909)
Throughout the construction of the Hilo Breakwater boulders for the breakwater came from three primary sources: Kapoho, Waiakea and Kukuihaele. It’s the latter that is the place that is the subject, here.
“First Blast for Hilo Breakwater. … The first blast for rock for the Hilo breakwater was fired September 3 at the Lyman quarry in Puna. The blast consisted of three tons of dynamite. Thus the actual work on this great enterprise has begun.” (Advertiser, Sept 13, 1908)
“[O]n July 21, 1914, it was announced that a new quarry at Waipio, near Kukuihaele would be opened.” (Warshauer, HTH)
“Waiulili Peninsula [a rock outcrop] a quarter mile north of Kukuihaele Landing & a quarter mile south of the mouth of Waipi’o Valley is the so-called boulder quarry/breakwater to take boulders to build Hilo Harbor”. (Narimatsu)
“The small breakwater that is being constructed on the Kukuihaele side of Waipio Gulch is progressing well, and the contractors hope to soon have loaded scows on their way to the Hilo structure. Twenty thousand tons of rock, each individual stone of which must weigh eight tons, are required for the particular part of the breakwater contract that will be handled first.”
“There is an ample supply of that kind of rock at the Kukuihaele end and the contractors anticipate no trouble as to that part of the work. The quarry is located on the old trail that winds around the bluff from Kukuihaele to Waipio.” (Hawaii Herald, Aug 14, 1914)
“The two advantages to the contractor which will result from this plan, as it is seen by those who are favoring it are a saving of transportation charges and saving of quarry charges.”
“It is claimed that the quarry at Waipio can be much more easily and cheaply worked than any other one, and that the hauling by water will be about forty cents a ton cheaper than the railroad could do for.” (Hilo Daily Tribune, July 21, 1914)
“[The Hilo breakwater contractor, Delbert Metzger] went out to a cliff face out beyond [Honoka‘a] at Kukuihaele where there was a landing, and in fact he quarried the rock off of the face of a cliff way out there and swung it down to a barge and took the barge then right in …”
“… towed it right up to the breakwater and he had a better deal that way than he would have had if he’d had to haul it by truck. And so he made a heck of a lot more money. He got it practically free – big slabs that came right off the face of the cliff.”
“[Metzger made] a lot of money and decided that he didn’t want to be an engineer anymore – he wanted to be a lawyer – went back to law school and came back out to Hawaii and stopped there on the Big Island.” (Judge Martin Pence, Watumull Oral History) (Metzger later became Federal District Magistrate for South Hilo.) (Melendy)
“Huge boulders have fallen from time to time from various causes, and these will admit of easy handling without the necessity of blasting. The distance from the quarry to the Hilo breakwater is about forty-eight miles and the contractors feel sure that the cost of towage will be very reasonable.”
Young Brothers was hired to carry the rocks to Hilo. “In order to meet the growing demand of the towage business in this harbor, the Young Bros have purchased the tug Breakwater … which it has been using for towing scows from Waipio to the Hilo breakwater.” (Star Bulletin, Aug 2, 1917) The ‘Breakwater’ tugboat was later renamed ‘Mikiala.’
Jack Young was in charge of the work at Hilo and spent the better part of a year skippering the Brothers (the name of their tug) as it towed a scow loaded with rock to be dumped on the breakwater extension.
A news article appearing in the Pacific Commercial Advertiser on December 25, 1911, provides some insights into the job of building the breakwater as the Young Brothers’ crew experienced it:
“The sea had been rough for several days, and finally made it impossible to work. On Monday, the … scow was taken out in tow of the Hukihuki, having on board about 125 tons of rock, which it was to dump on the bottom ….”
“Here the substructure, which has been laid by Lord & Young, forms a kind of artificial reef over which the waves break in stormy weather. On the day in question, the breakers were thundering in at a great rate, and great combers were continually sweeping the deck of the scow.”
“Nevertheless, the Hukihuki bucked through the swirling water, and she had just brought the scow over the substructure, though not in the exact place where the load was to be dumped, when trouble began.”
“The heavy scow was let down, in the trough between two big waves, to such a depth that one of her edges struck the rock of the substructure with such a force that the timbers were splintered and broken, and the water began to pour in through the leak.”
“All thought of depositing the load had to be abandoned, and the Hukihuki maneuvered the disabled craft out of the breakers. The scow was sinking so rapidly that it was impossible to save the load, and good Kapoho rock was jettisoned.”
“By good seamanship the scow was towed to safety, where she is being repaired.”
Contrary to urban legend, the Hilo breakwater was built to dissipate general wave energy and reduce wave action in the protected bay, providing calm water within the bay and protection for mooring and operating in the bay; it was not built as a tsunami protection barrier for Hilo.
It was while Young Brothers was engaged in building the Hilo breakwater that Captain Jack Young met and fell in love with Alloe Louise Marr. She had come to Hilo from Oakland, California, in 1909 with her father, Joseph Thomas Marr, to visit his cousin, Jack Guard.
John Alexander (Jack) Young and Alloe Louise Marr were married in a double wedding ceremony with her cousin, Stephanie Guard and John Fraser on September 20, 1911 at Hilo. (Harry Irwin (later Judge and territorial Attorney General) was Jack’s best man and Florence Shipman (daughter of WH Shipman who later married Roy Blackshear) was bridesmaid.) In 1922, Young Bros. Ltd. contracted the towing to build the breakwater at Nawiliwili harbor hauling by barge the 6-ton rocks from the quarry on the coast of Maui to build the base of the breakwater.
Jack and Alloe Young are my grandparents. I am the youngest brother of the youngest brother of the youngest brother of Young Brothers. (My grandfather was the youngest of the Young Brothers; my father was the youngest brother in his generation; and I am the youngest brother in our family.)
We never met our grandparents, and they never knew they had grandchildren from their son Kenny; they both had died before they knew my mother was pregnant with my older brother.
