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December 13, 2016 by Peter T Young 2 Comments

Healani

Water-related races and regattas in the Islands have ranged from swimming, yacht, rowing and canoe races.

One early club was Healani – it was formally incorporated on December 13, 1894, but participated in earlier races under the Healani name.

An early account of competitive rowing appeared in the December 16, 1871, issue of the Pacific Commercial Advertiser: “There was a race between two-oared boats, of which four were entered, Young America the winner … there was splendid rowing exhibited, and the winners became such by purely hard work.”

King Kalākaua’s birthday on November 16th, 1875 marked Hawai‘i’s first regatta with extensive rowing competition. The King, a rowing buff, viewed the event from his yacht along with other members of his royal family.

There were aquatic sports, including five-oared whaleboat races, canoe races, yacht races, and swimming. Capping the day were spectators who climbed greased poles extending over the water. (Honolulu Rowing Club)

“Rowing is very popular, especially at Honolulu, where the Myrtle (‘Reds’) and the Healani (‘Blues’) Boat Clubs have for more than twenty years been rivals in four-oared shell, six-oared and pair-oared sliding seat barge rowing contests.”

“Regatta Day, the third Saturday in September, a legal holiday, is the important rowing carnival day, but races are also held on July 4, and at other times. Occasionally crews from the other islands or from the Pacific Coast participate in these races.” (Aloha Guide, 1915)

In the 1920s, there were five rowing clubs in Hawai‘i. The men’s clubs were Myrtle and Healani from Oʻahu and Hilo from the Big Island. The Healani and Myrtle Boat houses were near each other at what is now Pier 2 in Honolulu Harbor.

The Oahu-based Kunalu and Honolulu were the two women’s clubs. Kunalu was coached by Healani, while the Honolulu Girls were affiliated with Myrtle. (Honolulu Rowing Club)

Over time, teams reverted back to the canoe, principal means of travel in ancient Hawaiʻi. Most permanent villages initially were near the ocean and at sheltered beaches, which provided access to good fishing grounds, as well as facilitating convenient canoe travel.

“The canoe racing capital of the Hawaiian Islands … was at Waikiki, an area between the Hui Nalu Club and the Outrigger Club. (M)any canoe races took place in Honolulu Harbor during the regatta time when you had a Myrtle Boat Club, Healani Boat Club, the Hilo Boat Club, they would all participate and many of the canoe races took place right in Honolulu Harbor.” (Steiner)

The ancient Hawaiians paddled the channel waters in their canoes for food, recreation, trade, communication and military purposes. The rich history of the islands is full of accounts of mythical demigods and real-life heroes testing their skills on the oceans.

Control of Hawaiʻi’s channel waterways was an important part of Hawaiian society. This importance is reflected today in modern Hawaiʻi’s claim to state ownership of interisland waters (Hawaiʻi State Constitution, Article XV). (NOAA)

Control of the interisland waterways was an extension of domination of the land by the aliʻi. The “nature of the dominion exercised over a channel lying between two portions of a multi-island unit was based on Polynesian rather than Western concepts.” The Polynesians view the surrounding waters as part of the land. Control of the ocean by Hawaiians was implicit in the control of the islands themselves. (NOAA)

Kaiwi is known for the Kualau or Kuakualau – the strong wind and the rain out in the ocean. It is customary for it to blow in the evening and in the morning but sometimes blow at all times. “Where are you, O Kualau, Your rain goes about at sea.” (McGregor)

Wind speeds decrease in the lee of each island; whereas winds in the channel increase in strength. The area out in the channel is subject to heavy, gusty trade winds.

These winds had an effect on the waters in the channel; “… the ship turned toward Lae-o-ka-laau. As we went on the Kualau breeze of Kaiwi blew wildly, and many people were bent over with seasickness”. (Ku Okoa, 1922; Maly)

In Hawaiian tradition, Lāʻau Point on Molokai represents a point of no return. For those traveling by canoe from Oʻahu to Molokai across the Kaiwi Channel, once Lāʻau Point is sighted, there is no turning back to Oʻahu.

More commonly known today as the Molokai Channel, the Kaiwi Channel separates the islands of Molokai and Oʻahu; it has the reputation as one of the world’s most treacherous bodies of water.

In 1939, William K Pai is reportedly the first person to swim the Kaiwi Channel, from ʻIlio Point on Molokai to the Blowhole near Oʻahu’s Sandy Beach (because he first paddled a little offshore before swimming, it was ‘uncertified.’) Since then, several others have tried and succeeded.

On October 12, 1952, three Koa outrigger canoes launched from Molokai’s west side; nearly nine hours later, Kukui O Lanikaula landed on the beach at Waikīkī in front of the Moana Hotel. Thus began the world’s most prestigious outrigger canoe race, the Molokaʻi Hoe. Two years later, the women’s Na Wahine O Ke Kai, Molokai to Oʻahu Canoe Race, was inaugurated.

Healani is a regular participant in the Molokai to O‘ahu race. In the 1960s, my father skippered his Na Alii Kai (haole sampan boat) and escorted the Healani fiberglass canoe in the Molokai Channel race. He escorted the winning Healani teams (fiberglass) in 1966 and 1967.

“The 1966 race showed what the channel could do. One canoe was destroyed and several damaged in 20-foot seas and 35-knot winds.” (Sports Illustrated) (Waikiki Surf Club won the koa division.)

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Healani 1st-1966 & 1967 Molokai to Oahu non-koa-K Young-Na Alii Kai-Escort Boat
Healani 1st-1966 & 1967 Molokai to Oahu non-koa-K Young-Na Alii Kai-Escort Boat
Home of Healani-PCA-Sep_23,_1901
Home of Healani-PCA-Sep_23,_1901
Regatta-PCA-Sep_23,_1901
Regatta-PCA-Sep_23,_1901
Healani Quarters-PCA- Sep_20, 1902
Healani Quarters-PCA- Sep_20, 1902
Regatta Day-PCA-Sep_21,_1907-Healani_Senior_Men
Regatta Day-PCA-Sep_21,_1907-Healani_Senior_Men
Regatta Day-PCA-Sep_21,_1907-Healani_Freshmen
Regatta Day-PCA-Sep_21,_1907-Healani_Freshmen
Healani Boat Club
Healani Boat Club

Filed Under: Economy, General, Ali'i / Chiefs / Governance, Hawaiian Traditions, Place Names, Sailing, Shipping & Shipwrecks Tagged With: Hawaii, Canoe, Healani Boat Club, Molokai Hoe, Na Wahine O Ke Kai

October 27, 2016 by Peter T Young 2 Comments

‘Toots’

His father was Albert Edward Minvielle who “served in Porto Rico, before coming to Hawai‘i, as a sanitary officer under the United States officials and carries high recommendations from these and other employers.”

The father later worked for the Honolulu Police Department as an interpreter. He later “has been twice already to Porto Rico for laborers for Hawaii and it was through him that the first Porto Ricans were brought to the (Islands.)” (Pacific Commercial Advertiser, December 31, 1909)

He became the chief recruiter for the Hawaiian Sugar Plantation Association. Minvielle’s recruitment for the HSPA resulted in eleven expeditions bringing to Hawaii some 5,000-Puerto Ricans between December 23, 1900, and October 19, 1901. Of this number, 2,930 were men, and the rest were women and children. (O’Brien)

The son took the father’s name, but he generally went by the name ‘Toots.’ Toots Minvielle was born June 1, 1903 in Ola‘a Hawaii, where his father managed a sugar plantation store. Toots moved to Oahu in 1916.

The University of Hawai‘i formed its first swim team on October 1924. The swimmers did not have a coach, Team captain was ‘Toots” Minvielle. The team finished with a loss to Pearl Harbor Marines and a win against McKinley HS. (Cisco)

After graduating in 1929 from the University of Hawai‘i as an Engineer and Land Surveyor, he worked on Molokai as a Military surveyor. (Jacobs)

An avid waterman, Toots is credited with starting the Molokai to O‘ahu canoe race, as well as introducing outrigger canoes in California – and, building the first fiberglass outrigger canoe.

“I worked for Molokai Ranch from 1934 to 1938, and that’s when I got the idea for a Molokai to Oʻahu canoe race. All the races then were flat-water races, and I wanted to race in the open ocean. I tried to get George Cooke of Molokai Ranch to sponsor it, but I couldn’t interest him or anyone else until 1952.”

“That year two friends of mine, John Lind and Vance Faucett, were involved with Aloha Week, and they got the committee (to agree) to sponsor the race if I could get three teams to enter. Waikīkī Surf Club was the first to enter with their canoe the Malia.”

“The second team was a crew from Kukui o Lanikāula Canoe Club of Molokai. They used a 30-foot canoe I had picked up at Nāpoʻopoʻo. The third team was a bunch of guys from Ala Moana Park, and they used a 30-foot canoe owned by Dad Center. Each team had a six-man crew.”

“We set the race for October 27 (others note it was October 12, 1952) and decided it would start at Kawākiu and end at the Moana Hotel. … We all slept (on the beach at Kawākiu) that night. In the morning we had a service, and then I went out on the point. The surf was really big, and I signaled with a towel between sets to get the boats in the water.”

“When the three boats were out, I started the race, then flew back to Oʻahu. In the channel, the Malia’s lashing broke three times. Surf Club had also rigged a plywood keel to the bottom of the ama that they thought would help them track better in the open ocean.”

“They sawed it off in mid-channel. And none of the canoes had splash covers, so they all had to bail the whole race. Surf Club had the Malia, the best boat, and they probably should have won, but all of their problems slowed them down.”

“Molokaʻi won in eight hours and fifty-five minutes, Surf Club was second, and the guys from Ala Moana Park were third. They all finished within eighteen minutes of each other. Francis Brown had put up $500 for first place and the Aloha Week committee had put up $300 for second and $ 100 for third. (AE “Toots” Minvielle, November 30, 1977; Clark)

“Outrigger-canoe racing … was brought to the Mainland in 1959 by (Minvielle,) considered the father of the sport.” (LA Times) The first outrigger race held there was on September 20, 1959, a long distance race from Avalon on Catalina Island to the Newport Dunes inside the California Coast.

The first race involved two canoes shipped to California from Hawaii through the efforts of Minvielle. Both of them were koa wood canoes with the names Malia (calm waters) and Niuhi (shark.) (CatalinaCrossing)

In 1954, Minvielle built the first fiberglass canoe, and it proved equal to canoes made of koa, which was growing scarce. Today, most races have special divisions for koa canoes. (Sports Illustrated)

In 1970 he sent the first Hawaiian team to race in Tahiti, in 1976 to Japan, and in 1978 to England to race the English Channel.

While introducing the German people – particularly their Olympic athletes – to outrigger canoe paddling, in 1981, Toots approached the International Olympic Committee and proposed the acceptance of outrigger canoe racing as an Olympic event. (Jacobs)

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Toots_Minvielle
Toots_Minvielle
'Toots' Minvielle, coach of Outrigger’s first Molokai crew welcomes them at finish-1954
‘Toots’ Minvielle, coach of Outrigger’s first Molokai crew welcomes them at finish-1954
Back: AG Harris, WW Harris Jr, A Makinney, H Harvey. Front: F. Turner, AE Minvielle. Time: 6:15 seconds. Honolulu Harbor
Back: AG Harris, WW Harris Jr, A Makinney, H Harvey. Front: F. Turner, AE Minvielle. Time: 6:15 seconds. Honolulu Harbor
First Hawaiian All Star Catalina Crew, 1959
First Hawaiian All Star Catalina Crew, 1959
1959catalinacaliforniacrew
1959catalinacaliforniacrew
Minvielle_AE
Minvielle_AE
Toots Minvielle Memorial Honor Bronze Canoe Medal
Toots Minvielle Memorial Honor Bronze Canoe Medal
Toots Minvielle Memorial - Honolulu International Airport
Toots Minvielle Memorial – Honolulu International Airport

Filed Under: Economy, General, Prominent People Tagged With: Canoe, Molokai Hoe, Toots, AE Minvielle, Hawaii

October 9, 2016 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Illinois Brigade

American Fur Company, founded by John Jacob Astor in 1808, would become one of the largest businesses in the country at the start of the 19th century.

Astor planned the post to grow into a permanent settlement, with plans to develop a large trade ring that included New York, the Pacific Coast, Russian Alaska, Hawaiʻi and China. The furs collected in the northwest and Alaska, would be shipped to China and exchanged for porcelain, silk and other cloth, and spices that would be brought back, via Hawaii to New York.

Initially, Astor’s operation in the Columbia River Valley of Oregon was under a subsidiary called the Pacific Fur Company and his Great Lakes efforts were under another subsidiary – the South West Company.

Astor began this ambitious venture to compete with the two great fur-trading companies in Canada – the Hudson’s Bay Company and the North West Company.

As early as 1811, Hudson’s Bay Company had already hired twelve Hawaiians on three year contracts to work for them in the Pacific Northwest. That year John Jacob Astor built Fort Astoria, it was later sold to the North West Company.

However, the War of 1812 destroyed both companies. Five years later, in 1817, Congress passed an act which excluded foreign traders from US territory, making the American Fur Company the biggest in the Great Lakes region.

The Illinois Brigade was one of several trading expeditions sent out annually, between about 1816 and 1827, by the American Fur Company from its headquarters at Mackinac, at the confluence of Lakes Michigan and Huron, in Michigan Territory.

The brigade, usually numbering ten or twelve native canoes, as well as shallow-draft, flat-bottomed boats (bateau,) loaded with trade goods, made its way down Lake Michigan and through the Chicago portage and Des Plaines River to the Illinois River.

There it divided into small parties that spent the winter bartering with the Indians for furs. In the spring the brigade reassembled and returned by water to Mackinac. In 1828 the American Fur Company sold its Illinois interests to Gurdon S Hubbard, the brigade’s commander. (Gale Group)

Wait … this is about another Illinois Brigade – they’re from this area (around Chicago,) but rather than canoes familiar to that region, this Illinois Brigade paddles Hawaiian outrigger canoes.

Among the more than 260 canoe clubs that have participated in the Molokai Hoe are crews from the Hawaiian islands of Oʻahu, Hawaiʻi, Maui, Molokai, Lānaʻi and Kauai; and, from several parts of California, from the states of Oregon, Arkansas, Illinois, Pennsylvania, New York and Virginia, and from several areas across Canada.

In the Pacific, clubs from several coasts of Australia have participated; and from New Zealand, New Caledonia, Japan, Hong Kong, the Kingdom of Tonga, Johnston Island; many from Tahiti and other islands of French Polynesia; and from Europe, crews from England, Germany, Slovakia, and Hungary have raced across the Molokai Channel. (Molokai Canoe Race)

Folks from the Chicago area got their start when Don Alberta, then a 51-year old pilot for American Airlines, and avid canoeist, was vacationing in Hawaii when he met Herman Clark (whose father Herman was a guard for the Bears in the 1950s.)

Clark invited him to paddle with him and afterwards challenged Alberta to get up a team and race. That he did, finishing 14th in 1981 and 10th in 1984, all the while using an old practice boat. (Chicago Tribune)

Then, in 1985 at Bankoh Molokai Hoe 34, on Sunday, October 13, 1985, 48 canoes, 13-koa, 35 fiberglass started the race, all finished.

The Illinois Brigade was the first team from a landlocked part of the world to win the Molokai Hoe, which began in 1952 and covers just over 40 miles from Molokai to Oʻahu. (Chicago Tribune)

First, in the fiberglass division was the Illinois Brigade-1 (Chicago) (Serge Corbin, Joe Johnson, Jay Mittman, Bruce Barton, Al Rudquist, Kurt Doberstein, Ed Crozier, Tim Triebold, Mike Fries) in the time of 5:33:04. (Molokai Canoe Race)

“That blew their minds,” says Alberta, explaining that teams far more accustomed to the water conditions couldn‘t keep pace. “They mystified the Hawaiians,” said restaurateur Nick Nickolas. (Chicago Tribune)

The Molokai Hoe has become one of the longest-running annual team sporting events in Hawai‘i (second only to football.) The first-ever contest, held on October 12, 1952, happened with just three competing koa wood outrigger canoes of six men each.

Canoes launch from the Hale o Lono Harbor off the west side of Molokai and travel approximately 41 miles across the Kaiwi Channel to finish at Dukes Beach at Fort DeRussy and Hilton Hawaiian Village. (This year’s race is today, October 9, 2016.)

The channel is said to be among one of the most treacherous spans of ocean in the world, with the current record time for the passage being under 5 hours. The Oahu Hawaiian Canoe Racing Association organizes the annual event.

The Molokai Hoe perpetuates one of Hawai‘i’s and Polynesia’s most important and historic cultural traditions, while honoring outrigger canoe paddlers around the world. (Molokai Hoe)

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1985-Molokai-Hoe-Finish-Line-(Outrigger)
1985-Molokai-Hoe-Finish-Line-(Outrigger)
molokai-hoe-start-MolokaiNews
molokai-hoe-start-MolokaiNews
molokai-hoe-start-Molokai_News
molokai-hoe-start-Molokai_News
molokai-hoe-push-off-MolokaiNews
molokai-hoe-push-off-MolokaiNews
Molokai_Hoe-Start_Area
Molokai_Hoe-Start_Area
2001-MolokaiHoe Kihei Canoe Club mid-channel in koa canoe Ku Koa Manutea
2001-MolokaiHoe Kihei Canoe Club mid-channel in koa canoe Ku Koa Manutea
Fort_Astoria-1813
Fort_Astoria-1813
Bateau
Bateau
Trapper with hides
Trapper with hides
Voyageur_canoe
Voyageur_canoe
Fort_Astoria_ca1960s
Fort_Astoria_ca1960s

Filed Under: Hawaiian Traditions, Economy Tagged With: Hawaii, Molokai, Kaiwi Channel, Kaiwi, Molokai Hoe, Illinois Brigade

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