Northwestern Hawaiian Islands | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

December 21, 2025 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Liberty Ship SS Quartette

Liberty ships were cargo ships built in the US during World War II. They were inexpensive and quick to build, and used for deliveries of war materiel to Britain and to the Soviet Union.

Liberty ships were products of early prefabricated mass production, in large part an industrial response to wartime needs and a definite response to the threat of submarine attacks against merchant vessels.

Eighteen American shipyards built 2,751 Libertys between 1941 and 1945, easily the largest number of ships produced to a single design. (Ships had an original design life of five years.)

They were relatively simple in design and operation, reducing both construction time and time needed to train engineers. The Liberty ships and their crews of merchant seamen faced, and some falling victim to, surprise attacks from unseen enemy submarines.

The first Liberty ships required about 230 days to build, but the average eventually dropped to 42 days. The record was set by SS Robert E. Peary, which was launched 4 days and 15½ hours after the keel was laid.

The ships were made assembly-line style, from prefabricated sections. In 1943, three Liberty ships were completed daily. They were usually named after famous Americans, starting with the signatories of the Declaration of Independence.

The keel of the USS James Swan was laid June 23, 1944 and launched in Savannah, Georgia, August 12, 1944; she was built for the US Maritime Commission by the Southeastern Ship Building Corporation.

James Swan was a member of the Sons of Liberty and participated in the Boston Tea Party. Swan was twice wounded at the Battle of Bunker Hill, he later became secretary of the Massachusetts Board of War and the legislature.

During the time he held that office, he helped fund the Continental Army. After the American Revolution, Swan privately assumed the entire United States French debts at a slightly higher interest rate (which he later sold.) The US no longer owed money to foreign governments, although it continued to owe money to private investors both at home and in Europe.

Following the war, the USS James Swan was sold to Standard Steamship Company of Wilmington Delaware and used to deliver freight. She was renamed the Quartette.

The Quartette was a three-masted single-screw triple-expansion steam engine vessel, 422-feet long, 57-feet in beam, and with a draft 35 feet deep. Her two water-tube boilers and triple expansion engine were capable of 2,500 horse power. She had three cargo holds forward and two aft.

In 1952, the Quartette was chartered by the Military Sea Transportation Service and en route from Galveston Texas to Pusan, South Korea (via an interim stop at Honolulu) with a load of 9,000-tons of milo yellow grain, consigned to the US Army.

Then, at 7:10 am on the morning of December 21, 1952, navigation fixes had placed the ship some nine to ten miles further away from any danger – it was wrong.

The lookout had reported a line of white breakers to the chief mate shortly after 7:00 AM, but allegedly no action to avoid the approaching obstacle was taken.

Then, heavy seas and 35-mph winds drove the 7,200-ton SS Quartette into the eastern reef crest of Pearl and Hermes Atoll, damaging two forward holds.

The ship was firmly aground, but in no immediate danger of sinking. Attempts to back the vessel off from the reef with the engines failed.

The Navy dispatched a Catalina flying boat and 170-foot patrol craft from Midway. Thirty-six crewmen were rescued on the following day, thirty-three of them being taken to Midway Island. The ship’s captain and two others (the chief engineer and radio operator) remained standing by on the patrol boat, waiting for the salvage tug.

The Ono arrived on December 25th; seas were expected to increase as a storm passed to the northwest, raising concerns that salvage efforts would be postponed.

In an effort to stabilize the vessel, anchors were dropped and a tow line attached. On January 3rd, the tug’s anchors parted at the shank, and the Quartette was blown broadside onto the reef.

She was deemed unsalvageable, a total loss.

Weeks later the ship broke her back (keel) and snapped in two, the bow portion forward of the superstructure was pushed into the shallow lagoon, and the stern and midsection (where engine was) remained in deeper water.

After three successive investigations (2007, 2008 & 2010,) teams of maritime archaeologists documented the shipwreck. Debris of the ship are scattered across the reef, including an impressive propeller, steering gear, triple-expansion steam engine and 4 massive anchors.

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Quartette broken in two on Pearl and Hermes Reef

Quartette broken up

Quartette Milo maze offloaded in bags

Quartette The loaded barge aground on Pearl and Hermes Reef

Quartette Whale boat passing through the bow and stern sections of the SS Quartette

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November 3, 2025 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Koʻanakoʻa

The name Koʻanakoʻa literally means the settling of coral, referring to Maro’s expansive coral reefs. Another name, Nalukakala, describes surf that arrives in combers, such as the surf that froths over shallow reefs. (PMNM)

In 1820, the ships Maro and Rambler of Nantucket, commanded respectively by Captains Joseph Allen and Benjamin Worth, in company with the Syren of London, rendezvoused at the Sandwich islands.

At this same time, Honolulu was described as a scattered, irregular village of thatched huts, of 3,000 or 4,000-inhabitants. (Maly)

Here they met Captain Winship of the ship O’Cane, a veteran northwest coast merchantman, who informed them that while crossing on his many voyages from the Sandwich Islands to Canton, China, he observed a great number of sperm whales off the coast of Japan. (Allen on the Maro is credited with discovering the “Japan Grounds.”)

One of the principal benefits to the economy of the Islands was the rendezvousing of the Pacific whaling fleets from the US and other countries at the various ports of the islands for many years, and the transshipment of oil and bone from these ports.

By 1820, the calls of whalers at Honolulu were quite frequent. Americans were quick to see the superiority of the islands for recruiting and refitting over other stations in the Pacific, and very soon all the American vessels in the Pacific, and quite a few from other countries, were touching at the islands regularly. (US Commission of Fish and Fisheries, 1901)

It was that year, after his discovery of Gardner Pinnacles, that Captain Joseph Allen on the Maro, sighted and named the reef after his whaling ship, Maro.

Maro Reef has less than one acre of periodically emergent land; at very low tide, only a small coral rubble outcrop of a former island is believed to break above the surface. As a result, Maro supports no terrestrial biota.

In contrast, the shallow water reef system is extensive, covering nearly a half-million acres and is the largest coral reef in the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument (Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.)

It is also one of the chain’s most ecologically rich shallow water marine ecosystems, with 64-percent coral cover over the entire area, among the highest percentage observed in the Monument.

Unlike the classic ring-shaped atoll, Maro is a complex maze of linear reefs that radiate out from the center like the spokes of a wheel.

The documented marine biota at Maro Reef includes 37-species of corals and 142-species of reef fish. Fish species endemic to the Hawaiian Archipelago make up half of all fish recorded here.

Maro’s reefs are intricate and reticulated (like a net or network,) forming a complex network of reef crests, patch reefs and lagoons. Deepwater channels with irregular bottoms cut between these shallow reef structures.

Because the outermost reefs absorb the majority of the energy from the open ocean swells, the innermost reefs and aggregated patch reefs are sheltered and have the characteristics of a true lagoon. Given the structural complexity of this platform, its shallow reefs are poorly charted and largely unexplored. (PMNM)

While Maro Reef has very healthy reefs, it may be ‘on the verge of drowning’ because the reefs are narrow, unconnected, and unprotected from storm waves. Others feel that the health of the corals suggest that Maro Reef is a complicated reef system on a large seamount, living in balance with the elements. (FWS)

As Chair of the Board of the Land and Natural Resources I made the recommendation to the rest of the BLNR (and we then voted unanimously) to impose the most stringent measures to assure protection of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.

In helping people understand why, I have referred to my recommendation to impose stringent protective measures and prohibit extraction as the responsibility we share to provide future generations a chance to see what it looks like in a place in the world where you don’t take something.

That action created Refuge rules “To establish a marine refuge in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands for the long-term conservation and protection of the unique coral reef ecosystems and the related marine resources and species, to ensure their conservation and natural character for present and future generations.“ Fishing and other extraction is prohibited.

The BLNR’s action started a process where several others followed with similar stringent protective measures.

Koʻanakoʻa (Maro Reef) is now part of Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, a State and Federal (State of Hawaiʻi, Department of the Interior’s US Fish and Wildlife Service and the Commerce Department’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) co-managed marine conservation area.

The monument encompasses nearly 140,000-square miles of the Pacific Ocean – an area larger than all the country’s national parks combined.

On July 30, 2010, Papahanaumokuakea was inscribed as a mixed (natural and cultural) World Heritage Site by the delegates to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO.) It is the first mixed UNESCO World Heritage Site in the US and the second World Heritage Site in Hawaiʻi (Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park was inscribed in 1987.)

June 4, 2025 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Codebreakers – Secret to Success at Battle of Midway

Around 7:20 Sunday morning, a single-engine Japanese reconnaissance plane entered the cloud-streaked airspace over Pearl Harbor. Launched earlier that morning from the heavy cruiser Chikuma, the plane circled as the pilot studied the ground below.

Having seen all he needed to see, at precisely 7:35 the recon pilot radioed his report to the striking force, which quickly relayed the information to the Japanese planes now approaching Oahu from the north: “Enemy formation at anchor; nine battleships, one heavy cruiser, six light cruisers are in the harbor.”

The attack on Pearl Harbor set in motion a series of battles in the Pacific between the Japanese and the United States.

With the fall of Wake Island to the Japanese in late-December 1941, Midway became the westernmost US outpost in the central Pacific.

Midway occupied an important place in Japanese military planning. According to plans made before Pearl Harbor, the Japanese fleet would attack and occupy Midway and the Aleutian Islands in Alaska as soon as their position in South Asia was stabilized.

Defenses on the atoll were strengthened between December and April. Land-based bombers and fighters were stationed on Eastern Island. US Marines provided defensive artillery and infantry.

Operating from the atoll’s lagoon, seaplanes patrolled toward the Japanese-held Marshall Islands and Wake, checking on enemy activities and guarding against further attacks on Hawaiʻi.

The turning point in the Pacific came in June 1942, when the US surprised and overpowered the Japanese fleet in the Battle of Midway.

That victory was possible, in large part, because of the work of a little-known naval codebreaker named Joe Rochefort. (Rochefort, responsible for the Pacific Fleet’s radio intelligence unit at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, felt immense guilt at the failure to predict the Pearl Harbor attack.)

The Japanese Combined Fleet depended on a complex system of codes to communicate by radio. The codes were regularly modified to avoid detection, but in the confusion of the rapid Japanese expansion in the South Pacific the change scheduled for early-1942 was delayed.

The course to Midway started not on a map in a top secret chart room with top strategists and tacticians contemplating Japan’s next move, but was set by the deciphering of messages from the Japanese Fleet.

This was done by a handful of US Navy intelligence officers stationed at Pearl Harbor.

In the spring of 1942, it took cryptanalysts in Australia, Washington, DC and Hawai‘i to achieve the breakthrough that made an American victory at Midway possible.

The Japanese naval code, known as JN 25, consisted of approximately 45,000 five-digit numbers, each number representing a word or a phrase.

Breaking this code, which was modified regularly, meant finding the meanings of enough of these numbers that a whole message could be decrypted by extrapolating the missing parts.

According to one of the leading codebreakers involved, it was like putting together a jigsaw puzzle with most of its pieces always missing.

Leading the codebreaking effort was Station Hypo, the code name for the combat intelligence unit at Pearl Harbor under Commander Joseph Rochefort.

Rochefort included members of the band from the battleship ‘California,’ damaged at Pearl Harbor. He thought their musical skills might make them adept codebreakers in much the same way that Marine bandsmen used to serve as fire control technicians on ship — the ability to quickly read and play music made them excellent mathematical problem solvers.

By May 8, Rochefort knew that a major enemy operation, whose objective was sometimes called AF, was in the offing and that it would take place somewhere in the Central Pacific.

When they checked this against their partially solved map grid, the found that “A” represented on coordinate of Midway’s potion and “F” represented the other.

His superiors in Washington weren’t convinced; they devised a test that would flush out the location of AF.

The radio station on Midway dispatched an uncoded message falsely reporting that the water distillation plant on the island had broken, causing a severe water shortage. Within 48 hours, a decrypted Japanese radio transmission was alerting commanders that AF was short of water.

Several days later, he was sure the target was Midway. As a result, the Americans entered the battle with a very good picture of where, when and in what strength the Japanese would appear.

On June 4, 1942, armed with information from Rochefort and his team, American planes caught the Japanese by surprise and won the decisive battle – it marked the turning point in the war in the Pacific.

In the four-day sea and air battle, 292 aircraft, four Japanese aircraft carriers – Akagi, Kaga, Soryu and Hiryu, all part of the six carrier force in the attack on Pearl Harbor six months earlier – and a heavy cruiser were sunk. There were 2,500 Japanese casualties.

The US lost the carrier Yorktown, the destroyer USS Hammann, 145 aircraft and suffered 307 casualties. (The inspiration and information in this summary comes from NPS, NPR and Naval History)

April 26, 2025 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Shipwrecks at Holoikauaua (the Pearl and the Hermes)

Holoikauaua (literally, Hawaiian monk seal that swims in the rough) is an atoll now known as Pearl and Hermes. Its modern name reflects the twin wrecks of British whalers, the ‘Pearl’ and the ‘Hermes,’ lost in 1822.

Holoikauaua is a large oval coral reef with several internal reefs and seven sandbar/islets above sea level along the southern half of the atoll. The land area is just under 100-acres (surrounded by more that 300,000-acres of coral reef) and is 20-miles across and 12-miles wide.

The highest point above sea level is about 10-feet. The islets are periodically washed over when winter storms pass through. Its estimated age is 26.8-million years.

As American and British whalers first made passage from Hawai‘i to the seas near Japan, they encountered the low and uncharted atolls of the NWHI. There are 52 known shipwreck sites throughout the NWHI, the earliest dating back to 1822 – the Pearl and the Hermes.

During the night of April 26, 1822, these British whaling ships ran aground almost simultaneously. The 327-ton Pearl (with Capt. E. Clark) grounded into a sandy coral groove, pressing its wooden keel into the sediment, while the smaller 258-ton Hermes (with Capt. J. Taylor) hit the hard sea bed.

The British whaler ‘Pearl’ was originally built as an American ship in Philadelphia at least as early as 1805. At some time after that, the ship may have been captured by the French during the aftermath of the Quasi-war and renamed La Perla.

She was subsequently taken by the British privateer Mayflower and from there put into service in the British South Seas whaling industry out of London.

The two ships had been making a passage from Honolulu to the newly discovered Japan Grounds, a track which took them through the uncharted Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.

The Pearl and the Hermes (wrecked to the west of the Pearl) are the only known British South Sea whaling wreck sites in the world.

The Hermes was not cradled by the reef, but disintegrated as she pounded across the sharp reef. The Pearl, sailing close by and striking the reef only a few minutes later, was more fortunate. She seems to have lodged firmly in place in a deeper groove with her stern seaward, and then she broke up more gradually over time.

Ship’s carpenter James Robinson commented in a letter to his mother, “When the vessel (Hermes) struck she was thrown on her beam end and being endangered by the masts falling – but God ordained it otherwise.”

The combined crews (totaling 57) made it safely to one of the small islands and were castaway for months with what meager provisions they could salvage.

Using salvaged timbers and other parts of the lost ships, one of the carpenters on board the Hermes, James Robinson, supervised the building of a small 30-ton schooner named ‘Deliverance’ on the beach.

Before launching the beach-built rescue vessel, the castaways were rescued by a passing ship.

Though most of the crew elected to board the rescue ship, Robinson and 11 others were able to recoup some of the financial losses from the wrecks by sailing the nearly finished Deliverance back to Honolulu, and eventually selling her there for $2,000.

From there, Robinson went on to found the highly successful James Robinson and Company shipyard in 1827 (the first shipyard at Honolulu) and became an influential member of the island community (his descendants became a well-known island family and his fortune founded the Robinson Estate.) (This family is different than the Robinson’s associated with Niʻihau.)

In 2004, NOAA divers in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands came across the two whaling vessel wreck sites at Pearl and Hermes Atoll.

The wreck of the Pearl lies seaward of the reef crest, but in the proximity of the surf zone, the Hermes site was to the west of the Pearl.

Artifacts were found at the sites, however they are quite deteriorated. Large iron try pots (for rendering the whale blubber into oil,) blubber hooks, anchors, brick and iron ballast pieces and fasteners were found around each site.

Cannons (four from the Hermes and two from the Pearl) and numerous cannon balls indicate the nature of hazards faced during early 19th century whaling voyages to the Pacific.

June 4, 2024 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Battle of Midway

Kuaiheilani, suggested as a mythical place, is the traditional name for what we refer to as Midway Atoll. Described in the legend of Aukelenuiaiku, the origin of this name can be traced to an ancient homeland of the Hawaiian people, located somewhere in central Polynesia. (Kikiloi)

According to historical sources, this island was used by Native Hawaiians even in the late-1800s as a sailing point for seasonal trips to this area of the archipelago.

Theodore Kelsey writes, “Back in 1879 and 1880 these old men used navigation gourds for trips to Kuaihelani, which they told me included Nihoa, Necker, and the islets beyond…the old men might be gone on their trips for six months at a time through May to August was the special sailing season.” (Papahānaumokuākea MP, Cultural Impact Assessment)

Look at a map and you understand the reasoning for the “Midway” reference (actually, it’s a little closer to Asia than it is to the North American continent.)

The Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, and in particular Midway Atoll, became a potential commodity in the mid-19th century. The United States took formal possession of Midway Atoll in August of 1867 by Captain William Reynolds of the USS Lackawanna.

Shortly afterwards, the USS Saginaw, a Civil War-era side wheel gunboat, was assigned to support improvement efforts at Midway where a coal depot in support of transpacific commerce was to be built.

For six months, she served as a support vessel for divers as they labored to clear a channel into the lagoon. In October 1870, the unsuccessful operation was terminated. Saginaw set course for nearby Kure Atoll to check for castaways before returning to San Francisco. The ship would meet a tragic end on the reef at Kure Atoll where she wrecked in the middle of the night.

Midway’s importance grew for commercial and military planners. The first transpacific cable and station were in operation by 1903. In the 1930s, Midway became a stopover for the Pan American Airways’ flying “clippers” (seaplanes) crossing the ocean on their five-day transpacific passage.

The United States was inspired to invest in the improvement of Midway in the mid-1930s with the rise of imperial Japan. In 1938 the Army Corps of Engineers dredged the lagoon during this period and, in 1938, Midway was declared second to Pearl Harbor in terms of naval base development in the Pacific.

The construction of the naval air facility at Midway began in 1940. At that time, French Frigate Shoals was also a US naval air facility. Midway also became an important submarine advance base.

The reef was dredged to form a channel and harbor to accommodate submarine refit and repair. Patrol vessels of the Hawaiian Sea Frontier forces stationed patrol vessels at most of the islands and atolls

The Japanese planned to assault and occupy the atoll in order to threaten an invasion of Hawaiʻi and draw the American naval forces that had survived the attack on Pearl Harbor out into an ambush against the brunt of the Imperial Japanese Navy.

Midway was of vital importance to both Japanese and American war strategies in World War II, and the raid on the atoll was one of the most significant battles of the war, marking a major shift in the balance of power between the United States and Japan.

As dawn approached at around 0430, June 4, 1942, the American carriers (Enterprise, Hornet, and Yorktown) were about 300 miles north north-east of Midway. Their Japanese counterparts (Akagi, Kaga, Sōryū and Hiryū) were 250 miles northwest of the atoll.

In their attack, the Imperial Japanese Navy lost two thirds of its fleet aircraft carriers (four Japanese aircraft carriers and their accompanying aircraft and crews.) The loss of USS Yorktown was a major blow to the US, but the American wartime production of men and materiel would soon make up the difference and outpace that of the Japanese.

While the primary carrier fleet engagement occurred well to the north of Midway Atoll, much of the “secondary” action occurred within or originated from the atoll.

The Battle of Midway (June 4-7, 1942) is considered the most decisive US victory and is referred to as the “turning point” of World War II in the Pacific. The victory allowed the United States and its allies to move into an offensive position.

In 2000, Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt designated Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge as the Battle of Midway National Memorial, making it the first National Memorial designated on a National Wildlife Refuge.

Of all the Islands and atolls in the Hawaiian archipelago, while Midway is part of the US, it the only one that is not part of the State of Hawaiʻi.

Today, Midway is administered by the US Fish and Wildlife Service as Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge within Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, a marine protected area encompassing all of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.