Images of Old Hawaiʻi

by Leave a Comment

The Thelma

Clifford Carlton “Gavvy” “Cactus” Cravath (March 23, 1881 – May 23, 1963,) was an American right fielder and right-handed batter in Major League Baseball who played primarily for the Philadelphia Phillies.

In the seven years from 1913 to 1920 he led the National League in home runs six times, in runs batted in, total bases and slugging average twice each, and in hits, runs and walks once each.  Cravath had part-ownership in a 40-foot boat, the Thelma.

On June 14, 1925, the Thelma was leaving Newport Harbor with 17-people, going out for a fishing expedition.

“The fishing party, including high school boys, left early and found a smooth sea until within 150 feet of the Jetty, Bland (the skipper) testified, when one wave turned the craft sideways. The boat rode the second, but the third, said to be at least 20 feet high, crashed over the boat.” (San Bernardino County Sun, June 15, 1925)

“When she neared the end of the breakwater a large wave smashed the engine room hatch, disabling the motor. Another wave, closely following, carried away part of the rigging, leaving the craft overturned, but another wave righted it.”  (San Bernardino County Sun, June 15, 1925)

“Big green walls of water were sliding in from the horizon, building up to bar like heights, then curling and crashing on the shore.  Only a porpoise, a shark or a sea lion (ought) to be out there.”

Some surfers were nearby; one had his board with him the others ran for theirs.  What follows is a recounting of the events that followed.

“It was obvious that the Thelma had capsized and thrown her passengers into the boiling sea.  Neither I nor my pals were thinking heroics; we were simply sunning – me with a board, and the others to get their boards – hoping we could save lives.”

“I hit the water hard and flat with all the forward thrust I could generate, for those bobbing heads in the water could not remain long above the surface of that churning surge.”

“Fully clothed persons have little chance in a wild sea like that, and even the several who were clinging to the slick hull of the overturned boat could not last long under the pounding.”

“It was some surf to try and push through! But I gave it all I had, paddling until my arms begged for mercy. I fought each towering breaker that threatened to heave me clear back onto the beach, and some of the combers almost creamed me for good.”

“I hoped my pals were already running toward the surf with their boards. Help would be at a premium. Don’t ask me how I made it, for it was just one long nightmare of trying to shove through what looked like a low Niagara Falls.”

“The waves were pounding so furiously that when a breaker came in, he had to scramble beneath the board and hold on with all fours as the waves broke over him. Fighting his way out, he came upon the havoc of the sinking boat and began grabbing its occupants and shoving them onto the board, begging them to hold on.”  (Sports Illustrated)

“The prospects for picking up victims looked impossible. Arm-weary, I got into that area of screaming, gagging victims, and began grabbing at frantic hands, thrashing legs.”

“I didn’t know what was going on with my friends and their boards. All I was sure of was that I brought one victim in on my board, then two on another trip, possibly three on another – then back to one.”

“It was a delirious shuttle system working itself out. In a matter of a few minutes, all of us were making rescues. Some victims we could not save at all, for they went under before we could get to them.”

“We lost count of the number of trips we made out to that tangle of drowning people. All we were sure of was that on each return trip we had a panicked passenger or two on our boards. Without the boards we would probably not have been able to rescue a single person.”   (as quoted by Burnett and HawaiianSwimBoat))

After the ordeal, 5 had died, 12 were saved (8 were saved by the primary rescuer.)

“At an inquest held at the Smith & Tuthill parlors at Santa Ana yesterday afternoon the Jury brought in a verdict of ‘unavoidable accident’ and thus absolved Bland, a cigar store owner and pilot of the craft, from blame.”  (San Bernardino County Sun, June 15, 1925)

The primary rescuer, known to many, received a hero’s welcome.

The Los Angeles Times reportedly noted, “His role on the beach that day was more dramatic than the scores he played in four decades of intermittent bit-part acting in Hollywood films. For one thing, that day he was the star.”

The Hawaiian Society of Los Angeles presented a medal of heroism on September 25, 1925.  On Christmas Day 1925, the Los Angeles Athletic Club honored him with a gold watch.

Several decades later (1957,) three of the survivors thanked him in person before a national television audience of ‘This is Your Life.’

The humble hero, Duke Kahanamoku, reportedly simply replied, “That’s okay.”

This is Your Life – Duke Kahanamoku
https://archive.org/details/this_is_your_life_duke_kahanamoku

The Newport Beach, Calif., chief of police was quoted in the newspapers as saying, “Kahanamoku’s performance was the most superhuman rescue act and the finest display of surfboard riding that has ever been seen in the world.”  (Sports Illustrated)

In addition to Duke, rescuers included Antar Deraga, captain of the Newport lifeguards; Charles Plummer, lifeguard; Thomas Sheffield, captain of the Corona del Mar Swimming Club; Gerard Vultee, William Herig and Owen Hale.

© 2023 Hoʻokuleana LLC

by Leave a Comment

Holoua

In historical times, two tsunamis occurred during the first week of April. The first of these occurred on April 2, 1868; it resulted from the great earthquake that took place that day near Pahala.

Based on the extent and type of damage, the 1868 earthquake is estimated to have had a magnitude of about 8.0. Reports indicate that 46 people were killed and several entire Hawaiian villages were destroyed by the tsunami generated from the earthquake. (USGS)

Destruction caused by the 1868 great Ka‘ū earthquake included the Wai‘ōhinu in the Ka‘ū District of Hawai‘i Island. With a magnitude estimated at 7.9, the earthquake is the largest in Hawai‘i’s recorded history. (USGS)

“There were twelve shocks counted during the night. -most of them easy, one however rocked the bed considerably At four oclock that afternoon there was such an awful rocking and heaving of the earth as we never felt before.”

“Indeed there was a series of shocks following each other in quick succession the third of which drove us from the house.”

“After a cessation of only one or two minutes the fourth came. in which violent undulations, rotary, and all most all other motions were combined or followed each other in quick succession. “

“At one moment the surface of the earth seemed to move like the surface of the ocean and the large trees to sway hither and thither like ships masts in a storm. The few stone buildings in the place were ruined.”

“The chimneys of cook and dwelling houses were thrown down. Clocks, mirrors and crockery, not firmly secured, were generally thrown down and broken. Cellar walls and underpinning were much damaged.”

“Stone walls were generally prostrated, even the foundation stones being generally removed from their original position. and it was not easy to tell in which direction from the wall the larger portion of the stones had fallen.”

“The best chimney stacks of the Hilo Sugar Mills were thrown down while some of the old cracked chimneys supposed all most ready to fall were little affected. The shocks were considerably more severe here than they were at the crater of Kilauea thirty miles from here, but less severe than they were in Kau from Kapapala to Kahuku.”

“Then slight jars were felt almost constantly for a few minutes after which the earth commenced rocking again fearfully. This continued but a short time and was followed by a tidal wave.”  (Sarah Lyman; USGS)

A letter “by the School Inspector-General [Abraham Fornander] gives a detailed account of the volcanic phenomenon on Hawaii” in the April 29, 1868 issue of the Hawaiian Gazette.

Fornander notes, “I have just been told an incident that occurred in Ninole, during the inundation of that place.  At the time of the shock on Thursday, a man named Holoua, and his wife, ran out of the house and started for the hills above, but remembering the money he had in the house, the man left his wife and returned to bring it away.”

“Just as he had entered the bouse the sea broke on the shore, and, enveloping the building, first washed it several yards inland, and then, as the wave receded, swept It off to sea, with him in it.”

“Being a powerful man, and one of the most expert swimmers in that region, he succeeded in wrenching off a board or a rafter, and with this as a papa hee-nalu, (surf board), be boldly struck out for the shore, and landed safely with the return wave.”

“When we consider the prodigious height of the breaker on which he rode to the shore, (50, perhaps 60, feet), the feat seems almost Incredible, were it not that be is now alive to attest it, as well as the people on the hillside who saw him.” (Fornander in Hawaiian Gazette, April 29, 1868)

Artist William CP Cathcart of Honolulu made a painting of the event and calls what Holoua did, ”the greatest aquatic feat of its kind in the history of the world”.

“Not many would quarrel with him that [Holoua], is the granddaddy of all surfriders.  [Holoua] happens to be riding the crest of a 50 to 60 foot tidal wave, using a house rafter for a surfboard.”

“Says Artist Cathcart: ‘[Holoua] prevailed, the undefeated super-champion of surfers …’ Mr Cathcart suggests the [Holoua’s] deed should be commemorated with a large bronze statue, suitably placed.  The deed itself, he says, merits ‘a tribute that would immortalize the prestige of Hawaii through centuries.’”

“Just to show what the water was like that day, the old Commercial Advertiser reported that four villages and 100 persons perished in the waves.” (Honolulu Advertiser, March 10, 1957)

An obituary for Holoua’s grandson, Joseph Kanuu Holoua, notes that the story “has been passed from generation to generation of Holouas. Aa Holoua used a house rafter for a surfboard and safely [rode] a 50 to 60-foot tidal wave to shore.” (Honolulu Advertiser, March 12, 1961)

The April 2 great Ka‘ū earthquake was part of a larger volcanic crisis that unfolded over 16 days. On March 27, an eruption quietly began in Moku‘āweoweo, the caldera at the summit of Mauna Loa.

Seismic activity increased through the day, and by the afternoon of March 28, a magnitude-7.0 earthquake occurred in Ka‘ū, which caused extensive damage from its own very strong to violent shaking.

During the following four days, nearly continuous ground shaking was reported in Ka‘ū and South Kona. Earthquakes continued at rates of 50 to 300 per day, including a magnitude-6.0 each day, leading up to April 2.

Then, the great Ka‘ū earthquake, 15 times stronger than the magnitude-7.0 foreshock, occurred at 4 pm. A severe aftershock occurred on April 4, and aftershocks of decreasing magnitudes continued for decades.

The great Ka‘ū earthquake unlocked Mauna Loa’s Southwest Rift Zone, and on April 7, 1868, an eruptive fissure opened low on the mountain, just above today’s Highway 11 and east of Hawaiian Ocean View Estates. (USGS) (The other April tsunami was April 1, 1946.)

© 2023 Ho‘okuleana LLC

by Leave a Comment

Gay Queen Of The Waves

A 2020 Proclamation issued by Governor Ray Cooper of North Carolina states, “Whereas, North Carolina was a pioneer of East Coast surfing;”

“the April 2, 1910 edition of Colliers Weekly includes a letter from Wrightsville Beach resident Burke Haywood Bridgers describing surfing activity in our state as early as 1909;”

“an announcement in the Wilmington Morning Star on June 30, 1910 includes mention of one of the earliest surfboard riding competitions in the mainland United States and direct communications with Alexander Hume Ford”.

However, that claim appears to be suspect, given other publications that predate the 1900s claim.  In the summer of 1888, several newspapers report a girl surfing at Ashbury Park, New Jersey – they refer to her as the “Gay Queen of the Waves.”

“A group of summer loungers on the beach at Ashbury park were watching the extraordinary antics of a dark-eyed bronzed-faced girl in the sea this morning. The object of all this interest and solicitude was beyond the line of breakers and standing on a plank that rose and fell with the swelling waves.”

“Her bathing dress was of some dark material, fitting close to the figure, the skirts reaching scarce to the knee. Her stockings wore of amber hue, adorned with what from the shore seemed to be vines and roses in colored embroidery. She wore no hat or cap.”

“Her hair, bound across the forehead and above the ears by a silver fillet, tumbled down upon her shoulders or streamed out upon the wind in black and shining profusion.  Her tunic was quite sleeveless , and one could scarcely fail to observe the perfect development and grace of her arms.”

“As a wave larger than those which had gone before slowly lifted the plank upon its swelling surface, she poised herself daintily upon the support, her round arms stretched out and her body swaying to and fro in harmony with the motion of the waters.”

“As the wave readied its fullest volume she suddenly, quick as a thought, and with a laugh that rang full into shore, drew herself together, sprang into the air, and, her hands clasped together and clearing her way, plunged into the rolling sea.”

“There was a little cry from timid feminine watchers on the sand, but the smiling face was above water again while they cried, and the daring Triton was upon the plank again in another moment and waiting for a second high roller.”

“So she has been amusing herself and interesting the mob for three mornings. She is as completely at ease in the sea as you or I on land, and the broad plank obeys her slightest touch.”

“When she has had enough of it she will bring the plank into shore, she riding upon the further end and guiding it like a goddess over the erects and through the foam of the biggest breakers.”

“She comes from the Sandwich Islands and is making a tour of the country. Her father is an enormously rich planter. She arrived in the park a week ago with the family of a wealthy New York importer. She is at a fashionable hotel and is one of the most charming dancers at the hotel hops, as well as the most daring swimmer on the Jersey coast.”

“She is well educated and accomplished, and, of course, speaks English perfectly, and with a swell British accent that is the despair of all the dudes.”

“She learned to be mistress of the waves in her childhood at her native home by the sea, where, she modestly says, all the girls learn swimming as a matter of course, quite as much as girls in this country learn tennis and croquet.” (Morning News from Philadelphia Press, August 17, 1888)

Although she is not identified, historian Vincent Dicks has apparently suggested that the young first-ever East Coast surfer was Emma Claudine Spreckels, the only daughter of Hawai‘i sugar baron Claus Spreckels.

Claus Spreckels (1828-1908), a German-born immigrant, made his fortune by starting a brewery and later founding the California Sugar Refinery. When he went to Hawaii in 1876 he managed to secure sole supply of sugar cane and with it much of the West Coast refined sugar market. In 1899 he founded the Spreckels Sugar Company, Inc.

The businessman gave over $25 million to his five grown children but his favorite child was the only daughter, Emma Claudine Spreckels.

He gifted an entire city block in Honolulu to her and an endowment worth almost $2 million. However, in 1893, when Emma eloped with Thomas Watson, many years her senior, she failed to tell her father. (House and Heritage)

Then, Emma “returned to her father all property, bonds, etc., which he had placed in her name. These gifts amounted to nearly $2,000,000, and were, it is said, relinquished by a single stroke of the pen by Mrs. Watson after her marriage.”

“It is reported that Mr. Spreckels was opposed to his daughter’s union with Watson, and that upon his chiding her for her seeming ingratitude in marrying against his wishes, she decided to give up her fortune, and did so, it is understood, upon the advice of her husband.” (Mount Holly News, Jan 12, 1897)

Emma ultimately married three times: after Watson died in 1904 she later married John Ferris (with her father’s blessing) and then Arthur Hutton in 1922.  Emma died on May 2, 1924 at Nuffield England.

© 2023 Ho‘okuleana LLC

by Leave a Comment

Amusements

The following is a portion of a letter from William Richards to Charles Wilkes, commander of the United States Exploring Expedition, dated March 15, 1841 in Lahaina.  The letter responds to questions raised by Wilkes.  It comes from editors Marshall Sahlins and Dorothy Barrere.

Richards arrived in Honolulu in April 1823 in the second company of American missionaries and was stationed soon thereafter in Lahaina, home of many of the chiefs. He remained in Lahaina throughout most of his missionary career.

His knowledge of Hawaiian is known to have been excellent—he is responsible for many translations of biblical and other works into Hawaiian—and as the letter to Wilkes documents, he was friend to the famous Hoapili and other chiefs.

In 1838, Richards left the mission to become political counselor to the Monarchy. In 1842 with T. Ha‘alilio he undertook a mission to America and Europe to negotiate recognition of Hawaii’s independence. Richards was commissioned Minister of Public Instruction in 1846. He died in Honolulu in November 1847. All of the following is from that letter:

Their amusements were pretty numerous, and many of them of an athletic kind, though not requiring the severest trials of strength.

A favorite amusement of the chiefs was sliding down hill on a long narrow slead, upon which they prostratrated themselves, and then having the slead ballanced on the edge of a very steep hill they started it with the foot and were precipitated down the hill with immense velocity often to a distance of half or even a whole mile.

Thus they went from the top of Diamond Hill far out upon the plane of Honolulu, and at other places to a much greater distance.

Rolling a smooth round stone was another favorite amusement and one which tended to strengthen the arms more than any other with which I have been acquainted.

On ground where the descent was scarcely perceptable I have seen the stone rolled a hundred and thirty rods.

Throwing the spear and various other exercises with it was also an amusement as well as a military exercise. With this weapon they were very expert.

Playing on the surf board has always been and continues to be a very favorite amusement. As you have doubtless seen this, I need not describe the process.

The dance was an amusement which was practiced perhaps to a greater extent than any other. There was a great variety of dances. Some of them consisted mainly in the recital of songs accompanied with much action as was calculated to give them force. Other seemed to consist mainly in action.

Sometimes a single girl was the actress, again, a large number united. Their motions were anything but graceful. Their motions were regulated by music, which consisted of a kind of drumming on various hollow vessels, as calabashes, tubs, and a kind of drum made by drawing a piece of shark skin over a short piece of a hollow log. . . .

Every variety of song was rehearsed and acted on these occasions, from the most sentimental to the most lascivious, and the action always echoed to the sense.

Sometimes a single voice rehearsed the song—sometimes a number chanted in unison.

The first summer I spent in Lahaina scarcely a night passed in which I did not hear the noise of these assemblies, and they were uniformly scenes of lewdness and vice.

But the most numerous class of all their amusements was their games of chance.

Of these they were specially fond. These games were peculiar to themselves. The one most practiced by the chiefs was that of placing several bunches of kapas in a row, and then one man took a stone and hid it under one of the tapas. His antagonist guessed the place of the stone, and the one who was oftenest right won the game.

They never played at games of chance without a wager, nor indeed at any game of skill. The wager seemed to constitute the charm of most of their amusements. It was an accompanyment of their down hill slides – their play in the surf – their plays with the spear their rolling the stone – their flying the kite &c. . . .

They gambled away their property of every kind – their clothes – their food – the crops upon their land – the lands themselves – their wives – their husbands – their daughters, and even the very bones of their arms and legs.

At present cards is a common amusement and it is accompanied with its usual evils.

© 2022 Ho‘okuleana LLC

by 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)

© 2022 Hoʻokuleana LLC