Historical Collections of The Hawaiian Islands - Kamehameha V --- (Part 3)

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Historical Collections of The Hawaiian Islands
" Keepers of the Culture "
A study in time of the Hawaiian Islands
As told by the ancients--
Kamehameha V -- Part 3
First Post Office
Lighthouses
Hotels and Newspapers
by Darlene E. Kelley
December 25, 2000

http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00026.html#0006374

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As told by the ancients
Kamehameha V -- Part 3

The years were bringing many improvements in Honolulu. The government
building , which was greatly needed, was finally completed at a cost of
$130,000. Everybody was elated when the new Post office was opened on
Bethel Street. 
From the 1810's to the 1840's, cargo and navel vessels, whalers, and
other ships brought mail from all over the world to Hawaii. Coastal
vessels carried it between the islands. Letters, newspapers, and
dispatches arrived by various routes-- around Cape Horn, from South
American ports, across Mexico, sometimes wandering from Sydney to Tahiti
to China. They might take 4 to 6 months or a year to arrive. After
arrival, sacks of mail were dumped on the floors of printshops or the
Harbor Master's where everyone rummaged through them. By 1840s and
increase in foreign activity and in communications and trade, residents
were complaining of the haphazard, erratic service, but the government
was not responsible for the mail. Then in 1849. Hawaii signed a treaty
with the United States that provided for an official exchange of mail.
Fixed rates were assigned for printed matter-- 10 cents for a half ounce
letter, 2 cents for a newspaper.

A Government Post Office was officially established in December of 1850
and regularized services. Henry M. Whitney, a missionary son with
experience in the NewYork printing trade, became Honolulu's first
postmaster. Soon Post Offices were established on neighbor islands and
in rural Oahu. The government issued its first printed stamps in October
of 1851. Whitney designed the 2, 5, and 13 cent stamps -- the so-called 
" Missionaries " -- that were to become among the most valuable stamps
in the world. On June 14,1900, the Hawaiian postal service became the
responsibility of the United States.

It was around this time, too, that the first Lighthouse flashed its
welcome to the ships at sea.It was built on Maui in 1840; the first in
Honolulu in 1869. Sea Captains and shipping firms pressed for more
lighthouses because freight and passengers were endangered when ships
ran aground on reefs and shoals during the night. Kamehameha lll in 1851
signed legislation, but it was 1878 before even a lookout station was
built on the Diamond Head promontory above a major shipping lane.

The first attendant, John Peterson from Sweden and known as " Lighthouse
Charlie." spotted incoming vessels through a telescope. He was on duty
17 hours a day, and lived in a small cottage nearby. For this he was
paid $ 50 a month. Then when a steamship ran aground in 1897, it caused
quite a commotion. Within two years, a stone tower was completed with a
fixed white light connected to the city electric system. Kamehameha V
said there was no more important on the government's agenda, then its
building.

In 1837, a promininently displayed ad in the Sandwich Island Gazette
newspaper of July 1st, extended an invitation to visit the new " Hotel
at Waititi-- as Waikiki was then sometimes called. The amenities offered
to the male public. "a bowling alley and a bar and table supplied with
choicests viands, along with facilities for amusement and recreation as
will seem to add to the comfort of gentlemen , who may honour us with
their visits. Horses and carriages will be carefully attended to 'by
servants'."

Waikiki's first hotel remained in business for only a few years. In
1870s, another foreign resident, Allen Herbert, turned his home into a
family resort. Herbert's enterprise broadened its appeal by welcomng
ladies and children. In 1888, this became Waikiki's second hotel.

When the first Royal Hawaiian Hotel was completed-- at Richards Street
and by the byway now known after it, as Hotel Street, Honolulu at last
became a city where visitors could be properly accomodated and
entertained.

Not withstanding his royal responsibilities, Kamehameha V did not ignore
the social side of life. A newspaper reported, " the ball given at the
court house by His Majasty's staff was a most brilliant affair. It is
not disparaging other elegant entertainments given in Honolulu in years
past to say that, with the exeption of the ball given by His Magesty in
honor of the Duke of Edinburgh, this was the most brilliant
entertainment we have seen in Honolulu. The decorations were splendid;
beautiful fancy colored lanterns were placed along the walks, and
special lights were used at various points. Eight hundred guests were
invited ----- . Her Majesty, Queen Emma, honored the Occasion.
The Queen arrived shortly after His Majesty. There was a formal
reception followed by a great ball, which opened with a quadrille in
which sixty couples took part. Dancing continued until very late. At
five o'clock in the morning the guns fom the Mohican gave the signal to
close the party." No one seemed to enjoy the festivities more than did
the King, whose health had been drunk by many friends during the supper
hour.

In 1836, Stephen MacIntosh, a Boston Printer, produced the Sandwich
Island Gazette and Journel of Commerce. Protestant Missionaries were
already printing Hawaiian language newspapers, but members of the
business and trading community wanted a voice of their own and backed
the new Newspaper.

MacIntosh. was just 24 years old when he set up a used press on the
grounds of the Catholic Mission. The four page weekly appeared every
Saturday, the chief market day, and was filled with ads for such items
as saddles, pearls, rat poison, fresh produce, Doctors ads, and shipping
supplies. There were a hundred subscribers in Honolulu and the neighbor
islands. MacIntosh wrote in support od sidewalks and roads and covered
local and foreign events, vital statistics, and shipping information. He
also felt he had a solemn responsibility to promote " Liberty of the
Press" --- that is, free speech. When the King and the Protestant
mission attempted to eject Catholics from the islands, MacIntosh
sucessfully advocated religious toleration.

The paper lasted only three years. In debt, he left Hawaii with his wife
and young children and continued his career in St Louis and New Orleans
until his death at the age of 27. n his brief life, however, he made
history when he introduced the first English language paper to the
islands and advocated and practiced freedom of speech and press.

This was a period of fierce verbal attacks between Catholics and
Protestants. The Catholic Mission wanted to have its own press. In 1841,
it bought the Gazette's old equipment and set up a print shop on the
site of the present Our Lady of Peace Cathedral, but Father L.D. Maigret
complained to his European superiors; " The Protestants have execellant
presses of the new kind, while we have only a bad one, the characters of
which do not work." Maigret received a new press from Europe, and in
1852, the first Catholic newspaper appeared. He Mau Hana l Hanaia. Works
Done, to begin a tradition of Catholic publication that continues to the
present.

An event of 1861 received little notice at the time but was to have a
lasting influence -- the birth of the first Hawaiian nationalist
newspaper.

The first Hawaiian newspaper appeared in 1834, but was produced by
American Protestant missionaries. In 1861, Chief David  Kalakaua backed
Ka Hoku o Ka Pakipika, 
" the star of the Pacific." This was the start of a press produced
entirely by Native Hawaiians. Editors and printers were prominent and
educated men and women, the men trained at Lahainaluna School on Maui,
the Kamehameha School for boys, and on other newspapers,and the women
learning on the job with editor husbands, Kalakaua, who sponsered a
number of journals, was called " Editor King" by his people.

The newspapers took up such topics as the decline of the native
population, the need for Hawaiian sovereignty, the value of the
monarchy, and issues of land and water. They covered news from home and
abroad, wrote up descriptions of the culture and customs of the land,
and promoted the use of the Hawaiian language. Ka Hoku was the
forerunner of some 60 newspapers.