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From Primedia Publications
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Shore Leave
Today's visitors to Lahaina are a welcome change from the whaling crews who once gave this historic Hawaiian Port its rowdy reputation.
By J. Kingston Pierce
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Front Street, Lahaina at twilight. |
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Self-righteous Christian missionaries of the 19th century had a genius for devising sulfurous condemnations. "One of the breathing holes of hell . . . a sight to make a missionary weep" was how a preacher visiting in 1846 described Lahaina, then a rowdy and ribald beach town at the western end of Hawaii's island of Maui. Another moralist of the same era described the place as "rotten with licentiousness. Men hire out their wives & daughters without the least scruple, for the sake of money." During whaling season, when the wharves here teemed with carousing sea hunters, the most enterprising women didn't even wait for the whalers to dock; they swam out to greet them.
Idling through the streets of present-day Lahaina, I don't see a single comely maiden preparing to breaststroke into adjacent Auau Channel. The harbor is lined with bustling restaurants, a redundancy of gift shops and low-scale wooden architecture (which helped win the town National Historic Landmark status in 1962). Except for the luxuriously verdant tropical backdrop and the ocean at their feet, some of the buildings that line Front Street would look at home in a Wild West town. The wind-snap of furled boat sails and the groan of hawser ropes remind me that this remains a popular ocean anchorage. A recently completed $10 million facelift of Front Street has made Lahaina more appealing to us landlubbers as well. On sunny afternoons, local sidewalks (some of them still made of planks) are elbow-to-elbow with visitors, many from Kaanapali, an area of gleaming beaches and swank hotels immediately to the north.
It's difficult to imagine that this was once considered a notorious destination, a spot where the peaceful traditions of native Hawaii collided with the profit-taking and profligacy of the outside world. Historical records, though, prove that clergymen weren't overstating the case—not too much, anyway—when they decried Lahaina's sins. Just a century and a half ago, young shiphands found this port so seductive that they deserted here or set fire to their vessels—anything to delay their departure.
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 | During whaling season, when the wharves here teemed with carousing sea hunters, the most enterprising women didn't even wait for the whalers to dock; they swam out to greet them. | |
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If Hawaiians hadn't known what to expect when whalers were first allowed to dock at Lahaina in 1819, they soon learned the facts—good and bad. Pacific ocean whaling turned out to be a major growth industry, spurring the development of harbors at Honolulu, on neighboring Oahu and at Lahaina, which had been the seat of power in Hawaii ever since warrior-chieftain Kame-hameha I united these islands under his rule in the mid-1790s.
Between 1830 and 1860 or so, Lahaina was hailed as the "whaling capital of the world" and the center of Western influence in Hawaii, home to lucrative printing operations and the first real American school west of the Rocky Mountains. Ships, mostly from New England and France and needing to reprovision after their hazardous passage around Cape Horn, anchored at Lahaina before heading for the rich sperm whale waters along the coasts of Japan, Australia, and Alaska. And while captains bargained for casks of fresh water, clumps of bananas, and sides of beef, hundreds of crewmen were unleashed upon the town, a horde more than ready to prove a popular maxim that there was "No God west of the Horn."
A bit of shore leave may have seemed meager compensation for the months these men spent confined in triple-masted, square-rigged ships that reeked of unsoaped bodies, ripening produce, and whale blubber being rendered into lamp oil. "The life of a whaler is one of hardship and toil," several captains explained in a letter to the Lahaina authorities, "and upon his arrival at your port, he needs rest and relaxation . . . 'tis absolutely necessary to the lives of the sailors that they should have liberty days."
However, missionaries—who had gained a foothold on Maui in 1823 and proceeded to expand their influence over the indigenous culture—were concerned with what sorts of liberties these seamen were allowed. They took a dim view of the grog shops and more lascivious services that catered to oceangoing libertines. "[One] establishment at that place is a perfect sink of iniquity," wrote a Lahaina visitor during the port's whaling heyday. "They are accustomed to have dances of naked girls for the entertainment of their customers the whalemen."
Seattleite J. Kingston Pierce is managing editor of Seattle magazine.
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