Hawaiʻi was the industry’s “crossroads of the Pacific.” Forty days’ sail to the west were the Japan grounds. Thirty days’ sail to the east was the northwest coast of North America. Straight to the north was the Arctic Circle. Hawaiʻi was the closest port for provisioning whaling ships. When summer turned to autumn in the North Pacific, or when winter turned to spring in the South Pacific, whalers made their way to Hawaiʻi, at the center of the ocean, for tropical refuge. Fall and spring consequently were the most active seasons in Hawaiʻi’s service/supply economies as countless whale ships arrived en masse in search of fresh provisions, downtime ashore, and the recruitment of Hawaiian labor.19
The voyage of the whale ship Adeline demonstrates this seasonality. This vessel from Newburyport, Massachusetts departed New England in November 1833 for a multi-year cruise of the Pacific in search of whales. After spending significant time whaling off the coast of South America, the Adeline made for Hawaiʻi in April 1835 for provisioning, recruitment of sailors, and time onshore for its crew. The ship recruited Hawaiian seamen off of Maui, then left the islands in mid-May to continue whaling. On September 15, 1835, the Adeline was back in Hawaiʻi, anchoring on Maui to discharge whale oil, provision, and recruit more seamen. The Adeline left again to engage in whaling throughout the winter and then in March 1836 returned again to Hawaiʻi. On April 23, 1836, the Adeline’s log records the ship’s departure from Lāhainā: “Bound on Japan for the fifth and last Cruise,” from May through September. Latitude and longitude records document that for the Adeline whaling on the Japan grounds did not mean sailing out to one defined spot and fishing there for months. Rather, the Adeline was constantly on the move, taking a full four months to sail from Lāhainā to just a few hundred miles east of the city of Tokyo—an unnecessarily long time for a voyage that could have been completed in forty days. The Adeline slowly but methodically hunted for whales along the way. After coming within a few hundred miles of Japan, the Adeline abruptly turned back in late August 1836, but still took another three months to return to Hawaiʻi with its cargo, continuing to hunt all the way back to the archipelago. The Adeline finally left the Hawaiian Islands for the last time on December 31, 1836, returning to New England by mid-year in 1837.20
The Adeline’s endless voyages to and from Hawaiʻi evidence the simultaneous centrality and peripherality of these islands to the whaling industry. While constantly returning to Hawaiʻi for provisions and refreshment throughout its four-year cruise, the Adeline was also constantly leaving Hawaiʻi. If we want to understand the place(s) of Hawaiʻi in Pacific whaling, this is it: central and peripheral, a place visited often, but only fleetingly, yet regularly. It was a touch-and-go relationship with massive consequences for Hawaiian labor.
Anakala’s whale ship, the Italy, tells a similar story. Twenty years after the Adeline’s voyages, the Italy visited Hawaiian ports primarily in spring and autumn, demonstrating the same comings, the same goings, and the same accountings of ocean space and time as experienced by the crewmembers of the Adeline.21 Further data from Hawaiian shipping articles kept by the Honolulu Harbormaster demonstrate that while whale workers’ contracts were supposed to be set for twelve months, these contracts were often extended, or even shortened, based on the seasons. Some ships’ captains even rewrote the language of the shipping articles, crossing out stock phrases that guaranteed the date of a worker’s discharge, such as one phrase guaranteeing a worker’s return “take place before the expiration of said term of months” and replacing it with the handwritten phrase “in the fall of 1865.” These shipping articles demonstrate that in the whaling industry seasonality trumped rational time. Labor recruitment and discharge were contingent on the time-disciplines of both nature and capitalism.22
The problem of labor supply in Pacific whaling was complicated by workers’ penchant for desertion. Pacific whaling cruises that began in New England, like the voyages of the Adeline and the Italy, regularly lasted three to four years. It was not uncommon for Yankee seamen who signed up in Boston, Salem, or Cold Spring Harbor to desert ship while anchored at an attractive port in the Pacific. Sailors deserted at Valparaiso, Chile; Callao, Peru; and Mazatlán, Mexico. But it was most common for seamen to jump ship in the Pacific Islands. They were drawn to the romance of the place. Perhaps the most famous case of desertion in Pacific history was when mutineer Fletcher Christian and his comrades, lured by the appeal of “beachcomber” life in Tahiti alongside their newly acquired Polynesian girlfriends, rose up and took the Bounty from Captain Bligh, sending the captain mercilessly adrift upon the ocean. There were many more Fletcher Christians in the nineteenth century. Desertion did not always include mutiny, but it was still illegal.23 American officials worried tremendously over Yankee deserters and their bad influence on Native subjects, including U.S. consul to the Hawaiian Kingdom John C. Jones, who wrote to a Navy official in 1826 warning that “a large number of the most abandoned of that class of people [deserters] have been constantly collecting and by associating themselves with the natives become familiar with every vice, lost to all sense of right, and ready to assist and aid in acts of Mutiny, Piracy and Murder.” This threat of Euro-American and Native Hawaiian seamen collecting themselves together and conspiring to resist exploitation at the hands of a globalizing whaling industry speaks to the possible formation of a multiracial maritime proletariat. U.S. officials in the Pacific sought to protect private capitalist interests from the threat of this many-headed hydra.24
FIGURE 5. Visits to Hawaiian Ports by the Whaleships Adeline (1834–1837) and Italy (1854–1857). Note the seasonality of Hawaiian experiences of whaling. Sources: Adeline (ship) Logbook, New York Public Library; Italy (ship) Account book, New-York Historical Society. Compiled by the author.
The logbook of the Italy records how its Yankee seamen deserted at nearly every opportunity, and how Hawaiian workers were recruited to take their place. Anakala and his comrade Kewau were recruited in April 1855, then let go on November 6. Two days later, a whole series of transactions of human labor—some legal, some not—took place. On November 8, two Euro-American sailors deserted; Kahula, the last Hawaiian recruit, was discharged; meanwhile, the Italy signed up five new recruits, all Hawaiian, thus replacing the five men they had lost. Soon the Italy set sail to the South Pacific with their new recruits, all of whom served for the remainder of the Italy’s voyage. They visited the Cook and Marquesas Islands (where the Italy also recruited three or four Cook Islanders), and returned to Lāhainā in the spring of 1856 to whale the northern reaches of the Pacific Ocean the following summer. The Hawaiian men were discharged in December 1856 at Lāhainā. Meanwhile, that spring, the Italy once again paid a fee “for securing natives” ($16) and a separate fee “For procuring & shipping men” ($12). In March the ship recruited five more Hawaiian men: Peter, Miguel, Moses, and perhaps two more men named Thomas and Cooper. Finally, the Italy returned to Lāhainā one last time in December 1856 to return the Hawaiians Poai, Paona, Kamakamia, and Kaliko. (Unfortunately, Hoe, the fifth Hawaiian recruit from November 1855, died at sea two months into the voyage.) The Italy then shipped to Honolulu to discharge its entire crew and end its voyage. (What happened to the Cook Islander recruits is unclear. Only one man has a record of discharge. How the rest got back to the South Pacific was not the Italy’s concern.)25
FIGURE 6. Recruitment of Hawaiian Seamen by Foreign Employers, 1860–1864. Note the seasonality of Hawaiian experiences of whaling. Source: Volume 4, 1859–1865, Collector General of Customs Seamen’s Records, Record Group 88, Hawaiʻi State Archives, Honolulu. Compiled by the author.
As the Italy’s voyages continued over the course of the 1850s, the composition of its crew became more ethnically diverse as more and more Polynesian men took the place of New Englanders who deserted or were discharged. This is not to say that New England whaling crews were homogenous to begin with. Far from it. African-American seamen were a staple of American whaling crews in the nineteenth century, especially serving as cooks
and stewards. Native Americans were also disproportionately represented on whaling ships. Some of these folks even ended up in Hawaiʻi. There are records of African-American seamen deserting in Hawaiʻi—incredible tales like that of Anthony Allen, an African-American from Schenectady, New York, who by the early 1820s was living in Waikīkī, Oʻahu, on a plot of land with a Hawaiian wife and three kids. Most deserters, however, were white. No matter how diverse American whaling crews were when they left the United States, the number of Polynesians onboard was bound to increase over the course of the voyage.26
The account book of the Italy shows a gradual “browning” of its crew. The ship left Long Island in 1854 without anyone onboard of known Hawaiian or Polynesian descent. In April 1855, during their first stop in Hawaiʻi, they took on three Hawaiian seamen. Then in November they recruited more Hawaiians, bringing the total number of Native men onboard to five. At the same time, they lost at least two Euro-American men to desertion. The next month, the Italy visited the island of Maʻuke in the Cook Islands and presumably picked up at least three, maybe four, local men, raising the number of Polynesian seamen to eight or nine. Back at Lāhainā in March 1856 they lost two more Euro-American men to desertion, and recruited at least three, but as many as five, more Hawaiian men. Thus, as the Italy entered the North Pacific and Arctic Ocean in the summer of 1856, less than two years since departing Long Island, they sailed with at least eleven if not fourteen Polynesian men onboard. The total number of men working onboard the Italy at any one time is not clear, but the ship’s account book lists only twenty-three seamen who were not Polynesian who served on the vessel over its entire three-year cruise. It is not hard to imagine, then, that the Italy’s crew had gone from zero to perhaps 50 percent Polynesian over the course of three years.27
When Anakala stepped off the wharf in Lāhainā, Maui in April 1855 and onboard the Italy, he linked his Hawaiian roots to the global routes of the ever-shifting whaling industry. This moment of labor recruitment on the wharf was a complex dance: foreign ships had to find available workers, workers looking for a contract had to find a ship, and, as demonstrated in the Italy’s records, the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi and labor contractors were also sometimes involved, with money changing hands, and men like Anakala playing roles, as well, in this grand drama. It is hard to locate primary data showing exactly what labor recruitment looked and felt like from a worker’s perspective, but there are some clues. American missionaries, for example, commented on labor recruitment in the early years of the whaling industry. Missionary Charles Stewart, visiting Honolulu Harbor in October 1823, only three years after the commencement of Hawaiian participation in the industry, acknowledged that a regular system of labor recruitment was already a feature of that port’s economic life. Autumn, he remarked, “is the season at which the whale ships recruit at the [Hawaiian] islands, on their way from Japan to the American coast, and I had the pleasure of seeing the captains and officers of nearly thirty ships in that business. The harbour looked quite like a busy port.” In November 1830, James Ames, a clerk on the American trans-Pacific trading vessel Edward, while docked at Honolulu Harbor loading sandalwood, also remarked that “there were a great number of whale ships in the harbor which come off of the coast of Japan to trim their Oil & recruit their sailors & also to get vegitables.” Ames’s comment suggests that when whalers visited Hawaiʻi they almost always acquired the same basic staples: water, vegetables, labor.28
From the Hawaiian perspective, recruitment was not so simple as just showing up at the right place at the right time. Records of the Honolulu Harbormaster from the 1860s demonstrate that Hawaiian men were sometimes recruited on very short notice—as soon as one day before setting sail—or as far in advance as one month prior to departure. For most ships, recruitment at Hawaiian ports was a process rather than an event. It frequently lasted days, but sometimes weeks or even months, with Hawaiian men signing up a few at a time over the course of multiple recruitment efforts, rather than all men signing up at once. Thus we can imagine that there was a lot of waiting around on both sides, for employers and employees, and this is perhaps why port cities such as Lāhainā and Honolulu developed such vibrant service/supply economies supporting the trade.29
It is not clear how Hawaiian whale workers felt about signing onto American vessels and leaving home for months or even years. Jacobus Boelen, a Dutch sea captain visiting Honolulu in 1828, described the ordeal of the men he met who signed onto whaling vessels only to return many years later. These “islanders,” he wrote, “often serve on the whalers that from time to time call here, and usually stay on board until the oil casks are filled and the vessels make a final stop at the Sandwich Islands.” Boelen himself recruited an “islander” to join him on his journey back to Holland. He described an unusual parting scene between the young migrant and the friends and family he left behind. “The young naked Indians”—about fifty or so Hawaiians—“grouped themselves on the quarterdeck—their favorite playing ground—danced and sang while making all kinds of grotesque gestures, and did not cease until the ship was close to the bar, when all raised shrieking cries and jumped into the sea to swim back to shore.”30
Sometimes Hawaiian whalemen were recruited to work on one ship but then transferred to another, raising even greater uncertainty about how long they would be gone, and whether they would return home. For example, there were the “4 Hawn [Hawaiian] Seamen” recruited by the bark Zoe at Honolulu Harbor in the spring of 1863. In reality, the Zoe was then thousands of miles away. Kuionuo, Apai, Opunui, and Keapikia all signed articles to work aboard the ship, but on the back of their shipping articles, written in hand, it stated that “Zoe 4 Hawn Seamen to join her up in Plover Bay. Passengers pr the Catherine April 10th 1863.” These men actually shipped out on the bark Catherine at Honolulu the next day in order to get to Plover Bay, a location on the Chukchi Peninsula in the Russian Arctic. “During the time they are on board the ‘Catherine’ on their way up to join the Zoe in Plover Bay,” their shipping article stated, “the within named men agree to work and to assist the crew of the ‘Catherine’ in all lawful orders of the Commanding Office.” The Zoe depended upon the Catherine to get these men from Hawaiʻi up to the Arctic. For the four men, they discovered that they had to work their way north on the Catherine before their contract even began for work aboard the Zoe.31
Herman Melville, years after returning from his own whaling adventure in the Pacific Ocean, acknowledged through Ishmael, in Moby-Dick, that “Islanders seem to make the best whalemen.” But what made Pacific Islanders the “best” labor for the job? Historian Margaret Creighton argues that whaling captains “were drawn to native labor because it was cheap.” In Melville’s imagination, islanders were useful to ships’ captains because they were so abundant and expendable. When Captain Ahab asked the captain of the ship Bachelor of Nantucket, upon meeting up near the Japan whale grounds, if the Bachelor had lost any men, the captain told Ahab: “Not enough to speak of—two islanders, that’s all.” His curt reply suggested that some captains gave little value to the lives of Pacific Islander workers.32
Besides their “cheap” nature, island labor was also desired based on the prevailing Euro-American belief that Hawaiian and Polynesian men were better suited for physically demanding—rather than mentally demanding—work. Melville, in Moby-Dick, acknowledged as much, with Ishmael comparing the racial divide in the whaling industry to the broader racial and class divide in all American industry. “It is the same with the American whale fishery as with the American army and military and merchant navies,” he stated. “The same, I say, because in all these cases the native American [Euro-American] liberally provides the brains, the rest of the world as generously supplying the muscles.”33
Anakala’s story does not end there. From the moment he was hired in April 1855 to his discharge in November, Anakala and his comrades were subject to the wages of whaling work: money, clothing, tobacco, debt, discipline. In Make’s case, this included a beating. Yet f
or most Hawaiians, whaling work was cruel in other ways. Life aboard ship was a complicated dance. No longer in Hawaiʻi nor completely apart from it, Native workers were what Ishmael, in Moby-Dick, called “neither caterpillar nor butterfly,” lost somewhere in the limen of the whaling ship in the middle of the world’s largest ocean.
NEITHER CATERPILLAR NOR BUTTERFLY
When Ishmael met the Pacific Islander harpooner Queequeg in a small inn in the Massachusetts whaling town of New Bedford, he was shocked by the man’s strange behavior. Watching Queequeg struggling to put on his boots made Ishmael ponder the islander’s inability to conform to American societal standards. “If he had not been a small degree civilized,” Ishmael conceded, “he very probably would not have troubled himself with boots at all; but then, if he had not been still a savage, he never would have dreamt of getting under the bed to put them on.” If Queequeg’s handling of his boots was odd, his method of shaving his face—using a whaling harpoon—was outrageous. “Neither caterpillar nor butterfly,” in Ishmael’s mind Queequeg was neither wholly savage nor wholly civilized; he was caught in the in-between, in the limen, as historian David Chappell argues, where nearly all Pacific Islander seamen found themselves when they shipped out on foreign vessels and lived at sea, neither at home nor in a wholly foreign land.34
Life at sea consequently presented a new world of experiences and social realities for Hawaiian men. Actually, every seaman on a whaling ship was in a sense “foreign”; the forecastle resembled no one’s home. Sailors from Massachusetts, just as those from Hawaiʻi, necessarily had to adapt to new conditions aboard ship that reflected none of their home cultures in full. Take, for example, the men’s diet. On American whaling ships, seamen got used to eating a monotonous cuisine of heavily salted foods based on only a few ingredients: salt beef, salt pork, hard tack, tea, coffee. These were the staples of the whaleman’s existence. Sometimes they also ate “duff,” a “kind of Pudding made of flour and slush.” Hawaiians, accustomed to meals of fish and poi, could not have enjoyed this cuisine very much. But in the shared foreignness of ship life, which soon became a shared familiarity and commonness, lay the seeds of a potential multiracial solidarity.35
Beyond Hawai'i Page 9
