Some men found solidarity in their shared opposition to the discipline meted out by an authoritarian captain. Corporal punishment was legally permissible until the end of the nineteenth century, and men like Captain Gray of the Hannibal, as we have seen, beat their workers without mercy. Some Hawaiian men resisted. Hawaiians participated in, and in some cases even led, mutinies against Euro-American employers. In 1834, the Hawaiian crew of the John Little killed their captain, burnt the ship, and fled to Honolulu. In 1853, fifteen Polynesian seamen led by a Hawaiian sailor named “Henry” (or “Harry”) mutinied on the whaleship William Penn. They killed the captain and cook and injured the first mate and steward. And yet mobility, rather than mutiny, was the Hawaiian workers’ most effective means of resistance. Their contracts aboard whaling ships usually covered twelve months’ labor. Mutinies were rare, as long as Hawaiians could imagine escaping soon enough by more peaceful means, either waiting for their contract to expire or by jumping ship.36
To understand what led Hawaiian men to mutiny, or run away, we must first understand the conditions that likely worked against seamen’s interracial solidarity, namely differences in pay received by Euro-American versus Polynesian men. Most whalemen were paid a “lay,” a percentage of total profits. When Hawaiian seamen signed on to work on whaling ships, they agreed to a specific lay, an amount determined largely by skill and rank. In the 1860s, almost all contracts for Hawaiian whale workers stated that “the same Premium or advance will be charged the within named men as is charged the American crew.” But the advance was just an initial outlay of cash. It was the lay that really mattered. It is likely that race played a factor in determining seamen’s compensation. According to historian David Chappell, many Polynesian men were paid in “slop”: clothing and other handouts from the ship’s store. In the early decades of whaling, Hawaiian men could hope to present these items to chiefs back home in exchange for land or status. But, in reality a Hawaiian seamen’s slop was most often deducted from his earnings. In other words, he was advanced credit by the ship to purchase untold amounts of slop that in the end he had to pay off when he finally received his lay. If a seaman had received more slop than his lay provided for, then he ended up in debt. Seamen’s lays were recorded in account books as fractions; the higher the denominator, the worse the lay. Hawaiian seamen received lays as low as 1/200 or as high as 1/95. In Moby-Dick, the greenhorn Ishmael signed onto the Pequod for an abysmal lay of 1/300. Queequeg, despite being a Pacific Islander, was given a lay of 1/90 because he had proved himself an expert harpooner, a skill that Ishmael lacked. The range of advances and lays awarded to 408 actual Hawaiian seamen on 39 voyages is summarized in Table 2.37
TABLE 2 Data on 408 Hawaiian whale workers, their titles and compensation, from a total of 39 voyages over the period 1862–1868
Aboard the Italy, Hawaiian crewmembers such as Anakala struggled to stay out of debt as their ship advanced them cash and credit and a variety of provisions (slop) that were ultimately deducted from their lay at the conclusion of the voyage. Not knowing exactly how much their lays would be at the end of the voyage, these men had to make wise decisions about spending, or else end up with nothing—or end up in debt—at the conclusion of months or years of hard work. The first three Hawaiian recruits on the Italy, in 1855, were offered lays of 1/170 and 1/160. The account book does not list the lays for the next five Hawaiian men who were recruited in fall 1855, but it does show that three of these men received the exact same amount at the end of their tour, while one, Kaliko, received a higher rate than the others. The actual amounts of money involved were not very much. Kewau and Kahula, the Lāhainā seamen who only worked for one summer and had lays of 1/160, earned a total of $81.61. Anakala, on the other hand, signed on for a lay of 1/170, and thus earned $76.87. The four Hawaiian men who signed on in November 1855 and finished their voyages in December 1856, perhaps because they served many months longer than the earlier recruits, earned larger amounts. Poai, Paona, and Kamakamia each earned $117.65. Kaliko, at an apparently (and extremely) higher lay than the others, earned $203.93.38
Clearly, different Hawaiian seamen received different compensation for presumably different work aboard the Italy. Elsewhere, there is evidence that Hawaiian whale workers sometimes received wages in addition to their lays (see Table 2). For example, on the whaling bark Coral six Hawaiian men were contracted for work at a 1/140 lay in 1862, but after each worker’s name was also penciled in the phrase “10$ pr month,” and the contract was amended to read: “10$ pr month for the cruise home only,” suggesting that these men were compensated for their time traveling between Hawaiʻi and the whaling ground. In another case, ten Hawaiian seamen signed up for work on the brigantine April in 1868 “on a whaling and trading voyage North.” With this mission, each seaman was promised a lay as well as “& $10 pr month . . . No lay in Trade.” When trading, the men would receive an uku malama (monthly wage); when whaling, they received a lay. But how the captain determined which type of pay was in effect at any given time is not clear.39
Each Hawaiian seaman on the Italy handled his credit and cash advances in a different manner. Of the first three men—Anakala, Kewau, and Kahula—Anakala, at a slighter lower lay, received a $25 cash advance upon joining the crew; the other two received cash advances of $30. The Italy charged interest on these advances, and so, theoretically, the Hawaiians were supposed to pay the ship back before the end of their voyage. But this was never the case. When the men checked out in November after whaling for the summer in the North Pacific and Arctic Ocean, they were charged a whopping 25 percent interest on their cash advances. This put Anakala back an extra $6.25, and Kewau and Kahula back $7.50. Also, in April 1855 when they signed on, these men were in need of various articles of clothing to keep them warm as they sailed into the cold, icy Arctic waters. Perhaps cold-weather clothing was not readily available onshore in Lāhainā, so these men had no other option but to purchase these items as slop from the Italy’s store. On April 25, Anakala purchased “1 Undershirt,” “1 pr Drawers,” “2 pr Stockings,” “1 pr Mittens,” “1 Coat,” “1 Wool Over Shirt,” “1 pr Wool Pants,” “1 Cap,” and “1 pr Shoes.” He not only purchased clothing but also “1 Lb Tobacco.” In October, presumably as the whaling season was coming to a close and the Italy was returning to Lāhainā, Anakala purchased yet more clothing, including replacement shoes and another pound of tobacco. All three men purchased extra clothing, including “duck pants,” in October, as their Arctic cruise turned colder. All these purchases, over the course of just one season of whaling, put these men so far behind in the ship’s account that they ended up with barely any earnings upon discharge in November. Between his purchases of clothing and tobacco, and his cash advance and its 25 percent interest, Anakala ran up a bill of $69.80. Kewau likewise owed the ship $73.41. Kahula owed the Italy $75.36. When their lays were estimated on November 6, Anakala was paid only $7.07, Kewau received $8.20, and Kahula just $6.25. Although they had smoked through all their tobacco, they at least still had the mittens, jackets, duck pants, and other clothing that they had purchased along the way, items totally useless in tropical Lāhainā unless they could sell them back to the Italy or to other seamen seeking employment in the Arctic fishery. It is not clear what the men did with their cold-weather clothing, but there is no record of the Italy purchasing back these items. And so, Anakala went home after a summer of whaling with just a few dollars and a pile of useless clothing on his back.40
Anakala’s situation, as with the other Hawaiian whale workers, was also shaped by interventions in the labor market by the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi. The Kingdom began forcing ships such as the Italy to give their Hawaiian men large cash advances, perhaps with the idea that these men could give that money to their families before heading off to sea. In a law passed in 1841, the government required foreign ships to pay Hawaiian seamen a minimum $20 cash advance upon recruitment. The legislation also required foreign ships to post a $200 bond guaranteeing the men’s safe
return to Hawaiʻi, and furthermore, it stipulated something of a minimum wage for Hawaiian migrant seamen at $5/month. But Hawaiian law did not regulate the system of credit that allowed the Italy to function as a floating shopping mall. Taken as a whole, most nineteenth-century Hawaiian workers ended up with little to no money at the conclusion of their whaling voyages. It was a system designed not to reward hard work, but to encourage workers to keep working until they could finally, if ever, pay back their debts. Outstanding debt, of course, kept Hawaiian seamen signing up year after year for more whaling work. This was an economic system that kept thousands of Hawaiian whale workers caught in a never-ending dance of work and debt upon the waves.41
WHALE WORLDS: LāHAINā AND NEW LONDON
What happened offshore affected life onshore. Whale work linked port cities across the globe into a diaspora of whale worlds. Local places felt the impact of the global industry in various, nuanced ways. Take, for example, Lāhainā, Maui. In the 1840s, Lāhainā became Hawaiʻi’s principal whaling port. Lāhainā was a much smaller city than Honolulu, and the effect of ship arrivals there was especially pronounced. In Lāhainā, American whalers initially found a relatively quiet harbor, but overnight the port and its Maui hinterland became a radically altered place. Here, the ecological interdependencies of Hawaiian land and the great ocean were on full display.
Early visitors to Lāhainā were unimpressed. “Lahina looks like a very pleasant place as seen from the harbour,” wrote sandalwood trader Charles Hammatt in 1823, “but when you come on shore, it appears a heap of sand & taro patches, dirty & mean, tho’ there are more trees than at Annalulu [Honolulu].” “Dirty and mean” and full of trees, Lāhainā was a wilderness to Hammatt. This place served as a royal retreat for Hawaiian nobility, but it had none of the signs of a bustling marketplace servicing a global economy. As the number of whaling ships increased, however, changes in the city’s ecology were underfoot. One agent of this change came aboard the whaleship Wellington, en route from San Blas, Mexico in 1826. Carrying barrels of fresh water for the supply of its crew, the Wellington carelessly dumped its excess San Blas water into a Lāhainā stream. The mixing of these waters left an enduring legacy in Hawaiʻi: the water that the Wellington had picked up in San Blas included a cargo of mosquitoes. Consequently, these insects found a new habitat in the pools of water around “dirty and mean” Lāhainā. They were the first such mosquitoes in Hawaiʻi, a consequence of the new trans-Pacific partnerships engendered by Pacific whaling.42
Visiting whaling ships such as the Wellington not only sought fresh water at Lāhainā, but also fresh fruits and vegetables. To accommodate these demands, makaʻāinana farmers began altering the contents of their gardens to suit the tastes of Yankee consumers. According to one historian of this agroecological transformation, Irish potatoes, corn, cabbages, onions, pumpkins, squash, cucumber, beans, and radishes were all “cultivated almost exclusively for the refreshment of ships, and the tables of foreign residents.” Another historian’s list went like this: “fresh and salt beef, Irish potatoes, sweet potatoes and other vegetables, pork, and salt, all locally produced” filled the stomachs of hungry whalemen at port and at sea. Islands such as Maui became, in essence, agricultural hinterlands of America’s floating industrial economy. In turn, local farmers’ focus on producing agricultural exports threatened food security for Native families. One Christian missionary based in Lāhainā in 1837 wrote that “all the food produced on this plain added to some cultivation up the ravine, in whh [which] the streams descend, does not supply half the food needed by the inhabitants. This fact alone will limit the native population to what it now is.” As whale ship visits crescendoed in the 1840s, it would have been impossible for Maui farmers to produce enough sustenance for both Native families and the visiting whale workers.43
Hawaiian commoners witnessed these agroecological transformations firsthand. An 1861 article in the Hawaiian-language newspaper Ka Hae Hawaii described the rapid changes that the whaling industry had brought to Hawaiian cities such as Lāhainā in the 1840s and 1850s. “The whaling ships brought great fortune previously upon this archipelago, for their sailing here for provisioning, and that’s the first reason for [the] establishing [of] the great planting of the uala [ʻuala; sweet potato]. The merchant haole also came greatly and live in the port cities to seek profit with the whaling ships, and multiply the settlements[,] namely cities.” This writer noted approvingly that the global whaling industry had transferred value from distant parts of the ocean into Hawaiian hands, thereby increasing “the wealth of men.” He also expressed his gratitude to the industry for the service/supply economies it engendered in Hawaiʻi’s cities, for providing “the farming/agricultural things [items]” necessary “for planting” in the countryside. By the 1840s and 1850s, port cities such as Lāhainā were overflowing with goods and people willing to buy them. In the 1850s, with a suddenly large population of hungry miners in California desiring Hawaiian agricultural goods, there arose yet even more incentive, the writer claimed, to “cultivate sweet potato to enlarge the planting, for the happy laughter of the profitability of the work. The hard work of the planting is beautiful,” he proclaimed, “and the sparkling of the shiny dollars earned from the work is really beautiful.”
This new market economy—despite the agroecological changes it engendered, and despite its unsustainable foundations upon a foreign consumer base and a finite amount of land and labor—had brought “happy laughter” to the Hawaiian sweet potato farmers. With their “sparkling . . . shiny dollars . . . the men dress up in party suits, and ‘dressed to perfection’ the women in silk,” the writer claimed.44 Hawaiʻi’s whaling economy was subservient to the ups and downs of a trans-Pacific economy, subservient to the consumption habits of people thousands of miles away, and subservient to the ability of ka ʻāina (the land) to support this new agroecology in place of the subsistence kalo patches once at the heart of Hawaiian life and labor. But it was “really beautiful,” some thought, the way land and labor were transformed into “shiny dollars.”
Lāhainā’s economic and ecological transformations were matched, halfway around the world, by social and cultural transformations in places such as New London, Connecticut. In New England ports ringing the Long Island Sound and facing out onto Atlantic waters, Hawaiian migrant workers left their mark. In Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, Hawaiians were said to have hung out on the porch of a local inn, carving bone ornaments, and giving credence to the block’s reputation as Bedlam Street. In New Bedford, Massachusetts, in a scene imagined by Herman Melville in Moby-Dick, “actual cannibals stand chatting at street corners; savages outright.” But this was not just in the writer’s mind. A Hawaiian government minister in 1846 noted, “We have heard that there is no part in this ocean untrodden by Hawaiians; and they are also in Nantucket, New Bedford, Sag Harbor, New London and other places in the United States.” Indeed, Hawaiians attended a school in Nantucket as early as the 1820s and some may have stayed at the local “Canacka Boarding-House.”45
New London, Connecticut, was just one of the whale worlds shaped globally by economic and ecological forces yet experienced locally by Hawaiian migrant men. According to a database of New London crew lists from the nineteenth century, at least 120 Hawaiian sailors shipped out of New London in the half-century between 1820 and 1870. On average, these men were between twenty and thirty years old. Their birthplace was the “Sandwich Islands”; their place of residence, New London. Neither caterpillar nor butterfly, ships’ captains alternately labeled the men’s “complexions” as “Dark,” “Black,” “Copper,” “Yellow,” “Light,” and “Colored.” Ships’ manifests also noted that some of these migrants, now living in the Atlantic World, departed New London on voyages to new corners of the world’s oceans, expanding yet further Hawaiian working-class geographies. Kiack Canacker and Tamara [Thomas] Brown, for example, both traveled on voyages to the Indian Ocean in the 1840s. One man who went by the name of Spunyarn shipped at least fou
r times out of New London in the 1830s for points in the South Atlantic off of Brazil. About ten Hawaiian men were enumerated in the 1860 U.S. census as living in New London, their occupations recorded as “Seamen Registered at Custom House.” They were mostly in their twenties, and some had come and gone from New London for many years.46
FIGURE 7. Departures of Hawaiian Seamen from the Port of New London, Connecticut, 1820–1876. Source: New London Crew Lists Index, 1803–1878, G. W. Blunt White Library, Mystic Seaport, Mystic, Connecticut. Compiled by the author.
THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN
If we follow whaling’s reverberations even further inland, beyond the wharf and the customhouse, beyond the inn and the tavern, we find that the industry’s most momentous dance was occurring in the countryside. Whale ship arrivals peaked in the Hawaiian Islands in the 1840s and 1850s. According to Marshall Sahlins, Honolulu and Lāhainā were the two most visited ports in the entire world for American ships in those decades. Even the landlubbing U.S. vice-consul at Lāhainā, Giles Waldo, felt the entirety of the world swirling around him in the 1840s as thousands of seamen disembarked from ships and brought their multitudinous stories ashore. “I feel myself more familiar with our earth now than I ever expected to be,” he wrote. “The matter of fact way in which every new captain tells you ‘the news’ in Tahiti, Kamschatka, Jeddo [Tokyo], Borneo, Guham [Guam], New Zealand, New Holland [Australia], & many other places from all of which we are having arrivals every day, makes me feel quite familiar with them all, & I know not only the physical features of the countries, but the names & characters of all the principal foreign residents in all the ports of the Pacific, as well as the manners & customs of the natives.” This was not only a peak period for foreign seamen visiting Hawaiʻi, but also a peak period for Hawaiian men visiting foreign lands and bringing home stories of foreign peoples and environments. The consequences of so many ship arrivals on Hawaiian society were far-reaching.47
Beyond Hawai'i Page 10
