The young princess Kaiulani (left) and the five Kaiulanis in the extended Sewall family (clockwise from top left): Kaiulani Williams Wharton, two Anne Kaiulani Winters (daughter and mother), Kaiulani Lee and Kaiulani Christian Kimbrell. (Photo courtesy H. Sewall Williams) Above, the Kaiulani as the Star of Finland. (Photo: SFMNHP) for a delivery dare. Bur a better memorial was to come: today there are five Kaiulanis in the extended Sewall family to keep alive the legacy of the princess and her ship.
in 1898, President McKinley seized the opportunity to take over from the Provisional Government, despite the fact that, under President Cleveland, Congress had voted against the annexation of the Hawaiian Islands. Less than a year later, Kaiulani fell ill after riding hard in a rain storm and died on 6 March 1899, aged 24. Among those she had impressed in her brieflife was Harold Marsh Sewall, son of shipbuilder Arthur Sewall. Harold, as the appointed US representative in Hawaii in 1898, hadhad the task of hauling down the Hawaiian flag and replacing it with the Stars and Stripes. The following year, he named his new daughter Kaiulani, in memory of the princess who had once nodded to him across a theater. Eight thousand miles away, his father named his newest ship in her honor. Harold's further suggestion that a figurehead of the princess grace the ship went unfulfilled due to time constraints; Hackfield' s agents, Williams, Dimond &Co., were already pressing Sewall
SEA HISTORY 91, WINTER 1999-2000
Kaiulani at Sea With a regular off-season voyage to Australia for coal each year, the Kaiulani earned her way in the Hawaiian Line for nine years, bur she was overtaken by steam vessels and was sold to the Alaska Packers Association of San Francisco. In this role, the newly named Star ofFinland rook supplies to the northern salmon canneries with a polyglot gro up of fishermen in crew. Ar the canneries the ships became warehouses for the summer, before carrying men and canned salmon south come autumn. One voyage to Hawaii during World War I returned the ship to her old haunts, bur the end of the war saw her back in business as an Alaska Packer. Her last voyage was in 1927, after which she was laid up with other ships of the fleet in Oakland Creek in Alameda, California. When World War II created an insatiable demand for ships, sailing ships came our of retirement to fill the need. Kaiulani was one of the lucky ones. The last of the Alaska Packers' square riggers, she had survived because of Alaska Packers superintendent A. K. Tichenor and a movie role in "So uls at Sea" in the late 1930s.
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Under the aegis of San Francisco commercial interests, rhe Star ofFinland again became a viable cargo carrier. The refurbished vessel, with her original name, Kaiulani, bur under the Panamanian flag, was loaded with the Danish East Asiatic Company's lumber. She left from Grays Harbor, Washington, on 25 September 1941, bound for Durban, South Africaand so began the voyage for which Kaiulani is best known: the last cargo-carrying voyage of an American-built square rigger around Cape Horn. Captain Hjalmar Wigsren, a veteran of square rig, rounded up a crew of old hands and enthusiastic young men, among them Karl Kortum and Harry Dring. Karl Kortum went on to found the San Francisco Maritime Museum, now the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park, and became a leader in the American shipsaving movement. His intervention saved vessels on all the US coasts and as far afield as Australia and Grear Britain. Dring was Ko rt um's righ r-han d man in San Francisco and was widely respected for his experience in the practicalities of historic ship restoration and for his ability to inspire volunteers and develop skilled, cohesive work crews. His particular talent was to forge connections between generations, linking the skills and attitudes of old hands and passing them on to new generations of ship preservationists. 25