guaranteeing ship mortgages to encourage the building of ships in US yards. A special amendment to the act would be required to bring Kaiulani under this provision. Alan Hutchiso n, Karl Kortum, and fellow Kaiulani advocate Belmont "Van" VerStandig testified before the House committee, asking for a loan guarantee in the amount of $5 00 ,000. The amendment passed the House and Senate and was signed into law by President Johnson. Then, as Alan Hutchison put it:
Kaiulani's crew throwing a sea stow in the main upper topgallant.
"If! had had an opportunity to survey the hull earlier, I would have recommended againstacceptingher!"Therewasnointernal structure, the hull had been badly damaged from having logs dropped into her hold, and the rust damage was extensive. Moving forward, however, Hutchison managed to secure a US Navy tow to bring the Kaiulani to the US naval base Subic Bay, where she was subsequently drydocked. In Washington, all efforts were focused on raising the necessary funds to pay for repairs. The National Maritime Union in New York gave a generous loan for the restoration work, but it was proving difficult to find enough additional support for the significant sums needed to finish the job. Afrer a year, the funds NMHS had in hand for the project had been spent, and Jim Kleinschmidt decided to return to the United States for personal reasons. Ir was determined that the best way to protectKaiulani for the time being was to sink her, and she was sunk. Some months later, Kaiulani was pumped out and refloared-temporarily- fo r a visi t by Lady Bird Johnson, and then sunk again. Back in Washington, NMHS retained C harles Wittholz, a naval architect specializing in ship restoration, to work on the project. Wittholz was invited to a council at the San Francisco Maritime Museum to come up with a plan and budget for
refloaring Kaiulani and beginning restoration work anew. The group cam e up with an estimate of $200 ,000 for the project. Mr. Hutchison, deciding to err on the side of caution, doubled that amount, and then finally decided to round up to an even $5 00,000 as their fin an cial goal, to cover all contingencies. The next step was to secure a loan guaranteed by the US government, under the Merchant Marine Act of 1936,
The passage of the "KaiulaniAmendmeht" was front-page news in Manila when Charlie Wittholz and I arrived to confer with the Philippine National Shipyard for the completion of the hull work ... (W]e were given a royal welcome by the top officials of the shipyard. They told us they had surveyed the hull and could bring her up to Lloyd's specifications for, you guessed it, $500,000! Wittholz and I went on to Hong Kong to m eet with shipyards there on rerigging the Kaiulani and, en route to the US, m ade a stop in Honolulu to talk with Jim Kleinschmidt, who was then overseeing
(right) When Alan H utchison found Kaiulani in 1963, she was serving out the end of her career as a log barge fo r the Madrigal Shipping Company ofManila.
SEA HISTORY 142, SPRJNG 2013
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