The steam schooner Cosmopolis/Hawaiian steamer Kauai : the Mahukona harbor steamship wreck

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is twofold. With a narrow focus, the purpose is to document in detail the history of the West Coast steam schooner Cosmopolis, which became the Hawaiian steamer Kauai, and later sank at Mahukona Harbor on the Kohala Coast of the Island of Hawai‘i in 1913. This documentation includes the archaeology of a steamship wreck site at Mahukona Harbor, and the confirmation, based upon archaeology and history, that the wreck site at Mahukona Harbor represents the remains of the steamer Kauai and possibly the cargo of its final trip. With a wider focus, the purpose of this thesis is to show that the Hawaiian steamer working in the sugar industry of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries is the same vessel type as the West Coast steam schooner serving that coast’s lumber industry of the same time period. The steamer Cosmopolis / Kauai demonstrates this link, as it was essentially both a steam schooner and a Hawaiian steamer, with only a deck structure modification to separate them. The detailed historical narrative in the thesis shows that it was a typical lumber hauler that became a typical sugar carrier.

The steamer Kauai is significant historically for a number of reasons. Built at San Francisco in 1887 as the steamer Cosmopolis, it was among the first of what many believe to be a California invention, the “steam schooner”. The steam schooner brings into question how early designs of different vessel types may have influenced the evolution of others; further study of these technology transfers is needed. Some scholars believe that the “steam schooner” is a unique California design; others maintain that it came from elsewhere, such as the Great Lakes region. This subject requires further research, and raises many questions concerning technology dispersion in a marine setting.

These schooner-rigged propeller-driven steamships known as steam schooners plied the waters of the West Coast of the United States, Mexico, and Canada well into the twentieth century. They played a key role in the lumber industry on that coast.

The Cosmopolis was the first steam schooner to carry lumber to San Francisco from Grays Harbor, Washington, on a regular basis. The Cosmopolis was sold to Hawai‘i interests in 1895, and the name was changed to Kauai. Most steamers working the sugar industry at that time were built in California or elsewhere on the West Coast; Kauai was one of very few that had a West Coast career prior to coming to Hawai‘i. Most steamers came over almost immediately after they were built. There were a few West Coast-built Hawaiian steamers that were built before the supposed first “steam schooners”. These add to the questions noted above regarding design origins and technology transfers.