A Honolulu Fourth of July in 1843 (Editorial: Published 1926)

A Honolulu Fourth of July in 1843

Editorial: Honolulu Advertiser: July 6, 1926

A glorious spectacle greeted early morning risers in Honolulu on July 4, 1843, when they saw rounding Diamond Head a great cloud of canvas, bellying to the trade-winds and propelling a great hull, whose sides were pierced for gun ports, and through which the muzzles of cannons protruded. She was the United States kine-of-battle ship “Ohio.”

Visits of warships with the American flag flying over them cheered the American pioneers in the Hawaiian Islands back in the 20’s and 40’s, particularly, for those were troublous decades in island history. But just when trouble clouded the Hawaiian horizon and beset the island ship-of-state, an American warship often, and providentially, hove in sight.

But when one of the greatest wooden-walled warships arrived on the Fourth of July, enthusiasm and patriotism seemed to have no limit. In “Hawaiian Yesterdays”, published in 1906, by Henry M. Lyman, M.D., son of the Rev. Mr. Lyman, who came to Hawaii in the early 30’s as a missionary and was established in Hilo, a graphic account is given of the “Ohio” arriving in Hilo, her long stay in the harbor awaiting a favorable breeze to sail out, and of her arrival at Honolulu.

“Captain Stribling had the splendid three-decker all to himself,” says Lyman, who at that time was a small boy, a passenger on the vessel from Hilo to Honolulu. “The ‘Ohio’ was one of the largest ships in the service; she was the latest and most perfect specimen of naval architecture that the old wooden flotilla had exhibited, dwarfing all of her predecessors in our port, and surpassing them in the number of guns and solidity of structure.” The warship called at Lahaina and saluted the king.

“On the following afternoon, the ‘Ohio’ again weighed anchor, and floated majestically out of the quiet roadstead… We quietly jogged along till daylight overtook us in a calm near Koko Head. At breakfast time, however, the trade wind began to blow and we rounded Diamond Head under full sail-a moving tower of white canvas.

“It was the Fourth of July; so after casting anchor in the roads outside of Honolulu harbor, the sails were furled, and the ship was dressed from spanker-gaff to main-truck and flying jib-boom with the gaily colored ensigns of all nations, displayed to honor the day. Captain Stribling good-humoredly bade his passengers farewell, and set us all on land before the hour of noon, when the yards were manned, and the great guns saluted the flags, thus ending in the roar of cannon our experience of life on a man-of-war.”