by Scott Ridley
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The Fire’s Reach
Sandwich Islands
DECEMBER 1794
THE WASHINGTON ANCHORED at her usual mooring beneath the immense cliff at Kealakekua. They were just yards off the beach from the stone temple and well. The “wives” of the men excitedly came on board and their familiar voices rang with the sense of a homecoming. The harbor seemed spacious with Vancouver’s ships gone, although the British presence was still clear in the British flag John Young was flying outside Kamehameha’s royal house. No one knew it, but half a world away the British had stepped up attacks on neutral American ships and were impressing their crews. The United States and Britain were again on the verge of war. Newspapers in Boston and New Bedford and other port cities ran a steady stream of reports on local ships being chased or seized. Britain was growing desperate, running out of men and money to conduct the war with France. On June 1, a major naval battle took place far out in the Atlantic as the British tried to stop American merchant ships carrying vital grain to France. The British managed to sink several French warships serving as an escort, but the grain ships made it to port. Both sides claimed the engagement as a victory.
The Glorious First of June by Philippe Loutherbourg. At the close of the eighteenth century, many European nations warred over who would become the world‘s next hegemonic superpower. The battle on the “Glorious First of June,” 1794, marked expansion in the struggle between France and Britain that threatened to draw in the United States. The global conflict was also reflected in the contest for control of the Hawaiian Islands.
To stay out of war, Washington sent John Jay as special envoy to London to negotiate a treaty. Jay made wildly unpopular concessions and was burned in effigy in America’s town squares. On his return to New York, he would muse that it was enough fire to light his way along the coast between Boston and Phildelphia at night.
BRITAIN WAS AT THE START of a long ascendancy, but here in the Sandwich Islands, despite the British flag flying, Kendrick would concede nothing. For a few days, trade at Kealakekua proceeded in a warm, relaxed manner and Kendrick continued to build his base of support. Among the crew on board with Kendrick was a young Spaniard, Francisco Palo Marin, whom he planned to leave here to help gather sandalwood. A Kauai native whom Kendrick had nicknamed “General Washington” was also on board. He would return home to serve as one of Kendrick’s men at the other end of the island chain.
Local trust in Kendrick remained high, and he was relied upon by other Americans. John Young came aboard the Washington and told Kendrick that the Jefferson had run aground when she was here a few months earlier. Her captain, Josiah Roberts, had left debts for Kendrick to pay for their stay. Several muskets were owed. Kendrick had cargo to cover the debt and didn’t mind Roberts’s dependence. Everything would be settled up at Macao after the new year. With the British and Spanish leaving Nootka, the Washington’s prospects had never been better. He could settle his outpost at Mawina next spring and establish himself firmly here in the islands. More than just fur trading, there were sandalwood and pearls and the potential for whaling. For a few placid days in the harbor it may have seemed that Kendrick and his men had reached a certain stability at last. Then came dire news from Oahu.
After three years of relative peace in the islands, warfare was breaking out. Kahekili, the last of the old Leeward Island lords, had died in July at Waikiki. The aged king left Oahu to his son Kalanikupule. The islands of Maui, Kahoolawe, Molokai, and Lanai were given to the rule of Kahekili’s half-brother Kaeo, who also remained chief of Kauai. The division set off the kind of uneasiness and plotting among subchiefs that had occurred on Hawaii more than a decade before, and left both Kalanikipule and Kaeo wary and suspicious.
Adding to the rancor was the agreement Kahekili had made with Brown, giving him rights to Maui, Lanai, Molokai, Kahoolawe, and Oahu. Grants by island kings typically ended with their death, and
Kaeo most likely believed that Brown’s grant was now terminated. Brown may have appealed to Kalanikupule and offered him arms and support. This would have goaded Kaeo’s chiefs further. Given traditional jealousies, the potential for trouble needed little stirring.
In early November, with makahiki season under way, there was a lesser threat of attack from Kamehameha in Hawaii. Kaeo gathered up a large party of his warriors and started home to Kauai from Molokai where he commanded the Leeward Island defense. During the journey, he planned to stop on Oahu’s northeast shore, at a traditional spot for food and rest near the village of Waimanalo.
There is some speculation that Kaeo had hostile intent. Kalanikupule’s chiefs on Oahu certainly suspected it and were on edge. They spotted Kaeo’s fleet of canoes approaching and prepared for an attack by digging trenches and quickly piling up earthworks.
When Kalanikupule’s chiefs blocked Kaeo’s canoes from landing, Kaeo’s men became offended and eager for a fight. In a running skirmish with the canoes cruising along the shore, Kaeo’s sharpshooter, Marc Amara, began picking out Oahu chiefs who wore brilliant feathered cloaks, and killed one of Kalanikupule’s favored advisers. Kalanikupule arrived and withdrew his men to halt the fighting. The next day, he let Kaeo’s canoes come ashore, and they met and cried together, renewing their trust and lamenting the death of Kahekili.
After pledging peace, Kaeo continued along the shore to the south side of the island, stopping at the villages on the way and then at Waianae on the west coast. But while he rested there he learned of a plot that had risen among his subchiefs. Eager for war on Oahu, they planned to drown Kaeo during the seventy-mile passage to Kauai. Kaeo had to decide whether to break his pledge of peace to Kalanikupule or be thrown overboard like a dog. Fighting to gain a kingdom and save his life, or dying bravely in battle, were preferable options to drowning at the hands of his own chiefs. Reluctantly, he chose to attack Kalanikupule.
Word of the pending battle spread through the islands. Men were drawn from Maui, Molokai, Lanai, and Kauai. Thousands amassed.
The outcome would have far-reaching consequences for control of the leeward domain. For William Brown, the situation was critical. If Kaeo became the victor, Brown could lose his claim to these islands, unraveling what he and Vancouver had won and jeopardizing potential fortunes that could not be regained. He quickly placed his ships, arms, and men into service for Kalanikupule.
On November 21, Brown appeared at the entrance to Honolulu Harbor, just a few miles west of Waikiki and about twenty miles to the southeast of Waianae, where Kaeo was encamped. The native people called the harbor “Kou.” Brown had reputedly been the first European to enter it through a narrow channel in the reef a year earlier. Although other traders knew of the harbor, and Vancover had mentioned it, Honolulu had not appeared very noteworthy. The surrounding shore was rocky and relatively desolate, with a small, poor village, muddy beach, and random clumps of brush and a thin line of palm trees above the tide line. Higher up the slopes, scrub vegetation grew thicker and greener as it climbed to the rugged and verdant Koolau Mountains. Just to the west was the channel to Wai Momi (Pearl Harbor), which branched into three inlets entering rough terrain cut with ravines and rising ground. Despite its impoverished appearance, Honolulu was a hidden jewel, the only harbor in the islands that offered a protected anchorage and deep water close to shore. Brown had named it Fair Haven and seemed to regard the harbor as his own. This is where he wanted to cut off Kaeo’s advance on Waikiki. It was about to become a killing ground.
To counter Kaeo’s sharpshooters and gunners from Kauai, Brown armed Kalanikupule’s gathering troops with powder and muskets and added several of his own men. Kaeo landed his forces on the beach to the west of Pearl Harbor at Ewa and marched overland. Except for rocky valleys and marshes, the shore was broad and open, offering ideal terrain for gunners. In the first encounter, at a place named Punahawele, Marc Amara killed one of Brown’s men and a few other foreigners under Kalanikupule, and Kaeo’s warriors routed the Oahu forces. Skirm
ishing continued for several days, and Kaeo steadily advanced along the shore and hills of Ewa above Pearl Harbor. Temporarily beaten, Kalanikupule collected his scattered forces along the eastern arm of Pearl Harbor between the Kalauao shore and the upper fields of Aiea. Protected by a natural ridge and cliffs to the northeast, Kalanikupule determined to halt Kaeo there in a decisive battle.
EXACTLY WHAT NEWS CAME to Kealakekua, or how much Kendrick knew, is not recorded, but he did find out that Brown had sided with Kalanikupule. While skirmishing along the shore had not been cause for alarm, Brown’s involvement altered the nature of the fight. If Kalanikupule and Brown were victorious over Kaeo, they would take Kauai and Niihau. This would give Brown control over all the Leeward Islands. Brown had to be stopped at Oahu. With his habitual practice of plunging into the center of events, Kendrick took John Howell and others on board the Washington and sailed for Honolulu. On December 3, the Washington warped through the crooked, narrow channel. Brown’s two ships, the Jackall and Prince Lee Boo, stood outlined against the rocky shore.
Kendrick’s exact purposes are unknown, and there are widely varying accounts about the role he played. Some accounts state that Brown appealed to Kendrick for help, and he agreed to assist the British merchant for a price. But local historians, relying on information from natives who observed the battles and had a detailed understanding of the conflict between the Americans and British, say that Kendrick took no part in the fight. The appearance of the Washington would have provoked Brown’s deep-seated hostility toward the Americans, and especially toward Kendrick, who had caused a litany of problems: the infamous capture of Colnett’s Argonaut; the muskets provided at Clayoquot that Wickaninish used to drive Brown and his men from the sound; Kendrick’s claim of lands on the Northwest Coast; Vancouver’s inability to remove him and his men from the islands; and Kendrick’s men and arms from Kauai opposing him now, causing the deaths of Brown’s gunner and Kalanikupule’s steady loss of ground. Given what they each had at stake, the coming battle held the element of a proxy war between the two men.
Kendrick’s low regard for Brown and his brutal trading tactics was obvious in the sarcastic parody he had offered to Vancouver’s officers. But in this remote harbor now, Kendrick was outgunned by Brown’s two ships. Anchoring near the Jackall, Kendrick undoubtedly exchanged formalities and discussed the situation. Perhaps he wanted to dampen Brown’s involvement by standing witness to the events about to occur, or to intervene at a critical moment. Going ashore, Kendrick may also have met with Kaeo and Kalanikupule as the two sides prepared for battle.
WITHIN DAYS OF KENDRICK’S ARRIVAL, Kaeo’s men crossed the Pearl River and advanced on Aiea. While the Prince Lee Boo remained with the Washington, Brown took the Jackall up into the eastern arm of Pearl Harbor. He sent out eighteen or twenty men, eight in two armed boats, and ten or a dozen ashore led by his first mate, George Lamport.
On the morning of December 11, Kaeo reportedly came through the cultivated fields below the ravines. To the northeast, on the slopes above him, Kalanikupule’s brother, Koalaukani, was positioned on the raised path from Kalauao to Aiea. Kalanikupule’s uncle and war chief, Kamohomoho, occupied the shingly beach at Malei to the south, and Kalanikupule held the middle of the line in the uplands of Aiea. Just off the beach, Brown with the Jackall and his armed boats were positioned to shell Kaeo’s troops and cut off any retreat along the shore at Pearl Harbor.
As Kaeo’s thousands of warriors advanced, Koalaukani’s forces descended from the path above them and broke the main column. Then, in an attempt to encircle Kaeo’s forces, Kalanikupule’s men came up, as did Kamohomoho’s. Fighting went on through the day, and this time
Brown’s gunners succeeded in killing several of Kaeo’s chiefs and sharpshooters between the ravines and the beach below Aiea. In the late afternoon, with his forces in disarray, Kaeo retreated toward Pearl Harbor.
Amid the scattering forces, Brown’s men noticed a small group taking shelter in a ravine near the shore. Among them, they could see the flash of a chief’s vivid yellow-feathered war cape. The boats fired swivel guns and the Jackall poured cannon fire into the ravine. Realizing they had a chief at bay, Kalanikupule’s warriors descended from the upland. They came upon Kaeo and his entourage and surrounded them. Despite being cornered, Kaeo refused to submit, and they killed him and his wives, and six or more of his chiefs and their women. Through the night, bodies were gathered from where they had fallen in the hills and piled on the beach near Paaiau. Kahulunuikaaumoku, one of the daughters of a high priest who had died with Kaeo, was thought to be dead and laid on the mound of corpses. During the night she was pecked in the eye by a bird and regained consciousness. Gathering her strength, she swam across an inlet to the farther side of Aiea and hid in the Halawa uplands, living to later tell her tale of the battle.
THE NEXT MORNING JOHN KENDRICK and one of his officers were at breakfast in his cabin below deck on the Lady Washington. Sunlight reflected off the water and through the transom windows, illuminating the low ceiling and the glasses of water on the narrow table. All the previous day, the boom of cannons had sounded from the west, echoing from the ravines and distant cliff faces over the lowlands. The night had fallen quiet. Word had come to the Washington that Kaeo was dead. Now would come a brutal turn of events.
A call sounded on deck of the approach of the Jackall. According to Kamehameha’s aide, Isaac Davis, to celebrate Kalanikupule’s victory, Brown ordered a salute to be fired. It may have also been Brown’s statement of his own victorious return. Below in his cabin, Kendrick heard the blast of the Jackall‘s first cannon. Then the second. The third came at close range. The Jackall was within yards of the Washington when a fiery explosion ripped the side of the hull, scattering round and grapeshot and spraying the deck. The captain’s cabin became a smoking, splintered hole. On deck, two seamen were killed and several others were bleeding. Stunned and outraged, some of the Washington‘s men likely went for the swivel guns and arms chest. Amid confusion and shouting, Brown claimed it was an accident. First mate James Rowan, and perhaps John Howell, stopped the men from firing on the Jackall.
In the shattered main cabin below the companionway, Kendrick’s officer lay fatally wounded. Kendrick too had been struck. He was brought up and laid out on deck. In a native-based account, he survived a few hours and gave orders to take the Washington homeward. But in the story passed on by Brown’s men, he was killed immediately after being struck in the head by a wad from the cannon. There was an air of disbelief that surrounded the covered shape of his large frame. After all the mortal challenges he had survived in battles at sea as a privateer, and in typhoons, hurricanes, and illness, it was this odd, unexpected blast that took him. At fifty-four years old, an age considered remarkable among men who spent their lives at sea, John Kendrick was gone.
Those who had served with him from the time they left Boston, such as young John Cordis and John Maud, found it hard to believe. In this sudden, brutal moment, they had lost their captain and the dream of returning home in glory. The legend would have no happy ending. The final work of establishing an American outpost would be left undone; no riches, no reward for all they had endured. Anchored not far from them, the Jackall sat like a challenge they could not avoid, and in the first few hours their outrage and disbelief passed into a brooding suspicion as conjectures became allegations.
LATE THAT AFTERNOON, the remains of Kendrick and his three unnamed men were wrapped in winding sheets and rowed ashore. In the thin line of palms beyond the beach (believed to be along what is now
South King Street in Honolulu), the crew dug graves in the packed earth. Armed crewmen gathered as John Howell most likely uttered the traditional liturgy from The Book of Common Prayer: “earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust …” Natives who watched the ceremony may have known of the animosity between the two captains. They believed that the prayer and ceremony were sorcery intended to bring about William Brown’s death. Kalanikupule was all
egedly warned by “Kendrick’s son” to take good care of the grave or “it shall be disturbed at your peril.” A young member of the crew, perhaps John Cordis, may have been the one who made the threat. That night, however, the grave was opened and robbed to obtain Kendrick’s winding sheet, which the natives considered an object of power.
The crew’s suspicions about the killing did not subside. In an attempt to settle the matter, an inquest was held aboard one of Brown’s ships. Brown reportedly said that he had ordered three guns to be unshotted for the salute. The gunner fired the first two, and finding the third not primed, “ye Apron of ye 4th Gun was taken of, which was fir’d & being shotted with round and Grape Shot, it pierced the side of ye Lady Washington & killed Capt. Kendrick as he sat at his table, & killed & wounded many upon deck …” The entire question came down to the word of Brown’s men, who insisted that firing the loaded cannon was an accident.
Accidents of this type were rare, and Brown’s compelling motives to kill Kendrick certainly warranted suspicion. The shot was said in many accounts to have passed through “the side of the ship.” If the shot passed through a porthole, as one version related, or the transom windows (both favored shots of gunners), the excuse would have appeared very thin.
But despite suspicion, and whatever allegations had been made, the Washington‘s officers and crew had no facts to refute Brown’s claim that the killing was an accident. The foreign officers who conducted the inquest on the deck of the British merchant ship found John Kendrick “a casualty,” an incidental death in the battle that took place. Eager to be off and have the matter settled, Howell, who later characterized himself as Kendrick’s “assistant,” accepted the finding, and would soon reap rich gains from the killing. James Rowan, the Washington‘s next in command, yielded to Howell, and the Washington was repaired and set off for Macao.