In 1873, American newspaperman and author Charles Nordhoff (1830-1901) booked passage on the 75-ton sugar schooner, “Fairy Queen,” which sailed one afternoon from Honolulu, bound for Waimea, Kaua‘i.
Aboard the “Fairy Queen,” passengers wrapped themselves in rugs, slept on deck, and carried their own rations, the favorites being poi and fish, while pigs, dogs, and chickens also shared the “Fairy Queen’s” deck with them.
At dawn the following day, the schooner anchored offshore of Waimea and Nordhoff climbed aboard a whaleboat that was steered through small surf to shore, where a few curious Hawaiians watched.
These and roughly 4,500 other Hawaiians, out of a total population of about 5,000, lived on Kaua‘i in 1873.
The remaining residents were persons of European or American ancestry, Chinese, and a handful of other races and nationalities.
Since there were no inns or hotels on the island, Nordhoff would stay at the homes of local residents throughout his tour of Kaua‘i.
On the day he arrived, Nordhoff rode west from Waimea to see Barking Sands.
The following day, he once again set off on horseback, riding to Koloa before noon and to Nawiliwili in the afternoon.
The dirt roads of the time were generally good for travel on horseback, but not for horse-drawn carriages, since steep and slippery sections of Kaua‘i’s roads could not be safely traversed in them.
Nordhoff’s itinerary also included a day’s ride from Nawiliwili to Hanalei, and a tour of the Na Pali Coast aboard a steamship available at Hanalei that also circumnavigated Kaua‘i by sailing on to Nawiliwili.
There, Nordhoff returned to Honolulu in a nighttime voyage.
During his round-the-island tour, Nordhoff saw Hawaiians living simply and easily off the land and sea, and enjoying life.
Nordhoff also observed that Kaua‘i’s sugar plantations were profitable in 1873, their success depending on irrigation ditches carrying water from mountains to dry fields.
Charles Nordhoff was the grandfather of Charles Bernard Nordhoff, who co-authored “Mutiny on the Bounty” (1932), “Men Against the Sea” (1934), and “Pitcairn’s Island” (1934) with James Norman Hall.
