Listed below are (slightly edited) articles that have appeared in 2008. For other years, click on the above links.

2008 Articles

January 2008:  A Drydock for Oahu

February 2008:  One Graving Drydock

March 2008: The Merchants Are Aroused

April 2008:Schroeder Board on Pearl Harbor Job

May 2008:  Watertown: Opposite the Shark-Pen

June 2008:  Drydock Bids are Rejected

In April 2006, ShengKai “Karl” Cheng of the Pacific Division, Naval Facilities Engineering Command (NAVFAC PAC) asked: “Professor: I was wondering if you have looked up historical information, such as photos of construction, concreting, frame works etc. for Pearl Harbor shipyard Drydock #1. I am particularly interested in the structural elements of drydock construction.”

I had indeed chanced upon some relevant information while researching the contemporaneous building of the Nu`uanu Dam at Reservoir No. 4. Some additional research yielded more details, which I shared with Karl. Since then, I accumulated more facts and I am ready to place the project in its proper historical context in two, perhaps three, compact installments. 

The backdrop to the U.S. Navy’s association with Pearl Harbor is well known: the first soundings by a navy vessel were taken by Commodore Charles Wilkes at the request of King Kamehameha III in 1840. In 1873, a secret survey led by General John McAlister Schofield recognized the locale’s potential. In the same year, King Lunalilo was prepared to allow the lease (or, by some accounts, cession) of the Pearl River Lagoon in exchange for a reciprocity treaty. Under King Kalakaua, the 1887 renewal of the 1875 Reciprocity Treaty incorporated a provision granting the U.S. “the exclusive right to enter the harbor of the Pearl River in the Island of Oahu, and to establish and maintain there a coaling and repair station for the use of vessels of the United States, and to that end the United States may improve the entrance to said harbor and do all other things needful to the purpose aforesaid.”

Nevertheless, it was only between 1900 and 1905 that land for the Navy’s use was taken by eminent domain and dredging of the entrance to the harbor commenced; the center of operations, the Naval Station, remained at Honolulu Harbor even longer than that. Interestingly, the Pacific Commercial Advertiser (PCA) of Dec. 7, 1906 presents a map of Pearl Harbor illustrating the specified course for the “first [yacht] race of the Governor’s Cup” within the harbor’s Middle and East Lochs, hardly a military exercise!

With the signing of the Hawaiian Organic Act in 1900 came appropriations from Congress to be expended, subject to typical provisos, for civilian (such as water works), military (e.g., fortifications) and dual use (e.g., lighthouses) facilities.

It so happened that the Naval Station at Honolulu Harbor had no repair facility of its own. According to Edward D. Beechert’s “Honolulu:  Crossroads of the Pacific,” only a marine railway was operated at the harbor since 1882 by its builder (businessman Samuel Wilder) under a lease arrangement with the government of Hawai`i. Navy vessels, it was reported, would normally be repaired and overhauled at Mare Island Naval Shipyard in California, about 2400 miles away!

To rectify this problem, a petition (or “memorial” as it was then called) to allocate funds for a “Dry Dock in the Harbor of Honolulu” was circulated for signature and subsequent transmittal to the President and the Congress via Hawai`i’s Delegate to the latter, Prince Jonah Kuhio Kalaniana`ole. As reprinted in the Dec. 26, 1906 Evening Bulletin [EB], the petition made three arguments in favor of the facility: It would benefit “the Navy and Merchant Marine in times of peace as well as in times of war;” it would sustain “American shipping and commerce generally;” and it would provide revenue to the Territory in lieu of the “customs revenue and post office receipts” it surrendered to the Federal Government after annexation.

Eight months later, apparently aware that the Merchants’ Association initiated the petition and subsequent “agitation,” Naval Station Commandant Rear Admiral Samuel W. Very extended an invitation to the membership (through Territorial Secretary Ernest A. Mott- Smith) to discuss an alternate solution. The Admiral’s proposal was to abandon the idea of a drydock at Honolulu in favor of expanding Pearl Harbor, where “it had been proposed to have six drydocks there, two big ones for battleships and vessels like the Manchuria, and four small ones for smaller vessels [EB, 8/23/1907].” He argued that the Honolulu Harbor was too constricted and exposed a place for such a development, and that it was imperative that “we must all pull together to get something done with that magnificent harbor of ours,” in the face of strong opposition in Washington, D.C. He went on the clarify that “a drydock which could contain vessels like the Manchuria, would occupy five acres, without the shops, and it would be hard to get that space at Honolulu. With the shops thirty acres would be needed, and this no private concern could afford to go into without Government assistance.” In other words, he was calling for what we now refer to as public-private partnerships (PPP).

The merchants agreed and passed a resolution that partly averred that “the opening of Pearl Harbor besides providing adequate facilities for military, naval and general commercial purposes will afford direct shipment for large and increasing amounts of freight from the central and west portion of the Island of Oahu [EB, 8/24/1907].” At its Aug. 30, 1907 meeting, the Association’s Secretary E. H. Paris “offered the resolution of endorsing the Pearl Harbor dry dock, which was adopted without debate [EB, 8/31/1907].”

Last month (January 2008), I related that in August 1907 Admiral Samuel Williams Very, the Naval Station Commandant in Honolulu, persuaded the merchants and businessmen of the city to pursue the construction of a drydock and other facilities at Pearl Harbor rather than in the constrained space of Honolulu Harbor. 

The Admiral’s position was in play at the national level at a time when the U.S. Congress and Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt’s administration were considering the future of the Pacific Fleet’s presence in Asia, Hawai`i and the West Coast. In fact, the US Navy was the “big stick” in the President’s interpretation of the old adage “speak softly and carry a big stick” that came to represent his foreign policy. The Panama Canal, under construction at the time, was to play a major role in this debate, along with certain social conditions. 

On the mainland, more than in Hawai`i, racial tensions directed formal and informal actions against Eastern and Southern European as well as Asian immigrants. Policies favoring “citizen labor,” particularly in public works, had strong racial implications in both places. As such, it became an issue in connection with government drydock construction in Hawai`i.

The following is a composite picture I assembled from accounts I found in local newspapers: The Pacific Commercial Advertiser (PCA) and its sister paper The Sunday Advertiser (SA), the Hawaiian Star (HS) and the Evening Bulletin (EB); a merger of the last two on July 1, 1912, gave rise to the Honolulu Star-Bulletin (SB). These newspapers had assigned correspondents in Washington, but for a some time, the EB enjoyed the advantage of receiving sometimes weekly telegraphs directly from Hawai`i’s Delegate to Congress, Prince Jonah Kuhio Kalaniana`ole.

I also looked at the New York Times (NYT) and several other documents, such as transcripts of Congressional hearings. For some technical matters, I consulted the monumental Paper No. 1354 in the ASCE Transactions of 1915 by Admiral Homer R. Stanford, Civil Engineer and Chief of Bureau of Yards and Docks, US Navy; this 71-page paper elicited 31 pages of discussion! When the Pacific Fleet arrived in Honolulu on September 1907 under the command of Rear Admiral James H. Dayton, only three of its four cruisers (West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Colorado) could be accommodated simultaneously at the crammed quarters of the naval coaling station in the harbor. The occasion, however, made it clear to the merchants that navy presence was good for business as “directly or indirectly the city, as a whole, is feeling the effects of the fleet’s visit in the line of trade,“ one company advertising:

“Boys of the Navy! Now is your chance to drink the famous PRIMO BEER made in Honolulu [EB, 9/7/1907].”

The visit also occasioned a social event: To honor the fleet’s naval officers a newspaper announced “tonight will be a gala occasion at the Alexander Hotel roof garden” to which “the people of Honolulu are cordially invited to be present [EB, 9/3/1907].” I am sure that everybody in town knew who was included and who was excluded from this invitation!

In the national debate about naval expansion, a California senator was said to have argued “until we get an American population in the islands, it is useless to build a naval station that might be captured by a foreign foe assisted by foreign residents [EB, 12/4/1907],” whereas, General J. Franklin Bell, ranking head of the Army, testified “unless the United States makes Pearl Harbor impregnable this outpost could be captured by Japan in the event of war and the advantage lost by the United States would go to Japan, which would then have the mid-Pacific outpost [3/1/1908].”

The local Chamber of Commerce initiated a national drive to gain support for a naval station at Pearl Harbor by encouraging business organizations throughout the country to endorse a petition to that effect. They also dispatched H. P. Wood, Secretary of the Hawaii Promotion Committee to Washington, to reinforce the efforts of Judge Francis M. Hatch, their regular agent in the nation’s capital who had earlier served as “Minister Plenipotentiary and Envoy Extraordinary to the United States from the Hawaiian Republic [NYT, 11/14/1895]” and as a Justice of the Hawaiian Supreme Court. Governor Walter F. Frear went with “thirty-one subjects down in my note-book,” including Pearl Harbor, immigration policy, and the new College of Agriculture, now the University of Hawai`i [EB, 11/1/1907]. The Merchants commissioned a widely distributed map [e.g., EB, 7/16/1908] depicting Hawaii as “the Cross Roads of the Pacific.” In a similar spirit Pearl Harbor was described as “a Pacific Malta [PCA, 3/7/1908]” and later “the Gibraltar of
the Pacific [EB, 6/19/1911].”

To help secure the Congressional appropriation, the Chamber decided to pay for at least 25 borings to supplement the limited “data on well borings on Ford island and other places in the vicinity,” whereas Supt. of Public Works Marston Campbell reportedly said that the Territory “has tendered the use of all the drills, machinery and appurtenances that it may have [EB, 12/17/1907].”

Based on the information obtained, the Army Engineer in Honolulu, Captain Curtis William Otwell, prepared volume and cost estimates for dredging the Pearl Harbor channel to 30 and to 35-feet below low tide. The transcript of the hearings of a US House Subcommittee on Appropriations in February 1908 (obtained via Google Books) reflects that Otwell’s full report had not been received but a cable implied that the conditions found could be “coral underlaid by mud.” The later 1915 paper, however, stated, “There is no regular stratification of the material [ASCE].” General Alexander McKenzie, US Chief of Engineers, testified that Otwell was instructed to provide advice but that the dredging of the channel would probably be a Navy job under a naval appropriation.

For about a year, the local newspapers’ coverage of the subject fluctuated wildly between optimism and pessimism, following the amendments of the naval appropriations bill as it moved on its tortuous path through Congress. When passed on May 13, 1908, Act 13 provided, among other things:

“The Secretary of the Navy is hereby authorized and directed to establish a naval station at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on the site heretofore acquired for that purpose, and to erect thereat all necessary machine shops, storehouses, coal sheds, and other necessary buildings and to build thereat one graving drydock capable of receiving the largest war vessel of the navy, at a cost not to exceed two million dollars for said drydock.”

In April 1908, Captain Corwin Rees replaced Admiral Very as commandant of Honolulu naval station and on June 1, Engineer C. W. Parks, along with Assistant Engineer Glenn S. Burrell arrived with a party of about twelve to take charge of the drydock project. Parks came from Portsmouth, N.H., where he had met Captain Rees. Burrell was from the naval yard at Boston. With expertise in reinforced concrete and drafting, Architect L. C. Woodman arrived two days earlier from Seattle where he had worked on a similar drydock.

Parks rushed to work on his first day in Honolulu because he was required to present a design report to a special Board headed by Rear Admiral Seaton Schroeder who was on his way to Honolulu as commander of the “USS Virginia” of the Atlantic Fleet.

This fleet, known also as the Great White Fleet, had sailed on December 16, 1907 from Old Point Comfort, Hampton Roads, Virginia, on a historic circumnavigation of the globe. It consisted of 16 battleships and their escorts and carried 14,000 men. Its itinerary included arriving in Honolulu in July 1908. So Engineer Parks had but about a month to carry out the necessary surveys and to come up with a drydock design!

As if this was not enough to keep him busy, he immediately found himself in a dispute involving citizen labor that had the merchants aroused [HS, 6/9/1908].

Following the May 1908 approval by the US Congress of a naval station at Pearl Harbor, civil engineer C. W. Parks and his entourage of about a dozen were dispatched to Honolulu to conduct surveys and to prepare plans and specifications for the planned drydock (see last month, Feb. 2008). The Evening Bulletin quoted him on his first day in town saying “the dock will probably be similar to that in Seattle [EB 6/1/1908].”

At the same time frame, the Army was proceeding with its own fortifications at Pearl Harbor and elsewhere under the direction of US Engineer Curtis William Otwell. The bids for one project, the enlarging and deepening of the Honolulu Harbor and the removal of a sand spit on which a lighthouse stood for quite a while, were opened by Otwell in early September of the previous year. With a 97-cents per cubic yard offer, the Hawaiian Dredging Co. (that was destined to play a major role at Pearl Harbor as well) beat those of the North American Dredging Co. at $1.27, the San Francisco Bridge Co. at $1.18, and local competitor Cotton Brothers & Co. at $1.14 [EB 9/9/1907].

According to the Sunday Advertiser, the bid winner deployed two dredgers for this job, the suction dredger “Reclamation” and the modified deep dredger “Governor.” The material obtained from the drilling and blasting operations was placed east of the small Quarantine Island via rail cars that were brought to the site by a scow in sets of ten [SA 3/1/1908]. When the job was finished “eight or nine months ahead of the allotted time,” the Pacific Commercial Advertiser informs us, “a new sand island” had been created [PCA 12/8/1908], that, aptly, if not imaginatively, became known as... Sand Island!

Major Eben Eveleth Winslow had arrived by the Sheridan a month earlier to take over Otwell’s duties and to occupy his office space in the commercial McCandless Building on Bethel Street [EB 11/12/1908]. Incidentally, an Army anecdote in a book by Lenore Fine has him reminding “young officers that the difference between ‘Engineer Corps’ and ‘Corps of Engineers’ was the same as the difference between a ‘beer bottle’ and a ‘bottle of beer!’”

In the interim, as soon as he had arrived on June 1st 1908 on the steamer Siberia, Parks, his assistant G. S. Burrell and Captain Corwin P. Rees, the new local naval commandant since April, “took the train from here and went over the ground where they are to work, and returned in the Navy launch late in the afternoon.” As a general impression, “the lonesomeness of the place at Puuloa rather disappointed the party [PCA 6/2/1908].”

The train from Honolulu that they rode belonged to the Oahu Railroad and Land (OR&L) Co. line that had a station outside the naval property, cut across the Ewa plain, skirted along the Wai`anae coast and around Ka’ena Point to its terminus at Kahuku (for details, see my June and July 2000 Wiliki articles). Pu`uloa is the traditional Hawaiian name of the area around the harbor’s mouth that could also be reached by sea. The Iroquois (as in “Iroquois Point”) and the Navajo were two often-mentioned Navy tugs used for this purpose at that time.

Interestingly, above Bishop’s Point (that is still shown on modern maps on the east side of the entrance channel) was the locality where “the Iroquois has grounded several times [PCA 2/27/1909],” illustrating, among other things, the need for improvements if a naval station was to be feasible in the vicinity.

To conduct the necessary surveys at some of its Pu`uloa lands, Park reached an “amicable agreement” for free access with the Honolulu Plantation that was at the time licensed to cultivate sugar cane there [PCA 6/4/1908]. The actual surveys started the next day by the navy crew under the supervision of assistant civil engineer Burrell [EB, 6/6/1908] but, to the newcomers’ discomfort, “sharp and stubborn thorns... of several varieties” seriously hampered their progress [EB 6/15/1908].

Regarding the naval station construction projects, at the time of Park’s arrival “the matter of labor on the work is still undecided, and whether the work will be done by the government or let out to contract was still to be decided upon [PCA 6/2/1908].”

Along these lines, the morning newspaper published a short editorial encouraging “the strongest kind of representation ought to be made to the Navy Department in favor of the employment of white and Hawaiian labor on the navy yard at Pearl Harbor,” and that “there would be no injustice to Japanese and Chinese residents in such procedure, as they, having practical control of private construction in this Territory, might well let American citizens have a chance at the public undertakings [PCA 6/6/1908].”

With a potent exclusionary spirit, the Evening Bulletin of the same day added that the Merchant Association and the Chamber of Commerce were “strongly in favor of having citizen labor used” but also that the federal government should avoid paying higher rates than those offered by the private sector in Hawai`i “in order that the local industry might not be embarrassed [EB 6/6/1908].”

A committee appointed by Captain Rees recommended, at least for the on-going preliminary work, wage rates that were consistent with the desires of local businesses. Regarding the source of workers, however, there was “no understanding as to the racial quality of labor to be employed on the whole job, but [the seven men] hired so far are citizens [SA 6/7/1908].”

“Fervor and commotion” would accurately describe events during the next few days: On June 9, the PCA clarified its position by saying that, although “what Federal contractors do is none of Honolulu’s business,” citizen workers residing in Hawaii should be given priority over outsiders. Except for small farmers, it reasoned, workers from the Coast should be avoided because some were union organizers, while most were anti-Chinese and anti-Japanese. Moreover, the editors continued, when brought here in 1899 by the construction firm of Lord & Belser, Californians voted for the Home Rulers and against “the Republican and Democratic tickets [and] the employing classes;” in other words, “they were against property, stability, conservatism, capital.”

On the same day, under a headline that said “the merchants are aroused,” the Hawaiian Star explained that a group of them were admitted by engineer Parks to discuss the matter only after “being assured that their ideas were different” than the Advertiser’s. The engineer was reported to have said that, because of its possibly adverse international implications, if it “were taken too much by the press,” he could not, in his federal capacity, discuss the issue openly. He nevertheless offered assurances that “before Pearl Harbor is completed everyone will be satisfied [HS 6/9/1908].” The EB gave a similar account, and both papers reported that the Association voted to simply drop the question and to express “confidence in engineer Parks [EB 6/12/1908].”

Although acknowledging that some labor had to be imported to avoid the substitution of “Asiatic for white labor,” the PCA strongly warned against the elements that, after the Great Earthquake of April 18, 1906, brought about the experience of “the rebuilders of San Francisco, who have had all the $8 per day bricklayers and $9 per day plumbers forced upon them by union rules that they crave [6/10/1908].”

Speaking on the wider labor conditions in Hawai`i while on a general inspection tour of the Territory that included Pearl Harbor, U.S. Secretary of the Interior James Rudolph Garfield enunciated “there is one point regarding which I am clear - that you must positively get European labor in the Islands either directly or through the United States [EB 6/29/1908].” As if wishing to have the last word, however, the PCA came out against homesteading farmers from “Italy or Spain or Portugal” but favoring “[Anglo-Saxons and Celts] from an English-speaking American base [6/30/1908].”

Such was the ethnic and racial political climate of those times!

As quoted in the Evening Bulletin one hundred years ago, the Army and Navy Journal envisioned that “the new dock ... will be large enough to take in battleships which may be designed in the next twenty-five years [and] that the Pearl Harbor station shall be a model of its kind, with elaborate coaling, cold storage and handling facilities, as well as a plant for repairing ships [EB 6/13/1908].”

Last month (March 2008), I explained that in June 1908 Navy engineers stationed in Honolulu under the direction of C. W. Parks were feverishly gathering data relating to Pearl Harbor improvements, including land surveys, borings and soundings, ahead of the arrival of Rear Admiral Seaton Schroeder who was to chair a board to pass judgment on the plans for the new Naval Station. The Admiral was in command of the “USS Virginia,” one of the battleships in the Atlantic Fleet that was on a historic cruise around the world. The impending sojourn in Hawai`i of the “Great White Fleet” generated much anxiety and anticipation in Honolulu.

Led by Territorial Secretary Mott-Smith, the Chamber of Commerce and other mercantile groups organized several planning, reception and entertainment committees to welcome the armada. Neither was the profit motive subdued in the process: Some looked forward to the business opportunity of supplying the fleet, but Admiral Samuel W. Very, the local naval commandant, let them down by saying “Do you suppose that the matter of food is not planned for in the movement of navy vessels just as carefully as anything else? Fleets are not sent out on cruises to get their provisions by chance [Pacific Commercial Advertiser, PCA 3/20/1908].” Moreover, responding to merchants and ranchers who had sought his influence in Washington, Delegate Kuhio explained that the Navy had, in fact, procured enough beef to take the fleet to Australia “which was one of the cheapest meat markets in the world [EB 6/1/1908].” Nevertheless, replenishment of perishables and expenditures by Navy personnel on shore leave boded well for the local economy.

The fleet left San Francisco for Honolulu on July 7, 1908 under the command of Rear Admiral Charles Stillman Sperry who had replaced the ailing Rear Admiral Robley Dunglison Evans.

In a letter to Mott-Smith that was reprinted by the PCA Sperry had suggested, among other things, modes of cooperation between the fleet patrol and the local police, emphasizing “that within the past ten years the class of men in the service has totally changed,” and boasting “there is nowhere in the world a body of working men equal to them in good character and intelligence.”

Drawing upon earlier experiences with landing “as many as three to four thousand men per day [without] the slightest trouble,” he asked for at least six convenient boat landings capable of accommodating a 40-foot steamer with adequate on-shore staging room, and “leaflets” showing sailors “the excursions which may be made in the vicinity, the means of conveyance, and the lawful and proper fares.” He revisited this last point by cautioning against “any attempt of imposing against them any excessive charges,” and suggesting that “the transportation lines along the Coast towns have very frequently made the uniform of the sailor a free passport on all their lines.” He also claimed that the sailors would not be interested in visiting saloons and drinking if better accommodations were made available to them, as for example the facilities of the YMCA. To clarify his claim, he attached a letter from G. S. Martin, the Secretary in Charge of the San Francisco YMCA, that listed a summary of services offered there, e.g., number of individuals served, number of beds rented, meals served, games played, etc.

Of a peculiarly Hawaiian twist was the Admiral’s answer to questions “whether or not the hula hula [sic] should be given as entertainment to the men” to which he responded with “an emphatic negative.” In his opinion, the hula was “prohibited by law, and while it may be decently performed, the public belief would be quite to the contrary if it were given, even if it were not forbidden.”

He estimated a Honolulu arrival of July 16 and agreed to a request made through Governor Frear to “have the fleet pass within sight during daylight” of the “Leper Settlement, Molokai [PCA 6/10/1908].”

It is of note that not everybody in town was as positively inclined as the merchants toward the comfort and convenience of the visiting sailors. The Honolulu Board of Supervisors, for example, rejected a suggestion from Captain Corwin P. Rees, who had replaced Admiral Very in April, to oil the dusty streets on the waterfront because “there was nothing to justify the expense,” even though “Chairman Hustace suggested the water carts be got out [PCA 6/13/1908]” instead.

On July 16, the first, second and fourth Divisions of the fleet anchored off Diamond Head in view of “cheering throngs [EB 7/16/1908].” As planned, the third Division was to “proceed at once to Maui and anchor there to take coal from colliers [EB 6/10/1908].” Along with their escorts, the Louisiana, Ohio, Virginia and Missouri dropped anchor off Lahaina [EB 7/16/1908]. The local newspapers ran long special fleet editions containing historical and cultural information, as well as sports and entertainment opportunities, along with advertisements by most commercial establishments of any size.

Only a day later, the EB ran a headline that read “Schroeder Board Is On Pearl Harbor Job,” and listed the board’s members as: Admiral Schroeder; Capt. J. B. Murdock of the Rhode Island; Lieut. Commander H. I. Cone who was identified as fleet engineer; Commander E. E. Capehart of the Louisiana; Captain Rees; Navy Civil Engineer Parks; and “naval constructor” L. S. Adams.

On July 27, it was announced, “the Schroeder Board is finished with its work. Investigations over the stay of the Fleet at the Pearl Harbor site are through, and recommendations will be made to the Department on the strength of these. [EB 7/27/1908].” The Admiral was also quoted to say, “a great deal of maps will have to be drawn and submitted to Washington.”

Last month (April 2008), I explained that, during a visit of the Atlantic Fleet in July 1908, the “Schroeder Board” met to review surveys and preliminary plans assembled by the Territory’s contingent of the US Navy to satisfy the provisions of Congressional Act 13 of 1908 establishing a naval station at Pearl Harbor. This entailed dredging the entry channel; constructing the necessary infrastructure and other naval facilities; and building “thereat one graving drydock capable of receiving the largest war vessel of the navy, at a cost not to exceed two million dollars for said drydock.”

All three of these naval station components, and indeed many individual elements of each, were notable engineering achievements. In addition, some of the nearby contemporaneous works of the Army (under separate congressional appropriations of funds) are also of special interest to engineers.

In early August, the Evening Bulletin [EB 8/6/1908] reported that, on just one day, 150 men took out applications to work at the naval station after a call for “general helpers, common laborers, artesian-well drivers, engine tenders, tool sharpeners, pile-drivers, carpenters, blacksmiths, boatmen, firemen, pipe fitters, and riggers” in anticipation of the notice-to-proceed from Washington. On Aug. 12, the same paper explained that the Navy was examining ways to import silica sand and cement from the Coast because the sand dredged locally contained too much “crushed shell” and cement was not produced in the Territory at that time (note: as I documented in a series of articles in 2004 and 2005, with the exception of some production during World War II, full scale manufacture of cement on O`ahu started in 1960 and lasted 40 years.) Back in 1908, the EB announced on Aug. 28 that Truman Handy Newberry, the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, had approved the plans for a 200-ft wide and 35-foot deep channel and the location of the graving drydock. In response, on Sept. 11, a Dec. 1 deadline for receiving sealed bids for the channel job was advertised in New York, San Francisco and Honolulu newspapers, while federal engineers proceeded with the sizing and design of the drydock.

About a month later, a day before departing after a three-week inspection of the site, Rear Admiral Richard C. Hollyday, a civil engineer and Chief of the Navy Department of Yards and Docks, announced that bids for the drydock would be probably opened in the following January [EB 10/10/1908].

The cost limit of $2 million placed on the drydock by the enabling legislation hampered designers in finalizing its size because of the parallel requirement to accommodate not less than “the largest war vessel of the navy.” The largest size of dock that could be built within budget could not accommodate the “USS North Dakota” then under construction, the British “HMS Dreadnought” that eventually gave its name to that class of vessels, and the largest size of ship that could navigate the locks of the Panama Canal that was afoot. As a result, the reported dimensions of the structure kept changing, from as short as 620 feet to as long as 1200, and at varying widths as well [e.g., New York Times, NYT 11/18/1908; Pacific Commercial Advertiser, PCA 12/7/1908; Hawaiian Star, HS 12/6/1911].

Regarding the bidding for the three-year channel-enlarging project, the EB of Nov. 11 said “E. J. Lord, the local dredging magnate, will leave for the States on the Mongolia... He will be one of the prime movers in a new company which is being organized, the Dillingham interests being among those concerned, for the purpose of submitting a bid for the dredging work that will be done at Pearl Harbor.” With a bid amounting to $3.56 million for the dredging component, the newly formed concern, The Hawaiian Dredging Company, “was found to have made the lowest figure of the six bidders, which included two Honolulu concerns and four mainland companies [EB 12/1/1908].” The new enterprise, however, had an established partner: “ The contract for the dredging of the Pearl Harbor channel... will be handled in a combination with the San Francisco Bridge Company, a concern well known in this city and which handled large contracts for the Territorial government here [PCA 12/18/1908].”  As for ownership, “the report that the Hawaiian Dredging Company is now owned entirely by the Dillingham interests is confirmed by news brought by the Hiltonian last night, E. J. Lord having sold his interest to them for one hundred thousand dollars [PCA 12/22/1908].”

By Feb. 1, 1909 the firm was ready to establish its construction camp by clearing “about three or four acres of land on the Honolulu side of the channel, about opposite the shark-pen at Puuloa... The company has just leased six acres of land from the Bishop Estate, and the camp will be located about between the naval and military [read, Army] reservations [PCA 2/1/1909].” Specifically, “Watertown, the camp of the Hawaiian Dredging Company on the Waikiki or Honolulu shore of the channel, is just below Bishop Point, and mauka of Queen Emma Point, where the two 57-ton guns are to be located for the first defense battery of Fort Upton,” as the Army reservation was briefly called. On Dec. 13, 1909, it was renamed Fort Kamehameha. Eventually, in 1991, it was absorbed in what is now the Hickam Air Force Base.

The particular shark-pen described above is also shown on early maps; it was said to have been the abode of an `aumakua, that is, a protective family deity or deified ancestor.

Water for Watertown was secured from an artesian well dug by the McCandless Brothers firm on the Damon Estate located five miles away in Moanalua Valley [EB 2/9/1909]. Until the pipeline from Moanalua was completed, “water was conveyed in water barges from Pearl Harbor peninsula to the camp [PCA 2/27/1909].”

Rail and roadway links were also necessary to facilitate the construction and eventual occupancy of the naval base, including the drydock.

In a story from Associated Press Cablegrams, the Sunday Advertiser confirmed, “it has been definitely decided to amend the plans for the drydock to be constructed at Pearl Harbor and to increase the length of the drydock to 1195 feet. This will make [it] the largest ever constructed by any government [SA 12/20/1908].”

According the EB, “the Engineering News of December 5 prints the advertisement of the Navy Department for bids for the construction of the dock,” with plans and specifications being available in Washington and, on December 14, in Honolulu [EB 12/21/1908]. However, it was not until December 29 that “the belated documents have arrived and any contractor can secure copies by making the required deposit” of $100 [EB 12/29/1908].

The initial round of bids was opened in February 1909, but this only marked the onset of pilikia!

In April, I received an e-message from Carolyn Brewster saying in part, “I’ve read some of your columns and find them interesting. I currently work at the Shipyard and have been involved in putting together a book of the Shipyard’s first 100 years.”

Six days later, another e-message arrived from Kendrick Settsu that included, “Dr. Papacostas, I guess it’s been about 26 years since you mentored me at the University of Hawaii. You helped me intern at DTS [that is, Dept. of Transportation Services, City & County of Honolulu] where I met Peter Ho, Gordon Lum, Toru Hamayasu, Denis Fukumoto. I have been working as a Nuclear Engineer at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard... “

Considering Ken’s current affiliation, I told him about my recent columns that Ms. Brewster had mentioned. His response two days later contained, “Wow,that was very interesting. Was it in support of our centennial celebration, when family came to visit our restricted offices? Although it may be too late, could I pass on the notes to be included in all the research that has been done for our centennial celebration? I don’t remember seeing any articles that went all the way back to construction of dry dock #1! I’ve spent many hours, days, weeks, months, and years servicing submarines in dry dock #1, including the USS GREENEVILLE after it hit the Ehime-Maru. Then in November 2006, I was an assistant Coach who went to Ehime Prefecture in Japan to play a Goodwill Series between Hawaii and Japanese 11 and 12-year-old baseball players. We visited the Ehime-Maru memorial at the Ehime fisheries school in Japan as well as the memorial at Kakaako Park.”

The tragic collision between the Navy submarine and the Japanese training fishing-boat occurred on Feb. 9, 2001 about 9 nautical miles south of O`ahu and caused the death of nine fishing crew members, including four high school students. I told Ken that, during a walk at the park several months ago, I chanced upon the Kaka`ako memorial that he mentioned and that, for me, it was a moving, evocative experience. As for his request to send my notes to those documenting the Shipyard’s centennial, I, of course, had no objection. Let us now return to the history of dry dock #1.

In one of the few Pacific Commercial Advertiser (PCA) news stories of those times to carry a “by” line, reporter Ernest G. Walker announced that the contract for dredging the channel to Pearl Harbor had been signed by the Acting Secretary of the Navy Herbert L. Satterlee for the Bureau of Yards and Docks (BY&D), and by George F. Denison and Walter F. Dillingham for the Hawaiian Dredging Company [PCA 1/9/1909]. “The bids for the drydock,” the Dec. 28 “mail special” from Washington continued, “are to be opened February 13.”

Walker then enfolded a detailed design memorandum prepared by the BY&D. According to these plans, the drydock was to be “the largest ever constructed by the Navy” with an overall length of 1195 feet, overall width of 140 feet and a “draft over sill at mean high water of thirty five feet.” It was to have two sets of caissons (that is, floated gates) that could divide it into two independent compartments with the requisite unique pumping and drainage systems, and a special innovative design of bilge block and docking keel block bearers to make the working floor “absolutely level from end to end.” Bids were to be called for three alternate shapes of head, trapezoidal in addition to the more common arched and V-shaped. Attesting to the facility’s great size was the inclusion of 16 flights of stairs, each taking “sixty-five steps to go from the floor to the coping.” Also, a track for a 40-ton crane was to encircle the structure “with the inner rail close to the edge of the coping! .” Concrete was considered suitable “on account of the equable climate and absence of frost.”

After solicitation of bids, contractor Edmund J. Lord who, as we saw last month (May 2008), had severed his association with the Hawaiian Dredging Co., led the creation of a new local stock company, intending to compete for the job [PCA 1/7/1909]. The petition for the incorporation of the “E. J. Lord Construction Company” reflected that, as company President, Lord held 9996 shares, whereas Vice Pres. Louis M. Whitehouse, Secretary Charles F. Clemons, Treasurer Frank E. Thompson, and Director Charles L. Seybolt held but one share each [PCA 1/19/1909]. Whitehouse, a Stanford engineering graduate, had originally come to Hawai`i with his classmate Johnny Wilson to build the then “new” Pali Road (see my Nov. 2001 article).

Other potential bidders were also seen in Honolulu. For example, Charles McDermontt and engineer J. J. Overn of the McDermott Contracting Company of Philadelphia arrived here on the Nippon Maru “to see what Pearl Harbor looks like, size up the situation and the specifications and bid in all we can get,” according to the engineer [PCA 1/9/1909].

On Feb. 13, the Evening Bulletin [EB] described a cablegram E. J. Lord, who along with L. M. Whitehouse was present at bid opening, sent to Frank Thompson that same day: “Two million, three hundred and seventy one thousand dollars was the low bid put in for the construction of the Pearl Harbor drydock, and the successful bidder was the Pacific Coast Contracting Company, of which Captain Matson is a large stockholder. A cablegram from the Associated Press correspondent at Washington tells a different story, however.”

Next day’s Sunday Advertiser (SA) printed the contents of three cablegrams on its front page: The one from Lord to Thompson as described above and that their own bid was second; another from reporter Walker saying that the Pacific Construction Company made the lowest responsible bid; and the third from the Associated Press indicating that among the eight bidders that submitted bids “under six items of varying specifications, the lowest in all particulars” was by C. M. Leech of Boston with $1,886,885 for a dock 795 feet long [SA 2/14/1909].

Surprisingly, six days later, a PCA headline declared that PEARL HARBOR DRYDOCK BIDS ARE REJECTED. The situation became clearer in a Feb. 27 “Mail Special to the Advertiser” from Walker carrying the dateline “WASHINGTON, Feb. 14.-” and by other news fragments in the local dailies.

A total of twenty concerns (listed by Walker) submitted inquiries for plans and specifications, but only eight bids were received. These were for a main design designated as “Item No. 1” and consisting of a drydock 1195 feet long “having a V-shaped head and octagonal pump well.” Quotations for eleven variations in length and other attributes were also solicited. The lowest bids were indeed submitted by C. M. Leech of Boston “who gave his address as care of the navy yard, that city.” However, “his bid was not accompanied by a bond and therefore will not be considered.” This left the Pacific Construction Company as the lowest responsible bidder.

Nevertheless, all bids exceeded the $2,000,000 ceiling placed on the facility by the enabling legislation that was enacted by the US Congress on May 13, 1908. As a result, all bids were rejected, a smaller graving drydock was considered for new bids to be opened in May 1909.