Lahaina: Whale-hunting
The first whaling ships arrived in Hawaii in 1820, the same year as the mission aries - and had an equally dramatic impact. With the ports of Japan closed to outsiders, Hawaii swiftly became the center of the industry. Any Pacific port of call must have seemed a godsend to the whalers, who were away from New England for three years at a time, and paid so badly that most were either fugitives from justice or just plain mad. Hawaii was such a paradise that up to fifty percent of each crew would desert, to be replaced by native Hawaiians, born seafarers eager to see the world. Soon King Kamehameha IV had established his own whaling fleet, and the economy adapted to meet the sailors' needs. Cattle-raising began on the Big Island, and vegetables were grown on Maui.Until the 1840s, Honolulu, which permitted drinking, was the whalers' favorite port. Then potatoes and prostitution lured them to Lahaina as well, which by 1857 stretched for several miles. The sea was calm enough for ships to dock along the open road, and a grassy marketplace stood beside a central canal. Both Lahaina and Honolulu soon became notorious for such diseases as syphilis, influenza, measles, typhoid and smallpox.
At the peak of the trade, almost six hundred whaling vessels docked in Honolulu in a single year. Decline came with the Civil War - when many ships were bought up in order to be sunk as a blockade of Confederate ports - and an 1871 disaster, when 31 vessels lingered in the Arctic too long, became frozen in, and had to be abandoned
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