The Pacific commercial advertiser., 1897-04-26
The Whole History of An.
nexation Reviewed.
Interesting Phases of Attempts to
Make Hawaii a Part of
United States.

The Los Angeles Times publishes, in
a recent issue, an interesting article
on annexation movements in Hawaii
since 1853 The Times calls some of
the incidents which it presents ''hith-
erto unwritten history" The article is
as follows:
The proposed annexation of Hawaii
is no new thing, at least not to the
people of California. In fact, it is mere
Iy the revival of an old proposition.
In 1853 John T. Wright, known all
over the Coast as Bully Wright, had
three steamboats, called the Sea Bird,
West Point and S. B. Wheeler. The
two former ran to Sacramento and the
latter to Vallejo and Benicia when
"Heenatown" was the capital of the
State, and John Bigler, otherwise
called John Tahoe" was Governor.
Bigler was an anti-slavery Democrat
and among his Kitchen cabinet" was
an irascible but thoroughly good heart
ed old gentleman named Garret w.
Ryckman. "Uncle Garry hailed from
New York, where he had been a de-
voted henchman of Silas Wright and
William L. Marcy. His son, Captain
George Ryckman, commanded the West
Point
The Wright boats were TOO slow to
be anything of a formidable opposition
10 such boats as the Senator, New
World Antelope and Confidence, any
,oI,
miles an hour under favorable con-
ditiOns. And hence they were seeking
subsidies from the newly formed Cali
fornia Steam Navigation Company, of
which Captain James Whitney, Samuel
J. Hensley and Marshall Hubbard were
the principal incorporators. Hensley
finally agreed to pay Wright $4,000 a
month if his three boats were taken
out of California waters, supposing he
would take them to Oregon or Puget
Sound. Wright accepted the offer and
sent them to the Sandwich Islands at
once. His financial backer was James
G. L. Wadsworth, a hardware merch-
ant of San Francisco, who came to the
coast as sutler of Stevenson's regiment
in 1916. AS soon as the steamers got
there they were given Hawaiian regis
ters and had native names painted on
their paddle boxes The West Point
was lost in 1854 and her machinery was
sold at auction. a whaling captain pur
chased it and took it to Sitka, where
it was used in the equipment of Rus
sian gunboat called the Politkofsky
now running on Puget Sound as tow
boat. The Wheeler was wrecked near
Lahaina a few months later, and as
the news had reached there of the dis
covery of gold in British Columb bia, the
Sea Bird came back to California alone.
The Wheeler's engine was bought on
speculation and shipped to Oregon,
where it was purchased by Captain
Richard Hoyt and Simeon G. Reed
(who died in Pasadena about eighteen
months ago., and put into the steamer
Eliza Anderson, then the largest boat
built west of the Rockies. She is still
running on Puget Sound.
INDUSTRIAL CONDITIONS.
At the period alluded to the social
and industrial conditions of the Sand
wich Islands were wholly different
from what they are now. Honolulu
and Lahaina were the winter rendez-
vous of several hundred whaling YES
sells engaged in the Arctic oil trade, a
business which, though very much
shorn of it's former proportions, has
long since been transferred to San
Francisco. From the last of Septem-
Der till the middle of March the streets
of Honolulu were crodwed with people
of every imaginable nationality The
Passamaquoddy Indian of Maine jostled
the swarthy Bhotan of India; the pig
eyed Chinaman elbowed UP against the
angular and awkward New Bedford
Yankee, and the Arancanian Of South
America lit his pipe at the cigarette
of the mercurial Frenchman. All was
serene. Oil was trumps and they held
a full hand.
Thara uac M S11par Industry ~ thot