Neptune's Needle

...finally at the age of fifteen he was allowed to leave school for a long voyage to Europe and the Mediterranean. In 1815 he went to China as a common sailor, and on Oct. 9 of the following year he shipped on a brig which traded along the California coast. At Honolulu the vessel was sold to Hawaiian chiefs, who were to pay in sandalwood, which had become the local currency when Americans discovered its value in China. The captain of the ship departed for Canton, and Hunnewell, now an officer, was left to collect payment. The task required several months of extensive travel through the islands and gave him an opportunity to become familiar with the natives, learn their customs, and gain the confidence of chiefs and royal family. He then sold the sandalwood in China and returned to America. [On Oct. 23] he sailed as second mate of the brig Thaddeus, which was taking to Hawaii the first American missionaries. Left at Honolulu to barter part of the cargo when the brig went to California, he aided in persuading an unwilling native king to receive the missionaries. When the Thaddeus returned to the islands she was sold, and Hunnewell a second time remained to collect the sandalwood. It came in so slowly that it was not until July 4, 1825, that he arrived again in Boston. Determined to revisit Hawaii as an independent trader, and unable to buy a vessel, he agreed to take out the Missionary Packet, a schooner built for the mission, in return for the privilege of loading on her fifty barrels of merchandise and rum. On this tiny craft, forty-nine feet in length and thirty-nine tons in burden, comfortless and unseaworthy, he made the extremely hazardous voyage around Cape Horn, reaching Honolulu in October 1826 after a passage of nine months and one day. During the next four years he developed there a large business, supplying to the natives rum, cotton goods, and Yankee notions, and to merchantmen and whalers, repair supplies and food. The proceeds in sandalwood and the furs of the Northwest coast he shipped to China. His business grew into the commercial house later known as C. Brewer & Company. In 1830 he took his clerk, Henry A Peirce, into partnership to manage the Honolulu establishment and he himself returned to Charlestown. There he spent the rest of his life, actively engaged until 1866 in exporting gods to Hawaii and California. He amassed a considerable fortune, of which he gave liberally to found Oahu College.

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Peter Richards