Civil War & Hawaii
October 11, 2007 > MAUI TODAY, > Maui Yesterdays No Comments |
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HAWAIIAN WORD OF THE DAY - MOKU: Ship, boat HAWAIIAN PROVERB OF THE DAY - “Cross the sea as a bird.”
October 11, 1864: During the Civil War, the CSS Shenendoah changes course and decides not to head for Hawaii, for fear of being overtaken by Union ships waiting in port at Pearl Harbor and Lahaina. The Confederate ship was on a heading south from the Aleutian Islands toward Hawaii, when its captain, James Waddell, thought better of it and changed course toward islands off the coast of Mexico and Central America, with the intent of destroying any Union ships sailing from the West Coast of the US to Hawaii.
The Shenendoah was built in Glasgow, Scotland in 1863. Many in Europe at that time were very sympathetic to the Confederate cause - slavery - and supported the Confederacy by paying for the ship. It sailed from Liverpool with a full crew to circumnavigate the globe (the only Confederate ship to do so), to wreak havoc on international shipping which supplied the Northern Union, and to disrupt commerce of goods to other countries from the North. The idea, of course, was to hurt the Union economy.
