Once Upon a Time: Honolulu

by Marjory Cutting Hulting

     On December 13, 1899, on my seventh birthday, we sailed from San Francisco for Honolulu. It was a foggy, bleak day when we left Marmee’s house and went to the wharf, the last part of the trip over large noisy cobblestones. Our trunks and our cat Billie, a huge part Persian, in a crate, were taken to the ship, R.P. Rithet, by a neighbor, Esther Hayes the expressman.

     By the time we reached the dock, I was thoroughly frightened at the strangeness of it all and the confusion, smells, fussing relations and my mother’s determined good-natured impatience. Billie had escaped from his slatted box, made by my young uncle Howard; so with this excuse, I cried. Everyone asked what was the matter, and knowing grown-ups always must have a reason, Billie’s loss was the simplest. I can look back and realize that Billie was not the main reason, but merely my excuse. Loving relations were my grandfather and grandmother Cutting, my Aunt Evelyn, Papa’s Auntie Grace [Beck] and Howard, then about 18. We love them all dearly and, on their part we were going to a very faraway place.

     Papa had gone to Honolulu some months before as a salesman for Waterhouse & Lester, a carriage supply firm in San Francisco where he was a bookkeeper, and a firm in Honolulu called Honolulu Carriage Co. had offered him the position as manager. He came home, made the necessary arrangements and returned to Honolulu, leaving my mother to sell the furniture (except the piano), put the house up for rent and take four children by sailing vessel to make a new home.

Our captain was Capt. MacPhail, a young, slight Scotsman with a decided accent. The first mate was Dr. Mr. (afterward Capt.) George Weston Gove, and a close friend of the family for many years thereafter. The second mate was another Scott named Mr. Burns, the delight of us children because he sang sea shanty type songs for us and had ridiculous things to say about the passengers, especially one old man who used to go to a barrel of seawater every morning and put it on his eyes saying, “nothing is so good for the eyes is good saltwater.” The mate took him off perfectly. We had Christmas at sea, and a passenger, Capt. Frieze, dressed a Santa Claus, came down through the cabin skylight with presents for everyone.

The Cutting's 1902 voyage aboard the R.P. Rithet