COOL SAILING in 1966

A commercial came on tv last night for some cruise line that has a HUGE ship that has a gaping hole in the fantail area with cabins facing across this expanse like some apartment complex. I looked at it and immediately thought that it looked like a Borg ship. Thousands upon thousands of people on board. The hive. Everyone being directed to activities. People surrounded by other people, but unaware of their existence. Blinded by vacation.

Then there's the old Matson Lines.


Click on image to see it larger. (SOURCE: Here's Hawaii, 1966)



To get a feeling of what it was like to travel on a Matson Liner there is a wonderful book called To Honolulu in Five Days. Full of images of ephemera, it tells the story of your trip to heaven and what it was like once you got there.

MATSON ad, October 1936

There's nothing particularly Polynesian about this ad, and yet that was what they were hoping to sell you. This ad could have just as easily been for Miami. So why weren't the people of Polynesia featured in ads? I don't think I need to delve into the answer for this. I think most people can figure it out. It's a shame, because I'm guessing that when a lot of passengers disembarked from their ship at the Aloha Tower their senses were soon overwhelmed by Hawaii that they dreaded ever returning to their world of browns and grays. Who would want to leave a place full of color and flowers that bloom all year long?


Click on image to see it larger. (SOURCE: The American Magazine, October, 1936)

You can actually buy a sign of this image, sans type, from a company that is licensed to reproduce vintage Matson Liner ephemera. They also have many of the beautiful illustrations Matson commissioned for murals and ephemera. I wish they offered posters instead of signs.


To get a feeling of what it was like to travel on a Matson Liner there is a wonderful book called To Honolulu in Five Days. Full of images of ephemera, it tells the story of your trip to heaven and what it was like once you got there.

MATSON ad, May 1937

For anyone who has followed this odd corner of the universe for any length of time you'll know my love for the Matson Lines and Hawaii back in the 1950s and '60s. If you aren't aware of this and want to bore yourself for a little while just click on some of the label links below.

This ad was the front inside cover of The American Magazine, May, 1937. Obviously there were still enough people who had spendable cash to take trips during the depression. You had to be very well off to go on one of these cruises, or at least been saving your pennies for a long time.


Click on image to see it larger.

I'm always searching for images from the Hawaii I remember. The Hawaii of today is a foreign land. The landmarks, even a couple of my homes, are long gone. But, I know there are others out there who remember these times; military kids who were uprooted from the Mainland and suddenly dropped into paradise. In my searches online I found the Flickr site of Kamaaina56. Hundreds of images of long ago vistas and buildings. I sat for hours looking at them, memories flooding back to a time that I still long for. I miss the magic of the place. It was indeed the most incredible place to be a child.

Stop on over to Tattered and Lost Photographs to see a mystery photo of a hotel in paradise. My problem is which paradise?

Time to RUN AWAY FROM HOME: Part 5

Okay, I'm going out on a high note here. I'm going first class on a Matson Liner back in time to Hawaii. Join me if you wish. It's a heavenly trip!

Click on image to see it larger. (SOURCE: National Geographic, November 1954)

To see more about cruising aboard a Matson Liner click here.

And don't forget to not follow my newest and most boring blog, Tattered and Lost: Traveling with Charlie. The site where nothing exciting will ever happen. I'm not kidding.

LET'S GO FIRST CLASS across America: Part 10...THE END

Well folks, this is it for the first class travel. We've now crossed to new territory, which this was sitting on when this card was made. Hawaii was a territory of the United States, a serious offense if there ever was one fueled by greed.

Click on either image to see them larger.

The Royal Hawaiian Hotel opened to guests on February 1, 1927. The hotel was built by Captain William Matson of Matson Liner fame. It was built specifically to house and entertain those who sailed to Hawaii for vacations on his ships.

With the success of the early efforts by Matson Navigation Company to provide steamer travel to America's wealthiest families en route to Hawaii, Captain William Matson proposed the development of a hotel in Honolulu for his passengers. This was in hope of profiting from what Matson believed could be the most lucrative endeavor his company could enter into. Matson purchased the Moana mansion, fronting the Ainahau royal estate. Christening it the Moana Hotel, it opened in 1901 as the first hotel in Waikiki. With its overwhelming success, Matson planned and built the Royal Hawaiian Hotel which opened in 1927.

During World War II, the Royal was closed to tourists and instead served as a place of rest and relaxation for U.S. submariners. While the Royal Hawaiian's lush tropical garden was (and still is) tranquil and poetic, on the beaches fronting the Pink Palace (sometimes referred to as the Pink Lady) one saw reminders of the war with rolls and rolls of barbed wire planted in the sand. The hotel was sold, along with the rest of Matson's hotels in Hawaii, to the Sheraton Corporation in 1959.

During the 1960's, the Pink Palace was home to "Concert by the Sea" which broadcast daily through Armed Forces Radio Network (AFN). Soldiers would listen to sounds of home all across Vietnam, and then on R&R would come to Waikiki to visit the Pink Palace in person. (SOURCE: Wikipedia)

This card was sent by my mother to her folks when we stopped over on Oahu on our way to live on Midway Island for a year in 1953. Somewhere I have a slide of my wee self standing on a step at the Royal Hawaiian.

If you've read my blogs for a few years you'll know that I met my best friend on a Matson Liner, the Matsonia, when our families were both transferred from the East Coast to Hawaii in 1959. Click here to read an old post about the Matson Liners.

For the first few months after arriving on Oahu in '59 we lived just a few blocks from the Royal in a hotel called the Islander until we got military housing. The Islander was a dump, but the military paid for it so you kept your mouth shut.

We used to walk to the International Marketplace in the evening for the shows and then walk along Kalākaua Avenue looking in shops and maybe stopping in to the Jolly Rogers for a piece of coconut cream pie and a root beer float.

The gardens at the Royal abutted the avenue and were beautiful, tropical, magical. There was a man who used to walk along the avenue with a parrot on his shoulder which impressed the heck out of me. If you were really lucky Duke Kahanamoku would walk by. A stunning man. If you don't know who Duke was I recommend you do a little side reading about him here.

When we moved to Oahu the Royal was one of the largest buildings in Waikiki. It was stunning and special. Then the jets started flying into the islands and things began to change. Developers moved in and by 1966 it looked like this in Waikiki. I've added a slight blush so you can find the Royal.

Photo: from Here's Hawaii by Tongg Publishing Company, Ltd.

Today...

Photo: Gerald Farinas

I hope you've enjoyed this odd little journey, first class and not so first class, around the United States of yore. There will be more travel adventures to come.

Only FOUR-AND-A-HALF DAYS

Leave San Francisco aboard ship and in 4-1/2 days you'd be coming around the bend of Diamond Head towards the harbor in Honolulu. I've said before it was a wonderful way to travel and an incredible place for two little girls to play. Running up and down the passageways, by the gift shop, across the wooden decks, out to the fantail to eat lunch. Glorious time. 

(Source: Paradise of the Pacific 1960, No. 11, Vol. 71)  Click on image to see it larger.

Once you arrived on the island that was not your last encounter with the ships. As military families you always had friends coming and going so you often went back down to the Aloha Tower to see ships arrive or set sail. This meant you got to be part of the big party that took place on the docks. A small Hawaiian band would play, there were dancers, and best of all there were streamers. Those onboard would stand at the railing looking down on us and fling long streamers from the ship to the dock. Thousands of different colored tendrils were soon stretching across the expanse. My friend and I loved grabbing as many streamers as we could to make into a huge pile of paper to hide in. There was also always a man with a wide broom sweeping the paper into large piles making our "job" a lot easier. It was all giggles, colors, and noise. Grand times.

Here is someone's home movie of the Lurline as it arrives in Honolulu.

And this, though it has really dreadful music, also shows the fun of sailing on a Matson Liner. Why they chose this music, well who knows what they were thinking, It's an old travel film made back on the Mainland far away from the land of strumming ukuleles. Personally I don't remember any "race horses" when we were onboard, but I might be wrong. I think by the late 50s they'd done away with that. This was just a film to be shown to potential travelers. We weren't given a choice so we never saw any travel films. We were told "You're going to Hawaii." Well actually my father was given a choice. It was Oahu or Kodiak, Alaska. My mother said "NO!" to Alaska. Good thing.

50 YEARS AGO today

It was 50 years ago today that my family boarded the SS Matsonia in San Francisco to sail to our new home in Hawaii. Hawaii was still a US territory, not a state. We sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge on a very cold January day, bundled in the warm clothes we'd brought from the East Coast. Within days we were in paradise covered in flower leis.

I'll never know who aboard that ship decided to seat two military families with two little girls at the same dining table, but I'm forever grateful. Those little girls became best friends for life, the sisters neither of us had. Today out of the 6 members of those two families only 3 survive.

I can't begin to describe what an adventure it was for two little girls on that ship. We still talk of the fun we had. We were instant friends.

We ate on the deck next to the pool, stole swizzle sticks out of people's drinks, sat beneath Tiki statues playing with our dolls, ran up and down from one end to another exploring the ship. The temperature changed from the wintery cold to tropical warmth and soon we were in shorts with our heavy coats packed away. We danced the Hukilau and were awarded with our own new Hawaiian names. It was magic. Though the ship is long gone, that beautiful ship, the friendship is still strong.

To learn more about what it was like to sail on a classic beautiful ocean liner before they became little more than giant garish shopping malls take a look at the book To Honolulu in Five Days: Cruising Aboard Matson's S.S. Lurline by Lynn Blocker Krantz, Nick Krantz, and Mary Thiele Fobian. I have placed a link to the book in the Amazon column on the left

Click on images to see them larger.