Journal of the voyage of the "Missionary Packet," Boston to Honolulu, 1826 ... With maps and plates, and a memoir, by J. F. Hunnewell.
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Title: Journal of the voyage of the "Missionary Packet,...)
Title: Journal of the voyage of the "Missionary Packet," Boston to Honolulu, 1826 ... With maps and plates, and a memoir, by J. F. Hunnewell.
Publisher: British Library, Historical Print Editions
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom. It is one of the world's largest research libraries holding over 150 million items in all known languages and formats: books, journals, newspapers, sound recordings, patents, maps, stamps, prints and much more. Its collections include around 14 million books, along with substantial additional collections of manuscripts and historical items dating back as far as 300 BC.
The HISTORY OF TRAVEL collection includes books from the British Library digitised by Microsoft. This collection contains personal narratives, travel guides and documentary accounts by Victorian travelers, male and female. Also included are pamphlets, travel guides, and personal narratives of trips to and around the Americas, the Indies, Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
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British Library
Hunnewell, James; Hunnewell, James Frothingham;
1880.
xxvii. 77 p. ; 4º.
10480.h.6.
James Hunnewell was an American sea captain and merchant.
Background
James was born in Charlestown, Massachussets, in 1794. He was the son of William and Sarah (Frothingham) Hunnewell. His father's ancestor, Ambrose Hunnewell, of Devonshire, England, settled at the mouth of the Kennebec River in Maine about 1660, whence a son Charles removed to Charlestown in 1698. The families of both parents were substantial farmers in that vicinity.
Career
An athletic and daring boy, James longed from early childhood for a seafaring life. At first he was discouraged, but 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 October 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. This 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. He reached home in April 1819. Exactly a month later 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 goods to Hawaii and California. He amassed a considerable fortune, of which he gave liberally to found Oahu College.