Remnants of Historic Lahaina Fort - Lahaina, Maui, HI
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denben
N 20° 52.281 W 156° 40.665
4Q E 741604 N 2309654
The restored coral remnants of the historic Lahaina fort are located on the southwestern edge of Lahaina Banyan Court Park on Front Street in Lahaina.
Waymark Code: WMR6XN
Location: Hawaii, United States
Date Posted: 05/18/2016
Views: 2
From Wikipedia:
"Queen Ka'ahumanu (1768–1832) visited Maui in February 1832, just months before she died, to support the construction of a new fort to protect the town from whalers. With her help, Hoapili (1775–1840), Royal Governor of Maui, built the fort on the Lahaina waterfront and it was completed within a month. The fort was constructed from coral blocks with walls approximately 15–20 feet high topped with 47 cannons. An 1848 inventory lists 6 large cannons, 21 small cannons, 6 breech-loaders, and 8 which did not work. The fort stored quantities of gunpowder, guns, rifles, and swords, and was used as a prison. Sailors who docked at Lahaina were subject to a sunset curfew; it they did not return to their ship when the drums sounded they would be imprisoned in the fort.
In 1841, American naval officer Charles Wilkes (1798–1877) visited Lahaina Fort as commanding officer of the United States Exploring Expedition. Wilkes observed, "After the king's palace, the fort is the most conspicuous object: it is of little account, however, as a defence, serving chiefly to confine unruly subjects and sailors in. The area within is about one acre, and the walls are twenty feet high."
As the whaling industry declined and the California Gold Rush gained prominence in the late 1840s, Hawaii's population dropped, and infectious disease epidemics contributed to the loss of local populations. The fort was restored in 1847 but was now used more as a prison than for defending the Kingdom. The cannons were rusting and the fort was mostly empty of personnel except for a few soldiers and the Governor of Maui who lived there. When Henry Augustus Wise visited in 1848, he met James Young (1797–1851), then Governor of Maui, who was living in the fort. Wise wrote that it was: "an oddly assorted battery of some thirty pieces of artillery, of all sorts of carriages and calibre—long, short, and mediums; they command the usual anchorage, and no doubt do very well to prevent any acts of violence from merchant ships; but it is a question, if, at the second discharge of shot, they do not tumble to pieces."
In the 1850s, whaling began its steep decline. The forts in the Hawaiian Islands were in poor condition due to damage and neglect, and were either abandoned or removed. Lahaina Fort was demolished in 1854. Its coral blocks were reused to build Hale Pa'ahao, a new prison at Wainee Street and Prison Road. In 1964, the State Parks Department placed a reconstruction of the old fort wall in the southwest corner of the park." (
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