LIHU’E – A new exhibit at Kaua’i Museum tells the history of shipwrecks around Kaua’i and its sister island, Ni’ihau. Sixty-eight sinkings in the past 185 years are recounted. The grim chronology begins in 1815, when a Russian-American ship loaded
LIHU’E – A new exhibit at Kaua’i Museum tells the history of shipwrecks around
Kaua’i and its sister island, Ni’ihau.
Sixty-eight sinkings in the past 185
years are recounted. The grim chronology begins in 1815, when a
Russian-American ship loaded with furs went under, and ends with an April 1996
incident involving a 95-foot fishing boat near Waipoli.
Among the stories
is that of the Andrea F. Luckenbush. In 1951, the freighter ran aground and
broke up off Wailua Beach, ending the voyage for its cargo of liquor, sardines
and other sundries.
Divers still visit the Luckenbush and other relics that
for most of the past 200 years have fallen prey to weather and human error.
The exhibit, in the museum’s Senda Gallery, was researched and organized
by Erica Nordmeier, 22, a University of Nebraska graduate student who is
serving a student internship.
Nordmeier spent 480 hours learning about
Kaua’i’s shipwrecks through books and old newspaper articles, selecting
photographs of wrecks from the museum’s archives and writing narratives about
them.
It was a lot of work, but “cool. I find them fascinating,” she
said.
Nordmeier, who plans a career in museum work – hopefully, she said,
in Hawai’i – tried to make the shipwreck exhibit “interactive. That’s what
makes history interesting.”
The exhibit will continue through
December.
