WAIMEA – A preliminary search is on for a historic brass cannon – and perhaps another – believed to have been accidentally sunk in the waters off the Waimea rivermouth in 1864 by Westside pioneer Valdemar Knudsen. The Hawaiian Kingdom
WAIMEA – A preliminary search is on for a historic brass cannon – and perhaps another – believed to have been accidentally sunk in the waters off the Waimea rivermouth in 1864 by Westside pioneer Valdemar Knudsen.
The Hawaiian Kingdom tasked Knudsen with the removal of armaments from what’s commonly known as the Russian Fort east of Waimea town. Similar work was being done in that era across the kingdom with other forts being dismantled at Kailua-Kona, Lahaina and along the waterfront at the old port of Honolulu.
In a letter sent to Honolulu, Knudsen listed an inventory of the guns at the fort following a survey made in 1862. They included 60 flint-lock muskets, 16 swords, 12 18-pound cannon, 26 4- and 6-pound cannon, 6 heavy guns and 24 little guns.
Details of the dismantling appear in Peter Mills’ book “Hawai‘i’s Russian Adventure – A New Look at Old History” published by the University of Hawai‘i Press in 2002. Mills is an Associate Professor at the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo and chair of its Anthropology Department, and has led archaeological field surveys of the Russian Fort area.
In his book Mills writes that workers took the cannon down to the Waimea River from the star-shaped fort’s enclosure, likely bringing the armaments down to a landing along the banks of the Waimea River that can still be made out today. They were then loaded onto a small boat and rowed out to a ship in Waimea Bay.
“In the process, a large brass cannon fell into the bay and was lost in the murky deposits on the sea floor, where, most assuredly, it rests to this day,” Mills says in his book.
In his book the UH Hilo-based researcher also refers to the fort by its Native Hawaiian name, Pa ‘ula‘ula o Hipo, and by its Russian name, Fort Elisabeth.
Mills returned to Kaua‘i last weekend to join the crew of the fishing vessel Pilialoha out of Hale‘iwa under the command of Capt. Rick Rogers. Rogers is an expert on shipwrecks in Hawai‘i and captained the Pilialoha during the Smithsonian Institution’s successful search for the wreck of Ha‘aheo o Hawai‘i, the royal yacht of Kamehameha II, at Hanalei Bay that began in 1995.
