Editor’s note: On Dec. 3, the Kaua‘i Museum celebrates its 50th anniversary. Museum leaders have chosen 50 stories from exhibits, collections and the archives of the museum to share with the public. One story will run daily through Dec. 3.
Editor’s note: On Dec. 3, the Kaua‘i Museum celebrates its 50th anniversary. Museum leaders have chosen 50 stories from exhibits, collections and the archives of the museum to share with the public. One story will run daily through Dec. 3.
LIHU‘E — Writer Robert Hobart Davis spent many years on and off traveling around the new U.S. Territory of Hawai‘i in the prewar years. An avid sportsman, he hunted wild cattle with the Eric Knudsen and Herman von Holt and went deep-sea fishing with H.D. Sloggett here on Kaua‘i. He included the story in a book he wrote in 1941.
On one fishing trip off Hanalei, H.D. Sloggett told him a remarkable story about a treasure he owned, a rare and beautiful Hawaiian cape. Long a resident of the Garden Island, he had been in London in 1926 visiting the ancestral home. Primed to regale his kinsfolk with tales of the islands in the far Pacific, he was received by his uncle, Sir Arthur Sloggett, retired surgeon-general of the British forces during the first World War.
The uncle took him into his drawing room, to behold upon the wall a magnificent feathered robe treasured by the Hawaiian chiefs. To his utter bewilderment, he learned that his grandfather, W.H. Sloggett had served as the surgeon aboard His Britannic Majesty’s ship Calypso, commanded by Captain Montresor. The Calypso arrived at Hawai‘i, Oct. 2, 1858. The ship remained three and a half months and on occasion conveyed King Kamehameha IV and his suite to Hawai‘i Island.
Kamehameha IV, taking advantage of the presence of an English surgeon, requested a survey of his royal person. Dr. Sloggett declined to accept a fee. Kamehameha IV, not to be outdone in courtesy, delivered to his benefactor on the day the Calypso sailed a beautiful specimen of the red and yellow feather cape. It was a symbol of royalty, worn by the Hawaiian kings. Surgeon Sloggett, having no alternative, accepted the gift in the spirit with which it was bestowed, sailed back to England and hung the cloak on his wall.
Sir Arthur Sloggett presented the king’s cloak to his nephew, who brought it back to Hawai‘i along with a lovely daguerreotype of Queen Emma. Today, through the generosity of the Sloggett family, the cape now resides in the Kaua‘i Museum. The value of Dr. W.H. Sloggett’s medical service fee in the 1930s was estimated by the Bishop Museum at $500,000 to $1 million.
