In 1842, British sea captain Godfrey Rhodes (1815-97) and his partner, Frenchman John Bernard, established the first commercial coffee plantation in the Hawaiian Islands at Hanalei, Kaua‘i, on 150 acres of government-leased land along the banks of the Hanalei River.
In 1842, British sea captain Godfrey Rhodes (1815-97) and his partner, Frenchman John Bernard, established the first commercial coffee plantation in the Hawaiian Islands at Hanalei, Kaua‘i, on 150 acres of government-leased land along the banks of the Hanalei River.
They then subleased a portion of their land to fellow coffee planters Gottfried Wundenberg and Archibald Archer.
Rhodes, known to Hawaiians as Kepena Loke (Captain Rose), also captained Jules Dudoit’s bark “Clementine” during this time, making numerous voyages to South America and the Pacific Northwest. Dudoit would later become the French consular agent in Hawai‘i.
Rhodes’ coffee mill was situated low on the hillside a short distance east of and just above the site of the present Hanalei Bridge, which was not erected until 1912.
He also built a stone house by his mill that he named Kikiula, while Wundenberg built a small wooden house at Limanui across the river from the mill.
Assisting Rhodes in building his coffee plantation of about 750 acres was English horticulturist Thomas Brown.
By 1846, Rhodes’ plantation and Yankee Charles Titcomb’s neighboring plantation had more than 100,000 coffee trees in cultivation.
Yet, beginning in the late 1840s, coffee production suffered. Flooding damaged the coffee crop in 1847, workers were lost to the California Gold Rush beginning in 1848, a severe drought struck in 1851, and sadly, epidemics killed Native Hawaiian laborers.
By the time the rains finally returned and immigrant Chinese had eased the labor shortage, a blight caused by aphids ruined the coffee crops in Hanalei.
Consequently, in 1853, Rhodes sold out to Hawaiian Foreign Minister Robert Crichton Wyllie.
Godfrey Rhodes was also vice president of the Royal Hawaiian Agricultural Society and a member of the House of Representatives and the House of Nobles of the Kingdom of Hawai‘i.
