Captain William Matson was a square-faced Swede who started his seagoing career at age 10 in 1859 when he went to work as a handy boy in the port town of Lysekil. From age 14, he knew no home but the deck of a ship. The fo'c's'le served as his classroom.
From New York, the teenager dreamed of San Francisco, where he thought the streets were paved with gold. Once he arrived, he became captain of a scow hauling coal across San Francisco Bay. Then he learned that there was money to be made carrying sugar from the Sandwich Islands.
Matson talked his friends into investing in a tiny schooner, the Emma Claudine, an investment that made them millionaires. Legend has it that Matson couldn't get a cargo of sugar to take back, so he loaded ohi'a ties for the Union Pacific Railroad.
He struck up a friendship with tycoon Claus Spreckels, who financed many of Matson's new ships that became a fleet. By 1900, his biggest vessel was the Falls of Clyde.
Always on the cutting edge, Matson converted to steam power and was soon shipping fuel oil instead of coal to Hawai'i. By the 1920s, the Matson fleet had become a lifeline of the Islands, hauling away sugar and bringing in everything from groceries to automobiles.
William Matson died in 1917 after establishing one of America's major shipping lines.
