Our Honolulu
Vigilantes, grass shacks and C. Brewer
By Bob Krauss
Advertiser Columnist
The death of C. Brewer & Co. deserves a moment of reflection. What does it mean to be the oldest operating company in Our Honolulu? I'm glad you asked.
If nothing else, C. Brewer provides a measure of how far we've come and of how little basic things change. Doc Buyers, the company's longtime chairman, is the philosophical twin of James Hunnewell who started it all 175 years ago: both are hard-headed optimists.
You don't last 175 years by selling peanuts at the end of a parade. For its 175 years, C. Brewer was in search of parades to get in front of.
Honolulu wasn't much of a parade early in January 1826 when Hunnewell set sail from Boston as master of the Missionary Packet, 49 feet long and 13 feet wide.
The vessel was built for the mission in Hawai'i to be sailed between island stations. Instead of a salary as captain, Hunnewell got free cargo space for a stock of merchandise with which he intended to open a trading post on the waterfront in frontier Honolulu.
Nobody in his right mind would try to sail around Cape Horn in January on a 49-foot vessel so overloaded that her deck rode one foot above the water line. The Missionary Packet leaked so badly that Hunnewell had to refit in Brazil to keep it from sinking.
He anchored 30 times in 20 different ports before he finally made it around Cape Horn. At that time, it was the longest voyage by any American vessel to Hawai'i. It wasn't until October that he arrived in Honolulu, where he set up shop in a grass house.
At the time, Honolulu consisted of grass and adobe buildings connected by dusty or muddy lanes with a few lonely palm trees for shade.
With the money he took in at the store, Hunnewell invested in Hawaiian sandalwood and furs from the Northwest Coast to sell in China, California and South America.
By 1828, he needed an assistant so he hired young Henry Pierce, just landed from the ship Griffon, at $30 a month. The two got along so well they became partners.
After a robbery in another store, Pierce became concerned. He sat on a vigilante committee (because Honolulu had no courts) that sentenced the culprit to be tied to a cart's tail and dragged through the streets while being given 100 lashes.
Pierce wrote to Hunnewell in the United States that the grass building wasn't very secure: "Captain Hinckley sleeps in the little mud house; Mr. Cummins and myself in the straw house. We have a good dog in the yard besides arms in the house. I wish we had a good stone store."
Then along came Capt. Charles Brewer in 1836 who became a partner and gave his name to the company. No other firm in Our Honolulu goes all the way back to sandalwood and furs and vigilante committees. That's what makes C. Brewer unique.
You can reach Bob Krauss at bkrauss@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8073.
