Researchers hope to reveal history at Shipwreck Beach

By Tanya Bricking
Advertiser Staff Writer

With a name like Shipwreck Beach, the 8-mile stretch on the northern coast of Lana'i conjures up images of mystery and intrigue.

A fisherman surveys the wreck of the Van Loi, its bow visible above the water off Kaua'i's Coconut Beach. Advertiser library photo • June, 17 1999

Ten students in a maritime archaeology and history class have been swimming through the shipwreck debris this summer and are mapping their measurements in a project they hope will uncover some of the stories of Hawai'i's maritime past.

They will present their findings next week, adding to the body of knowledge about a state landmark known more for its ship-littered beach than the lore behind the vessels that rest there.

"We were just able to scratch the surface because there's so much out there," said Kelly Gleason, 25, a graduate student from Santa Barbara, Calif. "This was a pretty major undertaking, just logistically and everything."

The class, led by UH researcher Hans Van Tilburg and made up of students from Hawai'i and Mainland universities, spent 10 days camping on the beach with only the supplies they brought in on trucks traveling over unpaved roads.

Locals such as Joelle Aki, who let them fill up their water bottles and charge their radio batteries, welcomed their research.

"I grew up along that coastline," Aki said. "That was our playground."

Aki remembers going crab hunting and finding Japanese glass fishing balls on the site, which is known for a large World War II-era ship beached by the Navy and still intact.

"I'm really glad that somebody came out to survey it," she said. "There's a lot of history of Lana'i that is just now being done."

The beach is known for the remains visible from land and in the shallow water just offshore, Van Tilburg said, but the class intends to recover history by recording for the first time where ships crashed into the reef and where others were dumped by 19th-century interisland navigation companies.

The expedition has included hikes along the beach to find and photograph wreckage, as well as snorkeling, in sometimes choppy water, to debris such as boilers, steam engines and propellers to mark their location and significance.

Their maps will mark the area that faces heavy trade winds, strong tides and swells from the 9-mile wide Kalohi Channel between Moloka'i and Lana'i. The team has uncovered steamship wrecks previously unrecorded at Shipwreck Beach, Van Tilburg said.

"In a way, we kind of solved a mystery of our own," said Ryan Ashton, 21, a history and anthropology major at Chaminade University of Honolulu. Ashton said one team found that a ship long thought to be an oiler may actually have been a water tanker.

Seeing the wreckage was like stepping back in time and wondering what happened, he said.

"It's like something out of a movie," Ashton said. "It definitely has its own beauty to it."

Not many people tell stories about the history of what's out there because locals don't know much more than the fact that the Navy beached a ship there and that other boats crashed in the treacherous reef, said "Uncle" Sol Kaopuiki, a kupuna and cultural specialist on Lana'i.

Most locals don't even dive there anymore because the fish have taken on the smell of iron from the debris, he said, and the sharp edges on the wrecks can be dangerous.

"I hate to see rubbish, and to me, that's what it was," Kaopuiki said.

One man's rubbish has become researchers' treasure, as well as a hunt to preserve history.

Correction: The June 17, 1999, Advertiser library photograph was shot from Coconut Beach on Kaua'i. It shows wreckage of a ship, the Van Loi, that was removed two years ago.

You can reach Tanya Bricking at tbricking@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8026.