Posted on: Wednesday, July 7, 2004

OUR HONOLULU
Reclusive lookout still stuff of legend

By Bob Krauss
Advertiser Columnist

There's a story about every street in Our Honolulu. Here's one you can tell your kids the next time you drive over Diamond Head Road. The story is about Diamond Head Charlie, the hermit who lived in a little shack on the slope of the crater.

Charlie Peterson's job was to report ships arriving from foreign lands and the Neighbor Islands. He was a sailor from Sweden who came ashore at age 40 in Honolulu in 1878 and got the lookout job on Telegraph Hill. Later the lookout station moved to Diamond Head.

Diamond Head Charlie could look through his 5-foot-long telescope and tell you the name of a ship from 30 miles away. This was important to residents of Ho-nolulu — merchants waiting for new goods, people waiting for relatives to arrive, the postmaster waiting for mail.

From Telegraph Hill, the lookout signaled the sighting of a ship, setting the wooden arms of a semaphore. Each ship had a semaphore signal. A lookout downtown set the arms of a semaphore on the roof of the post office. Everybody would know which ship was coming in because people knew the signal for each ship like they do telephone numbers today.

In 1879, the first long-distance telephone line on O'ahu ran from the harbor to the signal station on Telegraph Hill. In 1885, they moved the station to Diamond Head and Charlie moved with it. That's when people started to call him Diamond Head Charlie.

He was on lookout for ships all the time except to cook and sleep. He could recognize what ship it was rain or shine, day or night.

He married a Hawaiian woman who died a month after the birth of their daughter, Melika. Diamond Head Charlie did his own cooking outside his cottage. He had to carry drinking water in a bucket. He came to town once a month for his pay. For quite a while, his daughter lived with him way out on Diamond Head. Later on, his only companion was a dog.

After the Diamond Head lighthouse went up in 1898, the lighthouse keeper became Charlie's neighbor. They fought like cats and dogs. Maybe Charlie was jealous that somebody had invaded his territory. He claimed that Captain Nellson, the lighthouse keeper, was lazy and didn't do his job.

In 1901 they got into a fight. Diamond Head Charlie hit Nellson over the head with a club. Municipal Judge Luther Wilcox fined Charlie $500 and he was fired.

However, the new lookout made too many mistakes identifying ships. The town rose up in protest until Diamond Head Charlie got his job back. This time, they put him in charge of the lighthouse with an assistant.

People were so grateful to the lonely man for standing by his telescope that they took up a collection for him at Christmas every year. Diamond Head Charlie wasn't a good interview. He didn't like to talk. So far as I know, his job died with him in 1907. It wasn't long before radio came in and Honolulu didn't need a lookout.

Reach Bob Krauss at 525-8073.