Honolulu Harbour, 11 August 1911
On that morning, in the salt water of Honolulu Harbour, Duke Kahanamoku swam a hundred yards in 55.4 seconds and beat the world record by 4.6 seconds. The Amateur Athletic Union would not ratify it. The officials, they said, had used alarm clocks, and the current must have helped him.
He was twenty. Stockholm was ten months away.
This site is a record of what he did, kept by people who wanted it kept accurately. The whole story of that swim is in chapter two.
He was born in a kingdom and died in a state, and the country changed underneath him without his ever leaving home.
What is on this site
- The life Kālia to the paddle out, sourced, including the parts that do not flatter anybody.
- The timeline Every dated event we can stand behind, 1890 to 2002, with the disputed dates marked as disputed. Prints on two pages.
- The statue, and a walk Why the bronze faces the street, what to do with a lei, and five places within walking distance of it.
- The word What Duke himself said aloha meant, and where to read the people qualified to say more.
- The story of the name How his name became a piece of property, what his family has said about that, and where we sit in it.
The record, in short
Still to come
The photographs, as each one is cleared in writing with the collection that holds it. The films at /waterman. A page on the word aloha written by a Kanaka Maoli author, commissioned and paid. And an account of what this company gives away, with the numbers in it. What changes here is logged, dated, at changes and corrections.
But for the work of Kahanamoku and the others, we would all have perished.
F. W. Hock, who was aboard the Thelma when it capsized off Newport Beach, 14 June 1925. Reported in the local press at the time; we are working from a reproduction and have not yet seen the original clipping.