Approximately a century
after the great Captain Cook
had placed
Hawaii on the map,
another British vessel, HMS Scout,
docked
in Honolulu Harbor,
Kingdom of Hawaii.
The day was September 9, 1874,
and the seven astronomers aboard
were on the same mission
as Cook's expedition of 1769
– to
observe, and to record for science,
a rare transit of Venus across the sun.
The solar
system's scale
was as yet
not girded with
any real knowledge
derived from measurement.
Venus' Transit presents
an excellent opportunity
to determine
something called
"the Astronomical Unit"
which, according to NASA is:
" - approximately the mean distance
between
the Earth and the Sun.
It is a derived constant
and used to indicate
distances
within the solar system."
Hawaii's King Kalakaua
(who had his palace wired for electricity by
Edison 4 years before the White House was)
took personal interest in
the endeavor, granting the expedition
a suitable piece of open land
not far from our Honolulu
waterfront and downtown.
A wooden palisade enclosed
a well-equipped nineteenth-century
astronomical observatory, including:
"several temporary structures including wooden
observatories, a bathing tent, a cook house,
and a sappers’
barrack."
Simpler establishments
were also placed two neighbor islands:
at Kailua-Kona on the island of Hawaii,
and at Waimea on
the island Kauai.
Journals of the scientists speak of
heat unrelieved by thatched roofing,
even doubled layers of it!
They mention our winds,
powerful and playful enough
to dispatch a 90-foot coconut palm
crashing through the
observatory fence
Apparently it rained enough
to flood the observatory
grounds
and float the floors
of their wooden buildings.
Mr. Chauvin's timely book
also gives us the pleasure
of seeing our beloved Merrie Monarch
through the eyes of busy, preoccupied
'men of science'
One of them, George Tupman journal-ed that:
"King Kalakaua had not only interrupted
the
astronomers’ work
with a two-hour evening visit,
but that he had had the
temerity
to propose that if, as soon as all the instruments
were
mounted, the astronomers would
open the observatory grounds to the
public
for a week,
His Majesty would provide
some additional entertainment
by sending his own military band
down every day! "
Hawaiian hospitality was not appreciated
by these busy men!
Perhaps this is where our UN-serious reputation
as a place to conduct serious business
got started?
On the day-
" at about 3
o’clock hundreds of natives
arrived at the gates in their holiday
clothes! "
From a journal of the time quoted by Dr. Chauvin
To make matters worse,
during the time surrounding the actual Transit,
the king was abroad in Washington DC
attempting to negotiate the Reciprocity Treaty that the Kingdom
desperately needed for important political
and economic reasons.
" When the Reciprocity Treaty was signed
in January 1875, it would put
Hawaii’s fragile economy
on a firm basis by permitting Hawai‘i-grown
sugar
to enter the United States duty-free.
But it would also direct
the Hawaiian Islands
away from their long-standing flirtations with
England
and toward their consummate embrace
with the United States; "
Chauvin
Pearl Harbor became property
( "leased") of the US Navy-
History.
The transit of Venus was observed
here in Honolulu on
December 8th.
The sun's disk disappeared
in the Pacific
at 5:18 p.m. Honolulu Mean Time.
[No word about any green flash on that day.]
The transit was not complete,
but the observations of it's progress
were sufficient.
I am indebted
for this fascinating information
to a lecture by Dr. Michael Chauvin
that was originally delivered by him on
June
7, 2004,
at the Smithsonian Institution
in Washington, D.C.
It is reproduced as an article at
Please check out Mr. Chauvin's
fascinating volume via this LINK.
Hokuloa:
The British 1874 Transit of Venus Expedition
to Hawai'i
ISBN: 1581780230
Can also be ordered by phone (808-848-4135),
fax (808-847-8260)
Thank You!
Warmly, cloudia
