Donald J. Froning, Jr.

The Steam Schooner Cosmopolis/Hawaiian Steamer Kauai: The Māhukona Harbor Steamship Wreck.

(Under the direction of Dr. Bradley Rodgers) Department of History, April 2007.

The purpose of this thesis is twofold. With a narrow focus, the purpose is to document in detail the history of the west coast steam schooner Cosmopolis, which became the Hawaiian steamer Kauai, and later sunk at Māhukona Harbor on the Kohala Coast on the Island of Hawaii, 1913. This documentation includes the archaeology of the steamship wreck site at Māhukona Harbor, and the confirmation, based upon archaeology and history, that the wreck site at Māhukona Harbor represents the remains of the steamer Kauai and possibly the cargo of its final trip. With a wider focus, the purpose of this thesis is to show that the Hawaiian steamer working in the sugar industry of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries is the same vessel type as the west coast steam schooner serving that coast's lumber industry of the same period. The steamer Cosmopolis / Kauai demonstrates this link as it was essentially both a steam schooner and a Hawaiian steamer, with only a deck structure modification to separate them. The detailed historical narrative in the thesis shows that it was a typical lumber hauler that became a typical sugar carrier.