“The Silver Ship, my King—that was her name
in the bright islands whence your fathers came—
The Silver Ship, at rest from winds and tides,
Below your palace in your harbor rides:”
(from To Kalakaua, by RLS)
It was late January, 1889, when the yacht Casco, with Robert Louis Stevenson and family aboard, finally made landfall in Honolulu after a brutal thirty day passage from Tahiti. RLS arrived without food or funds. Dry rot in the masts had delayed the departure while expensive repairs were conducted. Upon collecting his mail and finding no money from London or elsewhere, he concluded that he could no longer afford the Casco. He soon discharged the yacht, which returned to San Francisco, and the Stevensons took up lodging at the Diamond Head end of Waikiki, not far from the Cleghorn residence at Ainahau. In order to restock his bank account, he decided to go dark (his words) for a few months and write. He hadn’t counted on meeting the King, David Kalakaua.
Fanny Stevenson’s daughter, Belle, and her husband, Joe Strong, had arrived in Honolulu in 1882, and were friends of the King. Two days after his arrival, RLS was introduced to Kalakaua by Joe Strong. Champagne parties followed, and card games at the King’s boathouse. The King introduced Stevenson to his brother-in-law, Archibald Cleghorn, another Edinburgh Scot, and president of the local Thistle Club. There were dinners at Ainahau, where RLS met Cleghorn’s young daughter, Princess Kaiulani, leading to afternoon teas, and dinners at the Stevensons’s. Later still, RLS would escort Kaiulani home to Ainahau along the path between the beach at Sans Souci and Kapiolani Park. It all ended in May, when the Princess, her sister Annie and her father sailed on the Umatilla for San Francisco. On the same boat, coincidentally, was Stevenson’s mother, on her way home.
A few days later, RLS caught the Kilauea Hou for Molokai. The morning of 22 May found his freighter “wallowing along under stupendous cliffs,” until Kalaupapa came into view, a “little town of wooden homes, bare and bleak and harsh.” Stevenson’s initial request to visit the leper settlement had been denied and permission had come only after a personal intervention by Kalakaua.
The Ruler of the Heavens 