Honolulu Harbor, the deep-water port just ahead of you, transformed a small island town into a hub of Pacific commerce and made the Hawaiian Kingdom a player in global trade. In the 1790s, the first foreign ships began calling here regularly, and Hawaiian chiefs quickly recognized both the opportunity and the danger this trade represented. The first major commodity was sandalwood: Hawaiian forests were stripped of the fragrant wood, which was shipped to China where it was prized for incense and furniture.
By 1830, the sandalwood forests were largely gone, and the chiefs who had profited most had plunged the common people into debt. The whaling era began in earnest around 1820, and for the next four decades Honolulu was one of the great whaling ports of the Pacific — ships stopped here to resupply, repair, and give their crews a chance to spend their wages in the waterfront grog shops and boarding houses. Then came sugar: the great plantations established in the mid-nineteenth century turned Hawaii into an agricultural exporter, and the harbor saw sugar-laden ships departing for San Francisco throughout the late 1800s.
Every transformation of Hawaii's economy passed through this harbor.