Bogus story of pirates’ raid provides ‘Five-0’ with a plot

A reader, Tom Holowach, asked me about a story he heard. Holowach is manager of the Paliku Theatre and acts in local productions.

He told me he was was an extra in the Season 6 opening episode of “Hawaii Five-0,” which premieres tonight.

The plot of the episode includes the idea that the kingdom was robbed in 1884 by pirates.

“They said that I was going to be one of King Kalakaua’s Cabinet ministers and a guest at an exclusive dinner in Iolani Palace,” Holowach says, “when pirates break in and rob the king and everybody else. I certainly couldn’t turn that down!

“The costumes were the authentic, heavy wool period costumes, mostly used last in the movie ‘Princess Kaiulani,’ and the wardrobe department was excited because it was so radically different.

“The makeup department had period research photos around their mirrors. There was a shot of Kalakaua surrounded by his Cabinet, and I actually did look like one of them.

“We shot the scene in one night from about 6 p.m. till midnight, not in the palace, of course, but in a magnificent Nuuanu home with a gorgeous dining room that had a working fountain built into the wall.

“I was placed on one side of the table, adjacent to the future Queen Liliuokalani, who was opposite King Kalakaua on the other end.

“After I got home at about 1 a.m., I went right to the Internet to see if this plot premise was remotely true, and found that one California newspaper reported it, but nothing from Hawaii, which seemed odd. That’s when I wrote you to check on the veracity.”

I had never heard this story and turned to one of my cadre of experts, Iolani Palace docent Willson Moore, who researched it.

The Iolani Palace research staff found a San Francisco newspaper first relating the story. It made the front page of the Daily Alta California on Dec. 15, 1884. (From 1804 until 1846 there were two Californias: Baja California and Alta California, whose capital was Monterey).

As one online account, posted on thunting.com, put it, “It was on December 1, 1884, that Hawaii became the scene of the last great buccaneering raid in history.

“About 10 p.m., the natives were stunned to see about five boats come ashore at the wharf with about 70 armed men with cutlasses and Winchester rifles. They marched with military precision and captured the town of Honolulu.

“The Royal Hawaiian treasury, the royal palace and the king himself, his ministers, generals, banks and all the large companies were systematically held to ransom, robbed and looted without firing a shot or anybody getting killed.

“It was conservatively estimated that over $2.5 million in treasure was looted. As quickly as they arrived, they left like a thief in the night.”

The account went on to say that “no one ever knew who these men were, who perhaps pulled off one of the greatest crimes of piracy in history. To this day there is no record of where they went after the Honolulu raid.”

“It was publicly humiliating for the Hawaiian king and his generals and downright embarrassing for the United States government. The raid was so brazen and so cocky that one cannot help feel a little admiration for this bunch of pirates. They really caught the Hawaiian government and king with their pants down,” the online post concluded.

Did a bunch of well-trained buccaneers pull off one of the most successful and daring crimes in history and leave the governments of two countries with very red faces? And what happened to the treasure?

“It turns out your pirate story is pure fiction, indeed a hoax, promptly exposed,” Moore says. It was created to sell newspapers, and it worked.

The next issue of the paper exposed the so-called Honolulu pirate raid as a pure hoax a little more than a week later.

In tonight’s season premiere of “Hawaii Five-0,” I believe someone in 2015 comes upon a map that shows where the pirates buried their treasure. Where the story goes from there, you’ll just have to watch and see.

I asked “Hawaii Five-0” executive producer Peter Lenkov where the idea for the episode came from.

It “originally started as an idea I had to do a big-scale pirate adventure story — launching Season 6 with a bang!

“After putting together a few pieces of the story I wanted to tell, I stumbled upon some research that indicated that there might have been a real pirate attack back in the late 1800s.

“Delving deeper, though, I discovered that the story was indeed a hoax. But that didn’t deter me. Tying my tale to a real story, or reported story for that matter, seemed like a good way to make everything seem more accurate — ripped from the headlines, so to speak.

“But of course my real agenda here was to debunk the pirate legend. I figured if anyone ever stumbled upon the same story online, our show would hopefully set the record straight.”

And it has.

Footnote:

A month ago I wrote about Earl Finch, who befriended thousands of AJA soldiers in 1943 in Mississippi. Finch was a strong supporter of Hawaii becoming the 49th state.

Reader Jim Hoover wondered what would have happened if Hawaii was made a state before Alaska. He wondered, would the TV show be called “Hawaii Four-9”?

Bob Sigall, author of the “Companies We Keep” books, looks through his collection of old photos to tell stories each Friday of Hawaii people, places and companies. Email him at Sigall@Yahoo.com.