Seattle Sets Its Sights on Honolulu's Grocery List
A Seattle schooner sails for the islands with flour, hay and shingles aboard, and Hawaiian importers begin to wonder whether they still need San Francisco at all.
Indications now point that Seattle is to have an increased trade in another direction, and that is to the Hawaiian islands. Some even make the statement that the entire import trade of those islands now lies open to Seattle. This city, of course, will be very much interested in this latter statement. The Northwest farmer is more interested in the shipments of flour, feed and hay, which are beginning to leave here for those islands. The schooner Bering Sea sailed last week with the first cargo of flour, etc., that has been shipped from here to Honolulu for a long time. Most of the shipment was by Lilly, Bogardus Co. Mr. Lilly has the following to say about it in the Post-Intelligencer:
"The failure of the grain crops in California has made the price of breadstuffs, as well as hay and feed, very high. In the past Honolulu merchants have depended almost entirely upon San Francisco for their supplies, but now they desire a change. They can buy flour, etc., much cheaper here, and there is no difference in the price of hardware and groceries. For that reason there is, according to Mr. Stevens, a strong feeling in the islands favorable to a line of vessels between this port and Honolulu.
"The bark Ceylon, operated by J. M. E. Atkinson and others of this city, made several runs from Seattle to Honolulu with general cargoes last year, but her owners finally put her back carrying lumber. Mr. Stevens tells us that the reason the Ceylon was not able to obtain full cargoes was that the Hawaiian merchants had not been properly advised as to her sailing dates. He says that there would now be no difficulty in filling several vessels every trip, and that nothing would please the islanders more than a line from Seattle. We loaded the Bering Sea with a general cargo valued at several thousand dollars. She was the largest vessel that Stevens could secure, and he was compelled to leave behind much stuff that he had orders for. He represents Thomas J. King, Sr., of Honolulu, who is at the head of the California Feed Company, and one of the heaviest island importers. The Bering Sea will be run in King's interests."
The Bering Sea's cargo was composed of 60 bales of hay, 210 sacks of barley, 25 sacks of bran, 30 sacks of cracked corn, 15 barrels of flour, 144,000 shingles, and 61 sash and doors.
This and other vessels will run regularly between Seattle and those islands.
“They can buy flour, etc., much cheaper here, and there is no difference in the price of hardware and groceries.”
Then as now, a port's fate turned on whether shippers believed it could fill a hull on schedule — the Ceylon failed for want of a sailing notice, not a market. Seattle's push into Honolulu's pantry was an early round in a century-long duel with San Francisco over Pacific trade. The Northwest's flour and hay, meanwhile, were grown in valleys like Yakima's, which is why a farm journal bothered to print a shipping manifest.
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