[ MAUKA-MAKAI ]

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MATSON/KRANTZ ARCHIVES Lurline passengers throw leis overboard as the ships round Diamond Head. This tradition was popularized by the passenger line.

Carefree comfort

A new book celebrates the
romantic era of steamship
voyages from San Francisco

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By burl burlingame
bburlingame@starbulletin.com

For someone who's not particularly old -- we're talking fresh as a daisy, or some similar old-fashioned phrase to describe her -- Lynn Blocker Krantz has a real affinity for things old and older. Even the dress she's wearing for an interview is older than she is. Might be older than her parents.

"Isn't it great!" she gasps. "They don't make colors like this anymore!" Krantz, it seems, speaks in fluent italics.

This passion is tailor-made for her latest project, a packed-to-the-brim picture book of Matson's glory days of steamship travel, "To Honolulu in Five Days," co-created with husband Nick Krantz and relative Mary Thiele Fobian.

MATSON/KRANTZ ARCHIVES Boat Day in Honolulu, above, was a time of great festivity and excitement.

Lynn Krantz became enraptured with advertising and promotional pieces produced during this era while researching Hawaiiana for a line of colorful dishes she also produces. She's been a Hawaii pop-culture buff since vacationing here as a teenager.

"It was the murals of Eugene Savage that really took my breath away," she said. "He painted them in 1940, six murals of Hawaiian scenes that were intended to be used as menu covers for Matson's ocean liners. But they went into storage in World War II and weren't printed until the late '40s, on the Lurline."

"To Honolulu in Five Days" By Lynn Blocker Krantz, Nick Krantz and Mary Thiele Fobian (Ten Speed Press, 150 pages, $24.95)

According to Krantz, the menu covers became instant collector's items. By the early '50s, hundreds of thousands had been printed. You can find them on eBay today commanding high bids. The originals are in Matson's San Francisco offices.

"Originally, I was going to use them to accompany a cookbook that we were preparing to complement the dishes," said Krantz. "But Nick and Mary and I got so interested in researching and recording that 'white ship' era of Matson's history that we knew the book had to be more than that."

Thanks to Matson public-relations manager Jeff Hull, Krantz became a familiar lurker in the company's San Francisco archives, and now probably knows the collection better than anyone else.

The trio also interviewed Matson employees and passengers about their times aboard the ships, deliberately trying to re-create the sense of carefree comfort that the steamship company promoted.

Part of that experience included spending time in Waikiki hotels, and the book covers this as well. A copy of "To Honolulu in Five Days" was placed in the Royal Hawaiian Hotel's time capsule during recent 75th-anniversary celebrations there.

MATSON/KRANTZ ARCHIVES When the passengers were at sea, left, they could relax with shipboard games like shuffleboard.

"And a documentary is in the works," said Lynn, who with Nick also produced a documentary about scientific work performed aboard the USS Arizona.

"There's so much good Matson footage of that era, it would be a shame not to do something."

According to Hull, "To Honolulu in Five Days" is already a runaway success with Matson veterans. It joins "Century of Ships" and "Cargoes" as only the third book to focus on Matson history, despite the line's importance in Pacific commerce.

At any rate, Ten Speed Press -- a publishing company known for its strong graphic sense -- snapped up the project and made it one of their leading spring publications.

"And we wound up using some recipes anyway," laughed Krantz.

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