GARY T. KUBOTA / GKUBOTA@STARBULLETIN.COM
Some men who brought the vessel Carthaginian from Denmark to Maui recalled the ship was not very fast. Crew members Curt Cameron, left, George Allan and Stanley Rayner gathered to say goodbye to the ship at a celebration Friday at Lahaina Harbor. The vessel, which served as a floating whaling museum, will be sunk in waters off Lahaina to become an attraction for dive tours.
Maintenance costs lead
museum to scrap ship
LAHAINA, Maui >> A floating landmark that has served as a whaling museum at Lahaina Harbor will be taken out to sea and sunk to become an attraction for dive tours.
The two-masted schooner Carthaginian, closed since Friday, was frequently photographed by tourists. More than 1 million tourists have visited the ship since the Lahaina Restoration Foundation began recording on-board visits in 1984.
The ship will be turned over to officials at Atlantis Submarines Hawaii LLC who will be sinking it off Lahaina once receiving government authorization, said George "Keoki" Freeland, executive director of the Lahaina Restoration Foundation.
Freeland said meanwhile, the foundation is looking for a replacement vessel and reviewing a few choices, including the double-hulled Hawaiian voyaging canoe Mookiha being built at Kamehameha Iki Park in Lahaina.
Foundation officials note the Carthaginian was costing about $50,000 a year in maintenance and would cost far more than feasible to repair.
Freeland said whatever vessel is selected, the goal is to make the new landmark fit the history of Lahaina and serve as an educational vehicle for people to learn about Hawaii.
Amid hula, song, and three shots from an on-board cannon, more than 60 people gathered at a ceremony Friday to say goodbye to the Carthaginian.
The vessel now at the harbor was brought to Lahaina in 1973 to replace the first Carthaginian, a wooden-hulled vessel built for the movie "Hawaii" that sank off a reef in Lahaina while on its way to dry-dock in 1972.
Designed as a steel-hulled two-masted schooner, the current Carthaginian hauled cement and coal in the Baltic before being purchased by the Foundation for about $21,000.
George Allan, who served as the assistant engineer aboard the ship, said the crew of eight people took about four and a half months to bring the vessel from an island off Copenhagen, Denmark through the Panama Canal to Hawaii.
Allan said the vessel wasn't anything like a racing yacht and the fastest it ever ran on the voyage was when the Portuguese coast guard towed it into a harbor for transmission repairs.
James Walsh, the general manager of Atlantis Submarines Hawaii, estimated his company may take about six months to receive the state and federal permits necessary to sink the Carthaginian.
Walsh, whose company has sunk two ships and an airplane off Waikiki as dive tour attractions, said part of the permit process involves making sure the sunken Carthaginian will be safe for navigation and dive tours.
"We really need to work closely with the diving community," he said. Walsh said tentative plans are to sink the Carthaginian in about 90 feet of water about a quarter mile off Puamana Park on the southern end of Lahaina Town.
