Rolling Down to Old Maui (Mohee)

DESCRIPTION: The sailors, having spent many months in Kamchatka and the Bering Sea, are happy to flee the northern gales and return to temperate climes in Maui/Mohee. The look forward to seeing the girls
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1858 (Journal from the Atkins Adams)
KEYWORDS: whaler return sailor sea Hawaii
FOUND IN: US
REFERENCES (7 citations):
Huntington-SongsTheWhalemenSang, pp. 27-28, "Rolling Down to Old Mohee" (1 text, 1 tune)
Huntington-TheGam-MoreSongsWhalemenSang, pp.53-55, "Rolling Down to Old Maui" (1 text, 1 tune)
Colcord-SongsOfAmericanSailormen, pp. 197-198, "Rolling Down to Old Maui" (1 text, 1 tune)
Harlow-ChantyingAboardAmericanShips, pp. 228-230, "Rolling Down to Old Maui" (1 text, 1 tune)
Hugill-SongsOfTheSea, pp. 120-121, "Rolling Down to Old Maui" (1 text, 1 tune)
Tod-WhalingInSouthernWaters, p.126, "Rolling Down to Old Mohee" (1 text)
DT, MAUI1* MAUI2* MOHEE3*
Roud #2005
RECORDINGS:
A.L. Lloyd, "Rolling Down to Old Maui" (on Lloyd9)
NOTES [468 words]: The anticipation with which the whalers viewed Hawaii in this song seems to be real, although it was usually Honolulu to which they sailed. Whipple, p. 183, writes of Honolulu, "Here the earliest whalemen of the nineteenth century found a somnolent tropic town with a beautiful and well-protected harbor. They turned it into the pesthole of the Pacific. 'Cape Horn,' the whorehouse district, was so named because of the truism that the whalemen hung their consciences on the Horn on the voyage out and picked them up again on the way home. The district was known all over the world for its riotous debauches, and the whalemen accordingly felt called upon to go on their wildest sprees in Honolulu."
Rickard, p. 129, says, "The great era of Hawaii as the principle base for the Pacific whaling trade came with the discovery around 1840 of new and rich grounds along the north-west coast of North America, in the Sea of Okhotsk and in the Arctic Ocean to the north of the Bering Strait. This brought a steady increase in the number of ships calling at Hawaii. A definite pattern soon emerged. In the early years, the whalers would round Cape Horn into the Pacific in winter, sail north and call at Hawaii in spring, spend the summer on the whaling grounds, and then return to their home ports, calling at Hawaii on the way. Then, as the system changed and voyages began to lengthen, ships took to spending the summer in the northern whaling grounds and the winter on the Equator. In spring and autumn they visited the islands to refit. Very often they left their oil and bone in storage at Honolulu or shipped it home as freight in ordinary merchant ships.
"There was a spectacular increase in the number of visits by whalers during the 1840's. In 1840 there were 86 arrivals at the two ports of Honolulu and Lahaina [on Maui, so presumably the destination of the ship in this song], in 1843 there were 383, and in 1846, which was the peak year, 596. This was the greatest number of arrivals in any year, though the actual value of the trade increased for about ten years afterward. During the decade 1851-1860 4420 arrivals were recorded.
"For years there was great rivalry between Honolulu and Lahaina.... Honolulu possessed by far the better harbour, but many whaling masters preferred Lahaina, as supplied were abundant and cheap there, and it offered fewer temptations to the sailors and less opportunity for drunkenness and desertion. Up to 1840 Honolulu had a clear lead, then for the next decade Lahaina did the better business. The leadership alternated for a few years after that, but from 1855 Honolulu rapidly outstripped its rival."
Thus, given that this song was first taken down in 1858, odds are that this early collection dates from no more than a decade or two after the song was writte. - RBW
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File: SWMS027

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