Before you could fly to Hawaii in five hours, you sailed there in five days. And for three decades — from the late 1920s to the dawn of the jet age — one company controlled nearly every aspect of that journey: the ships you sailed on, the hotels you slept in, the music you heard, and the lei placed around your neck when you stepped onto the dock at Honolulu.
That company was Matson Navigation. And the story of how a Swedish orphan’s freight shipping business became the architect of Hawaiian tourism is one of the most remarkable — and least told — chapters in American travel history.
A Swedish Orphan and a Sugar Schooner
The man who started it all was born Wilhelm Mattson in Lysekil, Sweden, likely on November 19, 1847, though he later changed his birth date and made himself two years younger. Orphaned young, he arrived in New York City as a cabin boy in 1863 at age 14. He worked his way around Cape Horn to San Francisco by 1867, and within two years he was captaining vessels carrying coal to the Spreckels Sugar Company refinery.
His friendship with sugar tycoon Claus Spreckels would change everything. In 1882, Matson bought his first ship — the three-masted schooner Emma Claudina, named for Spreckels’ daughter — and sailed from San Francisco to Hilo carrying 300 tons of food, plantation supplies, and general merchandise. The return cargo was sugar.
It was a simple business model: supplies out, sugar back. But Matson saw further. By the time he died on October 11, 1917, his fleet comprised 14 of the largest, fastest, and most modern ships in the Pacific. His daughter, Lurline Matson Roth, and son-in-law William P. Roth would take the company in a direction the old freight captain could never have imagined.
The Grand Scheme of 1925
The plan that created modern Hawaiian tourism was hatched in 1925 by three men: William Roth at Matson, Edward Davies Tenney at Castle & Cooke (one of Hawaii’s powerful “Big Five” companies and Matson’s partner), and a vision of vertical integration that would make modern tech companies envious.
The scheme had three parts, all launched simultaneously:
- Build the fastest ocean liner ever constructed for Hawaiian service — the SS Malolo
- Build a landmark beach resort — the Royal Hawaiian Hotel
- Build an exclusive golf club for hotel guests — Waialae Country Club
The logic was elegant: own the transportation, own the destination, own the experience. A wealthy San Franciscan would book passage on a Matson liner, sail to Honolulu in luxury, be greeted with lei and music at the dock, transfer to a Matson-owned hotel, play golf at a Matson-affiliated club, and sail home on the same line. Every dollar stayed in the system.
The Royal Hawaiian Hotel opened on February 1, 1927 — a $4 million Spanish-Moorish palace designed by Warren and Wetmore, the same New York firm that created Grand Central Terminal. Waialae Country Club opened the same day. The SS Malolo, designed by naval architect William Francis Gibbs, entered service later that year.
The Ships
Four passenger liners defined the White Ships era. All were designed by William Francis Gibbs, America’s preeminent naval architect, who would later design the SS United States and whose firm during World War II designed 63 percent of all American merchant ships over 2,000 tons.
SS Malolo (1927)
The flagship. At 17,226 gross tons and 582 feet long, the Malolo — Hawaiian for “flying fish” — was the fastest ship in the Pacific at 22 knots. She carried up to 620 passengers, primarily first class.
The Malolo proved her worth before she ever carried a tourist. On May 25, 1927, during sea trials in dense fog near the Nantucket Lightship, she collided with the Norwegian freighter SS Jacob Christensen. Over 7,000 tons of seawater flooded three compartments. But Gibbs’ revolutionary watertight compartment design held. The Malolo limped into New York Harbor with 7,000 tons of water in her hull — and the design became the industry standard for ocean liner safety.
In 1937, she was renamed SS Matsonia in honor of the company founder and refitted with new luxury “Lanai Suites.”
SS Lurline (1932)
The most famous of the four. Christened on July 12, 1932 at Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corporation in Quincy, Massachusetts, by Lurline Matson Roth — Captain Matson’s daughter, the ship’s namesake. At 18,163 gross tons and 632 feet long, she carried 715 passengers with a crew of 359.
The Lurline was dedicated to the Hawaii run — San Francisco to Los Angeles to Honolulu — and became synonymous with Hawaiian travel. After World War II, she was redesigned by Raymond Loewy, the legendary industrial designer responsible for the Coca-Cola bottle shape, the Lucky Strike package, and the Greyhound bus. The refit cost over $18 million.
SS Mariposa and SS Monterey (1931-1932)
Near-identical sister ships at 18,017 gross tons and 604 feet long. While the Lurline served the Hawaii route, the Mariposa and Monterey ran the longer South Pacific circuit: San Francisco to Los Angeles to Honolulu to Auckland, Pago Pago, Suva, Sydney, and Melbourne.
Five Days at Sea
The voyage from San Francisco to Honolulu took four and a half to five days. Most passengers in the 1950s spent nine days in Hawaii before the return crossing. The ships were designed to make the journey itself part of the vacation.
Passengers had access to two outdoor swimming pools, air-conditioned dining salons, a gymnasium, cocktail lounges, and a ballroom with live orchestras and dance bands. Hawaiian music and hula performances began the moment passengers boarded, creating an immersive cultural experience days before landfall.
The dining was an event. Menus featured artwork by Eugene Savage, arguably America’s leading Art Deco muralist. Matson commissioned Savage to paint nine large Hawaiian-themed murals, completed in 1940. The murals could not be installed during the war — the ships had been converted to troopships — but lithographs of Savage’s work graced the menu covers of the SS Lurline and the Royal Hawaiian Hotel from 1948 through 1956. These are now prized collectibles.
Boat Day: The Spectacle of Arrival
Nothing in modern travel compares to what happened when a Matson liner reached Honolulu.
As the ship passed the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, it sounded three blasts of its whistle. With Aloha Tower in sight, tugboats loaded with friends, family, hula dancers, and photographers came out to meet it. Outrigger canoes, sailboats, and motor launches accompanied the liner past Waikiki Beach to her berth at Pier 10 beneath the Aloha Tower.
Matson liners docked at 8 AM. The Royal Hawaiian Band played. Lei sellers offered flower garlands to arriving passengers. Hula dancers performed on the pier. Local children dove for coins tossed overboard. Live Hawaiian music filled the air.
Departure was equally theatrical. As the Royal Hawaiian Band played “Aloha Oe,” passengers threw colorful streamers and lei from the ship’s decks. Paper streamers connected ship to shore, stretching and snapping one by one as the vessel pulled away — a symbolic promise to return.
This spectacle ran from the mid-1920s through the late 1950s. It was not spontaneous Hawaiian hospitality. It was choreographed marketing genius, designed by a shipping company that understood that the emotion of arrival was as valuable as the destination itself.
The Vertical Empire
At its peak, Matson’s control over Hawaiian tourism was nearly total. The company owned or operated:
- The Moana Hotel (acquired by the 1930s) — Waikiki’s original luxury hotel
- The Royal Hawaiian Hotel (opened 1927) — the Pink Palace
- The SurfRider Hotel (opened 1952) — today a wing of the Moana Surfrider
- The Princess Kaiulani Hotel (opened 1955)
Book a Matson liner, stay in a Matson hotel, play a Matson-affiliated golf course, return on a Matson ship. The company did not just transport tourists to paradise — it built the paradise, staffed it, and controlled the entire experience from embarkation to return.
Famous Passengers and Extraordinary Voyages
The White Ships carried an extraordinary roster of passengers. Clark Gable, Shirley Temple, William Powell, Carole Lombard, Jimmy Durante, Janet Leigh, and dozens of other Hollywood stars sailed to Hawaii aboard Matson liners.
Some voyages became legendary:
Amelia Earhart and the Lurline (December 1934): On December 22, 1934, Earhart, her husband George Putnam, stunt pilot Paul Mantz, and mechanic Ernie Tissot sailed from Los Angeles aboard the Lurline with her Lockheed Vega 5C aircraft strapped to the ship’s aft tennis court. They celebrated Christmas at sea. On January 11, 1935, Earhart departed from Wheeler Field and flew solo to Oakland — becoming the first person to fly solo between Hawaii and the U.S. mainland.
The Millionaires’ Cruise (September 1929): On September 21, 1929, the SS Malolo departed San Francisco on a 90-day, 24,000-mile “Around Pacific Good-Will Cruise” visiting 19 ports in 14 countries. All 325 passengers were acknowledged millionaires, selected by the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce. Thirty-eight days into the cruise — on October 29, 1929, Black Tuesday — the stock market crashed. Approximately half the passengers went broke during the voyage. The ship returned on December 21 to a very different America.
Pearl Harbor — December 7, 1941: The SS Lurline was halfway from Honolulu to San Francisco carrying a record 765 passengers when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. She arrived safely on December 10 after traveling in a zigzag pattern under radio silence, blacked out at night.
Elvis Presley (November 1957): Elvis sailed to Honolulu aboard the SS Matsonia on November 5, 1957, arriving November 9. He performed two shows at Honolulu Stadium the next day, then played for troops at Schofield Barracks — his final concerts before being drafted into the U.S. Army.
The War Years
After Pearl Harbor, all four Matson passenger liners — Lurline, Matsonia, Mariposa, and Monterey — along with 33 Matson freighters were immediately pressed into military service. Painted gray, stripped of their luxury fittings, they became troopships.
The wartime total was staggering: 119 voyages, 1.5 million miles, and 736,000 troops transported. The Lurline once carried Australian Prime Minister John Curtin to America to confer with President Roosevelt. Meanwhile, the Royal Hawaiian Hotel served as an R&R center for Navy submariners — over 200,000 servicemen passed through during the war.
The End of an Era
The White Ships era did not end with a bang. It ended with a Boeing 707.
On October 21, 1936, Pan American Airways carried the first paying airline passengers across the Pacific via Honolulu. But air travel was still expensive and for the few — it did not immediately threaten Matson. The real blow came in 1959, when two things happened almost simultaneously: Hawaii became the 50th state, and Pan Am inaugurated jet service to the islands.
Jets could cross the Pacific in hours instead of days. Almost immediately, passenger loads on Matson ships began falling. By 1955, though half of all tourists in Hawaii stayed in Matson hotels, only a fifth still arrived by ship. The math was unsustainable.
In 1959, Matson sold all four of its Waikiki hotels to Sheraton Hotels and Resorts for $17.6 million — ending 32 years in the hotel business. These became Sheraton’s first properties outside North America.
The ships followed. The SS Matsonia was laid up in late 1962. On February 3, 1963, the SS Lurline suffered an engine failure arriving at Los Angeles from Honolulu. Matson decided not to repair her. She was sold to Chandris Lines and renamed MS Ellinis. The remaining Matsonia was rechristened SS Lurline and operated until 1970, when she too was sold. The White Ships era was over.
What Matson Built — and What Came After
The numbers tell the story of a revolution. In 1910, roughly 5,000 visitors came to Hawaii. By 1927 — the year Matson’s grand scheme launched — that number had risen to 17,500. In 1959, the year of statehood and jets, 243,000 tourists arrived. By 1970, just over a decade after the jets came, 1.8 million visitors per year were arriving. Tourism had replaced sugar and pineapple combined as Hawaii’s largest civilian income source.
Matson did not disappear. The company pivoted to what it knew best — freight. In 1958, the SS Hawaiian Merchant became one of the first ships in the Pacific to carry standardized containers. Matson built the world’s first A-frame gantry crane at its Alameda terminal — a prototype now displayed at the Smithsonian. Today, Matson Inc. (NYSE: MATX), headquartered in Honolulu, is one of the largest shipping companies in the Pacific, currently investing $1 billion in three new containerships.
The White Ships are gone. But the tourism industry they created generates over $20 billion annually for Hawaii. Every tourist who steps off a plane at Daniel K. Inouye International Airport, every guest who checks into a Waikiki hotel, every lei greeting at an arrival ceremony — all of it traces back to a Swedish orphan who saw opportunity in a three-masted schooner, and the men who turned his freight line into a machine for manufacturing paradise.
This article is part of our Hawaii Tourism History series. Read more: The Oldest Hotels in Hawaii | Is Waikiki Beach Man-Made?