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Although Matson is best-known as the steamship line which specializes in romantic cruises to the Hawaiian Islands, it has played and still plays a much more important role in the American economy. Its founder, William Matson, helped Hawaii's sugar planters boom their Pacific out' post into a modern American territory soon to be a state — a state which supplies a sixth of our sugar, 80% of the world's pineapple, and $200,' 000,000 a year in American trade. It was Matson who also developed the trade and tourist links between our nation and Australia and New Zealand.
Finally, it was the Matson fleet which carried our troops and supplies into the South Pacific — as well as the Atlantic — in the crucial four years following Pearl Harbor. Immediately after the outbreak of war, four Matson passenger ships — the Lurline, Mariposa, Monterey and Matsonia — were hurriedly stripped of their luxurious fittings and transformed into troopships. Forty-five Matson freighters became Army and Navy cargo carriers. Matson helped us get there fastest with the mostest, and with no let-up until after their final wartime chore — bringing home the troops, war brides and war babies.
THE man who made all this possible was Captain William Matson, a barrel -chested, mustachioed Swede with a passion for ships, trade, fine clothes and trotting horses. He worked his men hard, but paid the best wages and fed the best food. He could make old sea-dogs wince with a salty and profane tongue-lashing,
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yet was so smooth a diplomat that for several years he was ConsulGeneral of Sweden, and also President of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce.
Matson was born in Lysekil, Sweden, in 1849, the year of the California gold rush. Left an orphan at the age of four by an accident which killed both his parents, he grew up without any strong ties for the land. When he was only ten, he went to sea on a sailing ship as a "handy boy." He attended school between voyages until he was fourteen, and then shipped out on the Aurora, a Nova Scotia vessel bound for New York.
Here he heard so much excited talk I
about the fortunes in gold to be found n
in California that he signed on the !;
Bridgewater, a sailing ship going to a
San Francisco by way of the Horn. I «
But when Matson reached the city rc
which was to be his home port for ft
the rest of his life, he found that the J d<
gold fever had ebbed considerably. I
With Swedish prudence, he got a job j fe
on a schooner carrying coal from Mt. |h
Diablo across the Bay to the Spreckles | sugar factory in San Francisco.