Does the name Alonzo Gartley ring a bell? Maybe it should!
by Peter Rosegg | June 30, 2020
Of all my quiet, uncomplaining neighbors, residents of Oahu Cemetery, mentioned in a previous posting, my most fascinating is someone you may have never heard of.
If you’ve visited the University of Hawaii at Manoa you may be familiar with Gartley Hall, completed in 1922 and recently renovated. If you ever traverse Old Pali Road in Nuuanu Valley you may have passed Gartley Place.
If you are a gardener, or just a hibiscus lover, you may know the “Agnes Galt,” a widely grown hibiscus hybrid that does not carry the name Gartley but was first crossbred by Mr. Gartley and described by him in 1913 in “The Friend,” an early Hawaiian magazine.
My interest in Alonzo Gartley, however, is that he came to Hawaii in 1900 to be the first manager of Hawaiian Electric Company (initial salary, $250 a month) where he served until 1910. And he oversaw the conversion from burning coal to oil for fuel.
Alonzo Gartley was a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, which as you will see is important to the coal-to-oil shift.
After 1910, Gartley was vice-president of C. Brewer & Company (he had married into the family) until his death in 1921. Described in some histories as “brilliant,” Gartley’s innovations in milling machinery for Brewer made him famous throughout the cane sugar world. He served on the boards of other companies and was an advisor to Mutual Telephone Co.’s board as it created our first automatic telephone system.
Gartley was chairman of the first board of regents of the University of Hawaii, hence the building at Manoa. He was a founder of the Hawaiian Engineering Association (now the Engineers and Architects of Hawaii) and its first president for five years until 1908.
He was an avid photographer whose images of old Hawaii, many now in the Bishop Museum, are well known, including an iconic view of the Pali Highway in the early 1900s. Here’s another of his photos, which some Internet comic titled, “Real Housewives of Kaneohe.”
When Gartley arrived in Honolulu, coal was used to generate electricity. But a big change was coming.
The navies of the world ̶ remember, Alonzo went to the Naval Academy ̶ were starting to switch from coal to oil for fuel. Oil was easier to transport and store aboard a ship or on land and you don’t have to shovel it into a boiler. Refueling at sea is a lot easier with a liquid than a chunky ore. With the U.S. Navy presence at Pearl Harbor growing, a supply of oil was assured in the islands.
Unlike today, coal was more expensive than oil, which then had fewer uses. Another savings for Hawaiian Electric was in costs for the hard labor so necessary in handling coal. In 1905, Hawaiian Electric signed a contract with the Pacific Oil Transportation Company for the purchase of 15,000 to 36,000 barrels of fuel oil a year.
The shift to oil was inevitable in any case. The first gasoline-fueled “horseless” car arrived in the islands in late 1899 and the first airplane arrived in 1910. Both these amazing new forms of transportation would depend on liquid fuel, not coal. A barrel of crude oil could be refined into aviation fuel, marine fuel, gasoline and a residue for electricity production. It just made sense and continued to do so for a century.
It makes sense no longer, and we are eagerly and aggressively reducing our dependence on fossil fuels of all kinds for electricity and making some progress on transportation as well. Just as Alonzo Gartley ushered in oil to replace coal, Hawaiian Electric is adding renewable energy to our island grids to reduce the use of oil.
Peter Rosegg is a senior corporate relations specialist at Hawaiian Electric Company.
