Polynesian Arthur

By Laurence I. Barrett

THE WARRIOR KING:

Hawaii' s Kamehameha the Great by

RICHARD TREGASKIS

320 pages. Macmillan. $10.

His parentage and prospects are in doubt. Coached by a wise old tutor, however, the lad performs a trick involving a stubborn, sacred stone; the feat indicates future greatness. Then he goes on to subdue rival warlords, bringing his people unity and peace.

The similarity to Arthurian legend is hardly coincidental, though Richard Tregaskis, the war correspondent (Guadalcanal Diary) and novelist who died last August, was writing about the ruler of a small island kingdom a millennium removed from Camelot. In telling of Kamehameha, the very real soldier who waged a 30-years' war (1780-1810) to create an Hawaiian nation, Tregaskis leaned indulgently on legends of the sort that defy time and locale. The Polynesians had neither calendar nor alphabet before English-speaking traders started settling in the islands in the 1780s. Knowledge of Kamehameha's early career is misty, accounts of his later life were colored by success: by that time he had become a powerful King, and most of his enemies were dead.

Arms from George III. Richard Tregaskis' "biography" is therefore a blend of the fanciful and the factual. But it makes a fascinating tale that hurtles home like one of its hero's long spears. Kahekili, the warlord who was probably Kamehameha's real father, attempted to have the infant killed because of a threatening prophecy. Later, other princes were awed when the stripling moved a huge stone that mature warriors could not budge. Kamehameha began as a not-so-noble savage who brained and impaled foes in combat, conquered cousins, uncles and dear old Dad in a series of island-hopping wars.

Sophistication set in with power. He was soon bartering sandalwood and sugar for firearms. He even employed white technical advisers and directed one of them to write George III, offering allegiance in exchange for arms. The Foreign Office sent two brass speaking trumpets instead of the warship that Kamehameha hoped for.

Thereafter, he became an enlightened monarch who seemed to want to repopulate the islands, as it were, singlehanded. (Estimated score: 21 wives, numerous concubines, more than 50 offspring.) His enduring love, his Guinevere, was Kaahumanu, a stout sexpot to whom he always returned.

Tregaskis achieves a myopic happy ending. When Kamehameha died, he left his dynasty seemingly secure in the hands of a crown prince with the Lady Kaahumanu as regent. Even a short-ranged epilogue would have shown the dynasty and the island's culture disintegrating under the white man's burden of greed and commerce. qedLaurence I. Barrett

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.