Kualelo, 1789 (Greycoat School)

Kualelo, a boy from the Hawaiian island of Molokaʻi, arrived in Plymouth on the Prince of Wales in July 1789. He was 11 or 12 years old when he joined the Princess Royal in 1788 during the ship's voyage to what were then known as the Sandwich Islands. Kualelo spent almost a year in the city, under the care of the Prince of Wales's commander, James Johnstone. Surgeon Archibald Menzies, who had also served on the ship, wrote that Johnstone's "first object was to have him inoculated for the small Pox which he underwent with little inconvenience, & then he was sent to a public school in the neighbourhood where great pains was taken to learn him to read and write."

Menzies didn't provide any further details of Kualelo's time in Plymouth but it's possible that the school he attended was based here, in what was Woolster Street. The Greycoat School was one of the few schools in Plymouth at that time that admitted boys, since they were usually encouraged to seek apprenticeships for their education. While he learned to write better than he could read, it was in drawing that Kualelo found most joy and it was this that irritated the English men who sought to "civilize" him. Menzies wrote that Kualelo showed talent and would "no doubt in a short time make great proficiency with the aid of a little instruction." Much to his disappointment, Kualelo found humour in satire and was "fondest of those rude pictures called Caricatures & frequently amused himself in taking off even his friends in imitation of these pieces." He continued to draw when he travelled to London and in this, as historian Coll Thrush has noted, he was like any visitor to a city, seeking "mementos...that would remind him of his time there and that would document his experiences for his people" (Indigenous London, 140).

Kualelo eventually returned to the Hawaiian Islands in 1792 on HMS Discovery, as part of the Vancouver Expedition captained by George Vancouver. Menzies later recorded that Kualelo had achieved some success on his return by proving useful to King Kamehameha I, gaining a plantation and marrying a chief's daughter.