WHITSUN, 1824, the young “King and Queen of the Sandwich Islands”, Liholiho and Kamamalu, sat in the congregation of Westminster Abbey. Since docking at Portsmouth on 17 May, the Hawaiian royal couple had enjoyed a packed schedule They were the first royals to visit the British Museum’s present building, and also took in Whitbread’s brewery, the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, and possibly St Paul’s Cathedral.

“The voyage of Liholiho and his delegation to London in 1823-4 was a significant undertaking and one that changed the course of history. . . Coming into focus, however, are the ways in which the movement of people and cultural treasures between Hawaii and London at the time has formed a strong bond between the Hawaiian and British nations past, present and future,” says the curate of “Hawaii: A Kingdom Crossing Oceans”, Alice Christophe.

Liholiho’s reasons for undertaking the five-month voyage to England are unclear, but maybe related to fears around fragmentation of power across the archipelago, and desire for British protection. Hawaii’s emergence as a strategic point in Pacific trade, especially whaling, was attracting the interest of America, Russia, France, and Britain. Two years before his arrival in London, Liholiho had written to George IV, stating: “The former idolatrous system has been abolished in these islands, as we wish the protestant religion of Your Majesty’s dominions to be practiced here.”

From the turn of the 19th century, the Pacific became a mission field. Situated at the northern tip of the Polynesian Triangle, Hawaii was within the orbit of the region’s burgeoning missionary activity. The London Missionary Society (LMS), founded through voluntary subscription in the mid-1790s, first sent missionaries to Tahiti. Then the Society posted William and Mary Mercy Ellis, and their four children, from Tahiti to Hawaii. The family landed at Oahu in February 1823, welcomed by the American missionaries who first settled in the Hawaiian islands in March 1820, with permission from Liholiho. By 1831, the American missionaries established Lahainaluna Seminary.

In a letter to a Tahitian councillor, Liholiho observed: “the word of the Great God of Heaven has arrived from America, brought by the preachers and books. We are learning to read and write.” John Hayter’s lithographic portraits of the royal couple in London show Kamamalu in French Romantic portrait attire. Missionaries had guided the Queen’s travelling outfits for England.

© The Trustees of the British MuseumA mahiole hulu manu (feathered helmet) often worn with a feathered cloaks and cape in Hawaii

Ripples created by encounters between Christianity and Hawaiian culture and spirituality are still felt more than 200 years later. They form a backdrop to the British Museum’s dazzling Hawaii show. After the death of his father, Kamehameha I, in 1819, Liholiho began to diverge from traditional religious practices such as ai kapu (restricted eating), possibly influenced by the freer choices of foreigners visiting his kingdom. This weakened the power of local priests and customs.

Recovery and renewal of Hawaiian ancestral spiritual practices continue to this day.

Mea kappa (ancestral works) cared for by museums are important resources for Native Hawaiians. In recent years, artists have come to the British Museum to connect with Hawaiian collections, to study and relearn ancestral techniques, and to bring objects to life in new ways.

A statue of Ku, a Hawaiian god of warfare and governance, towers over visitors as they enter the Hawaii exhibition. Carved from breadfruit wood, the figure’s massive tubular limbs, scaly long locks, and giant, grooved lips are fearsome. The figure could be “one of the Idols formerly worshipped by the Islanders. It is as large as life, curiously carved”, remarked upon by the Sun newspaper when the Hawaiian delegation docked at Portsmouth. The Sun attributed the statue to the ship’s captain, as an intended donation for the British Museum. Yet it may have been brought to England by Lihliho himself. Before his voyage, he may have met the American missionary Asa Thurston, “who is known to have taken ‘three wooden gods’ to the mission house in Honolulu two months prior”, Ms Christophe notes.

Perhaps Liholiho was inspired by Thurston to offer the ki’i as a gift in England; but no record of its removal or provenance has been discovered. The menacing figure described in The Sun may correspond to the carving of the god Ku in the Museum’s collection. But the object’s history between 1824 and 1839, when it was given, or given again, to the Museum remains unknown.

A Polynesian chant draws visitors into the galleries, where feathered cloaks and capes are highlights. Each ahu’ula is different, made and shaped for a particular chief. When Liholiho’s voyage stopped at Rio de Janeiro, en route to England, he presented the British Consul, General Sir Henry Chamberlain, with a large ‘aha ‘ula cloak. The feather and plant-fibre cloak is burnt orange, with an irregular diamond pattern, and trim, in cream. Liholiho indicated that he wished to adopt Chamberlain into his family, hinting at the close bonds formed with the first British official encountered on the royal mission. The cloaks presented to George IV were also orange, with a pattern of lozenges and crescents, picked out in black and yellow. When he was Prince Regent, George had received a splendid ‘aju ‘ula cloak, in 1812, from Liholiho’s father.

Sadly, by the time George IV received the magnificent gifts at the audience hosted at Windsor Castle on 11 September 1824, the bodies of Liholiho and Kamamalu were in the crypt of St Martin-in-the Fields. The royal couple contracted measles, and Kamamalu died on 8 July 1824, aged 22. Her 26-year-old husband died six days later at the Caledonian Hotel. In procession, the remaining Hawaiian delegation followed Liholiho’s body to its temporary resting place in the church on 18 July. Seven weeks later, they realised the late Liholiho’s vision of a royal audience at Windsor.

On 8 September, the coffins were placed on the warship HMS Blonde at Woolwich, which departed Portsmouth for Honolulu on 29 September. On 11 May 1825, the chaplain from HMS Blonde, together with missionaries, led the carriages carrying the royal coffins, drawn by several chiefs, at the island funeral.

© The Trustees of the British MuseumAn ‘ahu ?ula (feathered cloak) associated with Kahekili, an ali?i nui (high chief) of the island of Maui, alive in the 1700s. He may have presented it to Captain Charles Clerke, who came to Hawaii in 1778-79. It served as a model for the Hawaiian coat of arms, featured in this exhition and created in 1843

In July, the crew of the Blonde visited the Hale o Keawe (House of Keawe) and desecrated it by entering a site of ancient chiefly bones and other ancestral manifestations. Their behaviour formed a stark contrast with Liholiho’s declining to enter Westminster Abbey’s chapel of Henry VII, because it felt too sacred. The ship returned to England in March 1826 with mea kappa (ancestral works) on board, which entered private and public collections, including the British Museum. Items possibly associated with the Hale o Keawe site and this episode went on loan to the Bishop Museum, Honolulu, in 2024, marking their first return to Hawaiian shores.

One collector’s item not on display is “Hawaiian Missionaries”, the island’s first postage stamps issued in 1851, so called because American missionaries used them to write home. The rarest “Hawaiian Missionaries” examples fetch nearly $2 million.

The legacy of missionary work in Hawaii, where descendants of five American missionary families control major business interests, is rightly contested. Yet, many objects in this exhibition were donations from the LMS, and missionary accounts have helped to reconstruct the fateful royal voyages to and from Hawaii. The collections, tastes, and scholarship of those who went to spread the Word in the past two centuries are still enhancing understanding of spirituality and cultures today. As Nicholas Cullinan, director of the British Museum, observes, “Cultural exchange is not a one-way journey.”

“Hawaii: A Kingdom Crossing Oceans” is at the British Museum, Great Russell Street, London WC1, until 25 May. Phone 020 7323 8000. britishmuseum.org