A crumbly wall made of coral blocks stands at attention just south of the courthouse – all that remains of a fort built in 1832 to keep rowdy whalers in line. Each day at dusk a Hawaiian sentinel would beat a drum to alert sailors to return to their ships. Stragglers who didn’t make it in time were imprisoned here. At the height of its use the fort had some 47 cannons, most salvaged from foreign ships that sank in Lahaina’s tricky waters.
When the fort was dismantled in the 1850s, its stone blocks were used to build Hale Paʻahao, the new prison.
