EARLY MICRONESIAN VOYAGING: A COMMENT

Abstract

In Andrew Sharp's response to Dr. S. H. Riesenberg's article on Micronesian voyages, the former appearing in the latest issue of Oceania (September, 1966), Sharp raises a question in his last paragraph (p. 65) to which I would like to answer. Sharp thinks that the first thing a practical-minded Micronesian boat-builder would want from the early European navigators, traders and missionaries who came to his island would be nails and spikes to strengthen his vessels , and supposes that this could have increased the range of safe two-way voyaging . From my own experience in the Marshall Islands at intervals since 1946, and as recent as 1964, I can attest that nails and spikes are just not the things the Marshallese canoe-builder wants to strengthen his craft. I have had Marshallese repeatedly answer me, when I have put the same question as does Sharp, that the demands of the sea upon a canoe, both hull and outrigger, are such that lashing with sennit is the only practical way to hold the craft together. They have tried nails and screws and find that the craft will break up more easily then, under the constant pitching and yawing that is encountered on the waves at sea. The craft must be flexible in order to withstand this punishment. Even lashings tend to yield, loosen, and break apart, and have to be redone even during a voyage. It is not only from the mouths of informants that I can speak of this. Frequently on lagoons in the Marshalls I have ridden in outrigger canoes, 20 to 30 feet long, for distances that took as long as eight to ten hours, especially if we were moving upwind and having to tack constantly. Further, I have had the experience three times of travelling between the atolls on the high sea, once for as long as 38 hours. During these voyages I have watched the parts of the outrigger frame and its attachment to the float, and even the planks of the hull itself, move with wave motion, and the lashings that held them together gradually deteriorate. At sea, repairs were made without great difficulty. Once the stay that held the mast upright parted and the entire rigging fell into the water ; but everything was put right within an hour and we were on our way. If nails and bolts were used instead of lashings on these craft, the wood itself would have parted. When it is a matter of Marshallese building and handling European-type sail boats, it is another matter, of course, and there they follow the Western custom.