Navigation and shipbuilding

Among no "natural" races has the science of seafaring reached so high an average development as among the Polynesians and Melanesians. Most of the tribes are genuine seamen. If we regard their remoteness from the great civilized races of the Asiatic continent, the shipbuilding art stands as high among them as among the Malays; and we must further reflect that they were without iron.

Naturally here also local limitations produce inequalities in shipbuilding, as well as in the extent of the voyages, and also in the migrations of the different races. It is a fact that at the present day the Fijians seldom go beyond the boundaries of their own group, while the Tongans, favoured by the wind, often come to them. But the art of navigation, no less than that of shipbuilding, may undergo alterations in the course of time. Fortunate voyages raise the spirit of enterprise, bad luck depresses it. The Samoa group got its former name of the Navigator Islands from the seafaring skill of its inhabitants; this has now greatly decreased.

Wooden baler, New Zealand, length approx 720mm. (British Museum)
[Click on picture for higher resolution]

Many of the low islands are so poorly wooded that shipbuilding is rendered difficult, and dependent on drift timber; while at Port Moresby on the New Guinea coast the Motus, having little wood, build as a rule no vessels. They do not, however (like the Caribs in a well-known couplet), content themselves with "wishing they could," but draw upon their more expert neighbours for them. Yet, on the other hand, the islanders of the Paumotu group, where wood is also scarce, build larger and better vessels than the Marquesans. The small area and poverty of their islands force them both to peaceable migrations and to warlike expeditions of conquest, and this can only be done by sea.

Vessels of every description, from the simple raft and the sailing vessel with outrigger, or the double canoe, are found in this region. We do not need to notice the rafts of bamboo made by the Pelew Islanders for the navigation of an inland lake, since opportunities for inland navigation are not usual throughout the region; but rafts are actually in use for coasting purposes.

Among the families whom Cook found in Dusky Bay there were no boats, only a single raft made of tree-stems for putting people across. Next we come to boats made simply of stems, which, being fastened together and planked over, become raft-like vessels. Such boat-rafts have led to the erroneous idea that the New Caledonians, for example, sailed the seas on rafts. As a matter of fact these people have only a kind of rough raft, resting on two hollowed tree-stems, and carrying a mast with a triangular mat-sail.