Navigation and shipbuilding

Water bottle - Fiji
Ethnographical Museum, Berlin

The Fijian ships long held the first place among the craft of the Pacific islands. When Cook first visited Tonga in 1772, he found Fijians there who had brought a Tongan of high rank to his own island in their ship. The Tongan vessels at that time were clumsy compared with those of Fiji, and for that reason they accepted this with its sails as a gift. They have only altered the Fijian model to the extent of cleverly improving the accuracy and fineness with which various portions are executed. These Fijian vessels with Tongan improvements belong to a type spread throughout Micronesia, in which, by reversing the sail, bow and stern are convertible. Thus Fijian chiefs took to employing by preference carpenters from Tonga; which gave rise to the belief that the Tongans built their vessels in Fiji for the sake of the better wood.

The New Caledonian ships are like the Samoan, but less well built and slower. The vessels of the Loyalty Islands are also clumsy; a fact the more remarkable since both these groups contain admirable material in their great pines. In the Solomon Islands shipbuilding has attained a high level, but here too there are gradations. The most elegant and the lightest craft in that archipelago are built in Ulakua. In the more westerly islands the war-vessels are extraordinarily rich with fantastic ornaments, festoons of feathers and bast, coloured red and yellow, shells, and so forth. In New Ireland the boats differ materially from those of New Hanover; they are equally made of a single tree stem, but are not so long and not curved in the gunwale. The boat of New Britain is mostly made from one stem, but has often a low strake on each side. It is on the average larger than that of New Ireland, and has a high narrow beak at each end.

Outrigged boat, New Britain. (From a model in the Godeffroy collection, Leipzig.)

The larger boats of New Guinea are from 16 to 20 feet long, and from 2 to 2½ wide. The hull, made in one piece, is hollowed out from a trunk which must have no flaw. It is not more than half an inch thick, and has cross-ties to keep it from warping. Both ends curve upwards and are strengthened with wooden posts, of which that in the stem rises high and is adorned with arabesques or painted. To raise the gunwale above the water line they employ the ribs of sago palm leaves after the fashion of the Alfurs. These are by preference interlaced, and then being attached like tiles to the cross-ties, form a water-tight surface. Over the gunwale are fastened two light cross-pieces, which project about 5 feet, and at the end of which is another piece of wood, bent at right angles, just touching the surface of the water, and sticking into a strong boom, which is as light as cork and serves as a float. Amidships on the cross-timbers a square cabin of bamboo is erected, sheltered against injury from weather by a small roof of coco-palm leaves. All other kinds of craft, from the raft upward, are found in New Guinea. The ornamentation is rich, especially of the war-canoes.

In Micronesia, where the vessels stand next in quality to those of Fiji and Tonga, we do not find the double canoes common among the Polynesians. Even the great war-amlais, holding sixty to eighty persons, have only an outrigger.

Differences can be noticed between one island and another. The Pelew canoes differ from all those in use in the South Seas by being very low in proportion to their length and sail-area. For this reason they are not adapted for such long voyages as the inhabitants of Yap, or those of Mackenzie and the Ralick Islands, undertake, but for short journeys they are extraordinarily effective. The light and sharp kaep, driven by a large three-cornered sail, slips over the water like lightning in the most gentle breeze. Heavy seas find no resistance in these canoes, they lift them and divide on the sharp angle of their stems, and do not check their way. The Micronesian fashion of adorning boats with bundles of the split feathers of the frigate-bird, and avoiding carved work, comes from Polynesia.