NAVIGATION AND SEAMANSHIP
Whatever may have been the origin of seagoing ships, the evolution of
the outriggered canoe is not difficult to trace. We may imagine a savage
in remote antiquity standing on the banks of a river and watching logs
of wood from a mountain forest floating swiftly down the current. His
home lies down-stream. There is no path, for the banks are overgrown
with a tangled mass of thorny creepers. This log will pass his village
doors. He wades out and intercepts it. With one arm cast about it he is
borne by the current right to his door without an effort. The women
filling their jars at the water's edge applaud his originality. But when
he next tries the experiment an alligator comes unpleasantly near his
legs. He tries to haul himself astride of the log; it turns round with
him. A bamboo is floating close at hand; he seizes it, and finds that by
holding it athwart the log he can steady himself on his perch. But the
bamboo, being too narrow to offer resistance to the water, tends to sink
until he rests the end upon a floating branch. But on his next aquatic
journey, remembering that the bamboo tired the arms and kept slipping
off the branch, he takes a vine with him, and lashes the bamboo to log
and branch. This leaves his hands free to use another bamboo to keep the
head of his craft down-stream by poling on the bottom. He even punts it
laboriously to land at the village, and ties it up for use in crossing
the river on the morrow. He has taken the first step towards building a
craft of his own. The thin end of the log cleft the water better than
the other. He chips the end to a point. There are tribes that stop at
this point. The catamarans of Eastern New Guinea are merely three
shaped logs lashed together, and depend for their buoyancy upon the
displacement of the solid wood. A chance experiment shows that a hollow
log is more buoyant, besides having the advantage of providing a dry
resting-place for the feet. The discoverer of this phenomenon widens the
natural hollow with fire, lashes his cross-ties to a smaller log, also
sharpened at the ends, and he has made a Fijian canoe. The next steps
are easy. By trying to propel it up-stream with a bamboo too short to
reach the bottom he discards the pole for a slab of bark, and he has
invented the paddle. To use the wind in the estuary to the best
advantage he props a slab of bark on a stick and steadies it with a stay
of vine. On his next voyage he takes a mat with him, staying his mast to
the outrigger, the bow and the stern. Going about on the other tack the
pressure of the wind bearing on the outrigger sinks it and capsizes the
canoe, teaching him by painful experience that he must turn his sail
inside out, and keep the outrigger always to windward. He has now
devised the most complicated, the swiftest, and in many respects the
most beautiful sailing machine in existence--the sailing canoe. The
raising of the sides, and the decking of the bow and stern are
expedients that need no deductive process.
[Illustration: The _Thamakau_.]
[Pageheader: THE SAILING CANOE]
Four kinds of canoe are used by the Fijians: (1) The _Takia_--an
undecked dug-out furnished with an outrigger, which is used on the
rivers and on the calm water inside the reef, and is propelled with
poles or with paddles.
(2) The _Thamakau_--a seagoing canoe with sides raised by planking to
carry a deck; with solid outrigger and mast and sails.
(3) The _Tambilai_--a dug-out with ends cut square, several feet at each
end being left solid.
(4) The _Ndrua_, or twin canoe--which is, as its name implies, made of
twin hulls, the one smaller than the other, connected by a deck, on
which the mast is stepped. The smaller hull is the outrigger, and is
always kept to windward. These vessels being often too large to be made
from a single trunk, are put together in sections with a sort of scarf
joint, secured by lashings of cocoanut sinnet. The adze and the auger
were the only tools used, every plank being adzed from a solid trunk,
and, since every joint must fit true, and the planking be less than an
inch thick, and one false stroke of the adze might spoil many days of
labour, some idea of the skill and patience of the native carpenter may
be formed. These vessels were of great size. The _Rusa i vanua_ was 118
feet over all. Her yards were 90 feet long, and she carried a crew of 50
men. Maafu mounted cannon on two of his _ndrua_, which were capable of
making long ocean voyages, and with the wind on the quarter could run
from ten to fifteen knots in the hour. Though they could lie close to
the wind, being keel-less, they made much leeway, and were bad sea-boats
to windward or in a seaway, for the play of the twin hulls was apt to
work the lashings loose. There is, however, no sea sport so exciting and
exhilarating as sailing on a calm sea in a _ndrua_ or _thamakau_ with
the wind abeam. A clever sheet-man will contrive to lift the outrigger
out of the water until it barely skims the surface, and then the canoe
becomes a veritable flying-machine.
The _ndrua_ is enormously expensive to keep up, and for this reason it
will be seen no more. The mat-sail, which costs far more than canvas,
rots quickly if it gets wet, and must be unbent and taken into shelter
after every trip. The sinnet lashings, both above and below water, soon
work loose and become rotten, and the whole structure has then to be
rebuilt. To manage the great sail in tacking a crew of from ten to
twenty men, all expert canoemen, is required. By the year 1890 the
_ndrua_ in the group could be counted on the fingers, and probably the
last has now fallen to pieces.
Thomas Williams has given so admirable a description of the building and
management of these canoes[101] that it need not be again described.
[Pageheader: THE PAY OF CANOE-BUILDERS]
The handicraft of canoe-building was hereditary. Every considerable
chief had his _matai_, but those of Rewa, descended from Tongan
immigrants, were the most esteemed in the west and those of Kambara in
the east. In 1860, however, the Fijian _matai_ fell upon evil days, for
the chiefs preferred the Tongan craftsmen, who had begun to settle in
the group. Besides canoes the _matai_ made _lali_ (wooden drums), kava
and food bowls, all cut from the solid timber with the adze. Every stage
of canoe-building called for its special feast and presentation to the
_matai_, and in order to test the actual cost of these I once had a
canoe built by a Rewa _matai_ and his mate on the Fijian system of
remuneration. I was acting as Commissioner of Tholo West at the time,
and being in native eyes vested with the powers of a Roko Tui, I could
play the part of carpenter's patron with plausibility. The men who
hauled in the logs were given the appropriate feast, the _matai_ had his
feast at the completion of the hull, at the fixing of the upper works,
at the lashing of the deck. I obtained the mats for the sails from
Yasawa by _kerekere_ (begging), and sent their equivalent in kind; the
neighbouring villages performed the ceremony of _rova_ (and received
their reward) after the launching. When I came to reckon up the bill I
found that it came to L13--a little more than the contract rate for
building canoes at that time, which was L2 a fathom; or, to put it in
another way, as the canoe was two months in building, about L3 a month
for each man besides rations. But since my carpenters were on their
mettle, the canoe was better built than it would have been by a contract
builder.
Forward and abaft the deck both in the _ndrua_ and the _thamakau_ are
open wells, in which a man stands baling with a wooden scoop, for the
joints and seams of the planking let in a good deal of water when under
sail. Beyond these wells some fluted work is left by the adze, and a
line of beading is left along the lee side both to afford footholds to
the men who carry over the foot of the yards in tacking and to carry
fixed blocks for the _tuku_ or mast-stay. A remarkable feature about
these carvings is that they never vary, though some of them have no
object but that of ornamentation, and they are sufficiently elaborate to
have been only arrived at after a long period of evolution.
If the Fijian canoe is so carelessly handled as to bring the outrigger
to leeward she immediately capsizes, for the pressure of the wind
drives the outrigger under water. In order to keep the outrigger to
windward when tacking it is therefore necessary to make what was
formerly the bow become the stern, the sail must be turned inside out,
and the mast, yards and steer-oar must all be changed over. This
complicated manoeuvre is accomplished with extraordinary skill.
Instead of luffing up into the wind as in a cutter the steersman keeps
away until the wind is abeam, the sheetman slacking the sheet
simultaneously until the sail is flapping. Two or three men then run out
to the prow, seize the foot of the yards and carry them bodily
amidships. During this operation they have to bear the weight of the
mast, which is sloping forward at an angle of 45 degrees, and to relieve
them of some of this extra weight a man is hauling on the running stay,
which runs through a block astern. As they pass the mast with their
burden the lower yard is let go, the sheet is passed round their legs,
and the sail turns inside out. They tramp forward, and the mast again
begins to incline, throwing its weight upon them. A man now seizes the
other stay, and in obedience to their loud cries of "_Tuku!_" begins
cautiously to pay it out. If he is too quick the weight of the mast
precipitates the men and the sail into the water; if he is too slow he
holds them back. At last the foot of the yards is planted with a thud
into its nest in the carving and lashed secure, but before the sheet can
be hauled in the heavy steer-oar, which takes two men to lift, has to be
dragged inboard and carried aft. All this time the hull is heaving in
the trough of the sea, and the mat sail is thrashing itself to pieces.
Sometimes the yard-carriers slip on the wet deck, and tumble overboard,
sail and all, in inextricable ruin, but if all goes well the canoe is
gathering way on the new tack in less than sixty seconds, and though to
the spectator on board the moment is full of excitement and risk, to
those watching it on shore it is the most precise and beautiful
manoeuvre known to seamanship.
[Pageheader: NEW MODELS OF SCULLING]
And now we come to a remarkable paradox. The Tongans were the great
navigators of the Pacific; the Fijians are not known to have voyaged
beyond their own group. The Tongans were so expert with the adze that
they rapidly displaced the Fijian canoe-builder in his own country. And
yet the Tongan counterpart to the _ndrua_ was the _tongiaki_, a craft so
clumsy and ill-finished that it did not survive the eighteenth century,
when the Tongans learned the art of canoe-sailing from Fijians. The
_tongiaki_ was like the _ndrua_ in build, but its mast was immovable and
it tacked like a cutter. To make this possible the mast was stayed on
both sides from a clumsy transom which protruded many feet beyond the
deck. It could lie close to the wind on one tack, but on the other the
sail was broken up into pockets by the mast, which held the wind and
stopped all headway. Consequently it was the practice to wait for a fair
wind, and set the sail on what would be the lee of the mast, and if the
wind changed there was nothing for it but to change the course. It was,
no doubt, this fact that led to so many Tongans being cast away on
remote islands, and to the mixing of Polynesian with Melanesian blood.
From 1790 to 1810 it had become the custom for Tongan chiefs to voyage
to Fiji in their clumsy _tongiaki_, join in the native wars, and take as
their portion of the loot Fijian _ndrua_, in which they beat back to
Tonga, and in a very few years the _tongiaki_[102] was extinct.
There were two ways of propelling a canoe in a dead calm--the _vothe_
and the _sua_. The _vothe_ is a leaf-shaped paddle cut from one piece of
_vesi_ hardwood, five feet long and eighteen inches across the widest
part of the blade. Adapted for propelling light canoes on the rivers, it
is ineffective against the dead weight of the heavy _thamakau_. In shape
and size the _sua_ resembles the oar of a ship's cutter. Thrusting it
down perpendicularly into the water between the hull and the outrigger,
and using the cross-tie as a rowlock, the sculler describes short,
semicircular sweeps with the blade, throwing his weight against the
handle in front of him as he stands upon the deck. When two are sculling
they swing in time, but in opposite directions, and there is no exercise
that displays the grace of the human body in action to better advantage.
A speed of three miles an hour is the maximum that can be attained with
the _sua_, but the scullers can maintain this speed for a long time
without fatigue. The stroke is as difficult to acquire as that of the
gondolier, but when you have once acquired it you wonder wherein the
difficulty lay.
The craft of seamanship was hereditary, and every considerable chief had
his fisher tribe to man his canoes. In war time they were his navy,
since many engagements were fought at sea. Manoeuvring to windward of
the enemy was even more important in a war-canoe than in a frigate,
because by getting within striking distance of his outrigger you had him
at your mercy. While he could not venture out upon his outrigger without
capsizing himself, one stroke of a hatchet at his mast-stay brought the
whole of his rigging down about his ears, and you could club his head as
it bobbed up under the sail. A body of etiquette grew up about the
canoe. The high chief's canoe was marked by a streamer or a fan floating
from the tip of the lower yard. It was an insult to cross her bows, or
to sail to windward of her. The custom which required the serf to stoop
in passing or approaching a chief was extended to canoes passing or
approaching chief villages such as Mbau. All had to lower their sails,
and toil past with the _sua_, however fair the breeze.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 101: _Fiji and the Fijians_, pp. 71-76, 88-89.]
[Footnote 102: A full description and diagram of the _tongiaki_ is given
by Captain Cook.]