The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1899-04-07
CANOES OF THE PACIFIC.
Curious Craft With Outriggers, Which
Furnished the Earliest Means Of Com


There is only one race of primitive
men which makes it's entrance upon the
page of history by way of the sea
Other early races creep over mountain
passes and evade the great water cours.
es by fanking their distant fountains
They fear the great sea. 1t takes ages
before they gain the courage to coast
from cape to cape, and always in sight
of land. The Polynesian of the South
Seas bursts into knowledge with the
hazard of deep water voyaging. In all
the families of his race, save one, his
story begins with the daring of the Pa
cific, the greatest ocean of all.
Call the roll Of these families and
see whence they came and how.
Hawaii? BY canoe from Kahiki
which may be Tahiti, certainly is nc
nearer than the Marquesas.
The Marquesas? From the Hawaii,
far across the Western sea.
Tahiti? From Hawaii in the West.
Raratonga? From Awake, land in
the West and down to leeward
The Maori Of New Zealand? From
Hawaiki.
All these families tell of the tempes-
this mysterious land of which all retain
the name. 1t was the home of the race
in the beginning, it was at that home
that they learned to become sailors and
ocean adventurers. The only family of
the Polynesian race which does not be-
gin in a legend of q dangerous trip
across the waters is the Samoan. They
believe that the earth was made at their
archipelago, that they are themselves
the first race of human beings. Eth
nologists are agreed on one point; they
acknowledge that even If Samoa is not
the nest of the Polynesian race, still its
largest island, Savaii, is carried. in all
these traditions as at least the place Of
the final dispersion of these colonies.
This gives us the shortest and the
ost direct line in the evolution of ma
al construction BY it we can judge
how primitive man first essayed to
build ships, a primitive man who was
not afraid of water. Compared with the
brown race of the South Sea, the Tyrian
navigators of remote antiquity and the
Viking rovers of more recent ages are
nothing but longshoremen. We are able
to see in the present day what the prim-
tive savage did in remote ages when he
ventured on the sea. The Polynesian
vessel is type which has been preserv-
ed with almost absolute uniformity in
all the wandering families of that race.
1t is the type of what the floating log
became when human ingenuity was ex-
erted to fit it for emergencies which
arose early in savagery.
AS Samoa is acknowledged to be the
dispersal centre of the Polynesian race,
the Samoan type of vessel may not i'm
properly be assumed as containing all
the elements of naval architecture as
known to the race at the time of the
great dispersal, and therefore the most
simple development of the early type Of
vessel. There is just time to catch the
Samoan type before it vanishes. AL
ready the boat copied after Caucasian
models is displacing the native craft
from end to end of the archipelago. Fiji
teen years ago there We're many sailing
canoes in Samoan; this year there is
but one and it Is drawn up on remote
beach and left to fall into decay, never
asafr II, be. @tsed Fine same change will
continue to work; it will not be long
before this primitive type of vessel will
be but museum curiosity.
Before proceeding to the considera-
ton of what the Polynesian vessel is, it
is needful to make clear one thing
which it is not, for great confusion .ex-
lists on that point. The Polynesian YES
sci is not a proa or prahu. Where the
prahu is found in the Pacific it has
been carried by the Malay race or by
the Tarapon stock, which has peopled
ic hot 70
users are not Polynesian people. The
vessel is a diametric oppo-
site Of the prahu, it is everything which
the prahu is not. Keep that clearly in
mind before passing to study of the de-
tails.
The prahu must have these features:
/, bow and stern must be alike; 2, one
side must be fiat, and that fiat side
must always be to leeward; 8, the
outrigger is always to wndward, and
axerts a downward force; 4, the mast
IS fixed at the vertical; 5, the sail is as
nearly as possible an equilateral TRAN
gle.
The Polynesian vessel differs in these |
,eautres: /, bow and stern are on differ /
emit lines, with single exception; 2,
he lines are symmetrical with respect
10 the central force and aft line; 3, !
he outrigger Is designed to act by |
ouoyancy to exert an upward force,
and is absent from sailing canoes; 4,
he mast hinges in the step and is never |
VERTICAL but always canted forward; 5, |
he sail is never an equilateral triangle,
,ut sharp isosceles triangle in which
,oom and gaff measure the equal Sides
While the after leach is about one-third
# their length
Bearing in mind, therefore, that the
,rahu and the canoe are radically dis
met in every particular, let us proceed
o the study of the Polynesian vessel as
ypified in the naval architecture of the
;amoans, whose skill in shipping earn
d for them at the hands of Bougain-
lille, who discovered them, the title of
he navigators, a name which only now
S being removed from the maps.
According to their uses, Samoan ves-
els are divided into the two classes,
UGH as are propelled by sails and such
s depend on the paddle for propulsion.
he latter again are divided into two
lasses, the canoe which Is built up of
cards and that which is shaped from
single tree trunk. OF these the sim
-