From Pacific Islands: Peabody Museum #7

Let's look at some more maritime-related objects from several Pacific cultures on display at Harvard University's Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. (Earlier posts in this series on the Peabody looked at Baffinland Inuit, Aleut, other Alaskan Eskimo, and Chinook, Coast Salish, et al, other Pacific Northwest exhibits, and a large stitch-planked monohull canoe from the Solomon Islands.)

This canoe model from New Zealand was collected prior to 1850. Its origin is probably Maori. The base of the hull appears to be carved from a single log, as would have been the real canoe that it represented. It measures approx. 108" LOA. (Click any image to enlarge.)

Elaborately carved stern decoration on the Maori canoe model. 

Bow decoration on the same model. The carved washstrakes are stitched to the dugout hull, and a black half-round batten is captured by the stitches. On a real canoe, some kind of vegetable fiber and mastic would have been placed beneath the batten to make the seam watertight.

The museum has an impressive display of adzes from various Pacific cultures, most with stone blades. The adze is the primary tool for dugout canoe construction.

This side-hafted adze from the Carolina Islands has a blade of sea-turtle bone and bindings of twisted coconut fiber.

This adze from Kirapuno, New Guinea, has a reversible stone blade held in place with nicely woven rattan binding.

Navigation chart from the Marshall Islands, made of the midribs of palm leaves, shells, and hibiscus and banana fibers.

Collected prior to 1903, this model Philippine double-outrigger sailing canoe has a squaresail rig, a dugout base and trifurcated ends, with two of the horns at each end turned up sharply. The outrigger floats are attached directly to the straight outrigger booms, placing the floats quite high -- possibly above the load waterline.

The struts on this Hawaiian double canoe model (wa'a kaulua) curve up between the hulls before passing through the washstrakes just above the gunwales of the dugout bases. Naturally-grown, curved timbers were used on real canoes. The curvature raises the struts above some splashing waves.

The unadorned simplicity of this single-outrigger Hawaiian paddling canoe model clearly identifies it as a workboat for inshore fishing and/or transportation.  

Whereas the two previous canoe models from Hawaii were representational, this delicately carved canoe-shaped effigy vessel from Indonesia probably had a ceremonial purpose. 

Composite fishhook of bone, fiber and wood. The display card says it's from the "Sandwich Islands": one wonders why the museum chose to use this antiquated name for Hawaii. A leader is bound to the shank of the hook, the bindings tightened by an inserted wooden wedge.

Emergency Navigation, 2nd Edition

International Marine has released a new edition of David Burch's significant book, Emergency Navigation with a new subtitle: Find Your Position and Shape Your Course at Sea Even If Your Instruments Fail. This valuable book has been out of print for a few years and it's good to see it back in print.

Burch, the author of Fundamentals of Kayak Navigation (now in its fourth edition), is founder and president of the Starpath School of Navigation, a chatty intellectual who knows more about the principles of navigation than most. In Emergency Navigation, he draws upon a wide range of sources for a wide range of navigational principles, including Polynesian and Viking methods. His description of Polynesian Star Paths is a good example of the clarity with which he writes:

"The concept of a star path comes from island navigators of the tropical Pacific. The 'path' is a sequence of stars with nearly the same declination, which means they rise at nearly the same place on the horizon throughout the tropics (the Tropics Rule). By learning the sequence for the bearing from one island to another, Polynesian navigators have, in essence, established sets of celestial sailing directions. They follow one star as it rises above the horizon until the next in the sequence appears, at which time they shift to the new star for orientation. In this way, they keep track of a particular bearing on the horizon throughout the night. The same technique can be used with setting stars. It is easy to see how indigenous star paths could evolve into finely tuned routes that account for both prevailing currents and the leeway of traditional craft. Poor choices would be removed from the lore by natural selection."

Burch doesn't confine his methods to traditional ones. The book is based on the presumption that one or more essential navigation tools are lost or malfunctioning -- your compass, your chronometer, your tables, whatever -- and he demonstrates how to use whatever is available to make up the deficiency. At one point, he shows how to use a pair of polarized sunglasses to find the sun when it's below the horizon or obscured by clouds. So while a lot of the material is based on indigenous methods, a lot of it isn't. Worthwhile for any navigator, bluewater or coastal, nonetheless.

By the way: in spite of its title, Fundamentals of Kayak Navigation is by no means a basic text -- it's quite comprehensive and as such can be somewhat intimidating and more than many kayakers need. For a simpler approach, check out Ray Killen's Simple Kayak Navigation, below.