Canoes re-enact Pacific voyage
01 Sep 2009
One of the world’s greatest migrations across the Pacific Ocean is to be re-enacted using ancient seafaring skills and a fleet of traditional canoes, currently being built in New Zealand.
The voyage from French Polynesia to Hawaii next year will not only recreate history but also regenerate Polynesia’s ancestral traditions and legendary voyaging skills that date back thousands of years.
Three of the six double-hulled canoes being built for the journey have already been completed in Auckland, and another three should be finished by November.
Traditional design
The Pacific Voyaging Canoes project rolled out the three completed double-hulled replicas at a boatyard on Auckland’s Waitemata Harbour this week.
The robust boats, built in a traditional design from the Taumotu Islands in French Polynesia, have twin hulls 22m long and are joined by a platform supporting a small deck house.
Because logs used to make original craft are no longer available, the replica canoes have been made of fibreglass and other modern materials.
Twin masts rise 13m above deck, and a carved 10m steering paddle extends back between the hulls, each of which contains eight bunks and storage for the journey.
Island’s identity
Although identical in construction, each of the six canoes will be finished in the colours, motifs and carving of the islands they are going to.
New Zealand, Cook Islands, Fiji, Samoa, American Samoa and Tahiti will all provide captains and crew for the historic voyage. Captains have already been chosen, and crews will soon begin training.
New Zealand actor Rawiri Patene, best known for his role in Whale Rider, helped to obtain funding for the project from the German ocean environmental foundation Okeanos.
Pacific Pride
Pacific Voyaging Canoes manager Te Aturangi Nepia-Clamp says it’s hoped the project will build Polynesian pride and identity by highlighting the achievements of ancestors who settled small islands scattered on a vast ocean covering more than a quarter of the globe.
"What is more important than the short-term vision of sailing to Hawaii is the long-term vision of regenerating the voyaging skills and traditions of our ancestors," said Nepia-Clamp.
"Our ancestors made these canoes watertight with inadequate timber, using stone tools to drill and caulk them, lashing them together with coconut fibre rope. And then they made these incredible voyages thousands of years before the Europeans were confident to go out of the sight of land."
Polynesian navigators used the stars, sun, knowledge of sea swells and winds to steer a course.
Melanesia and Polynesia
Around 3000 to 4000 years ago the Lapita people - believed to have first migrated from Southern China through Taiwan before spreading through Southeast Asia - started settling the islands of Melanesia and Western Polynesia in the Pacific Ocean.
About 1000 years later their descendants began spreading to islands in eastern Polynesia, and the uninhabited islands of Samoa and Tonga were settled by seafaring people who arrived in small groups by canoe. They continued to discover new lands as they explored eastward.
Evidence from languages, plants, crafts and domesticated birds indicates they eventually sailed to California and South America and back into the Pacific.
Among the Pacific outposts settled were Hawaii, New Zealand and Easter Island.
By the time the first European explorers visited the Pacific in the 17th and 18th centuries, the big ocean-going canoes were found in only a few regions.
Vaka Moana
New Zealand historian Kerry Howe of Massey University, who edited Vaka Moana, the untold story of the world’s greatest exploration,
says Pacific Islanders developed the world’s first blue water technology.
"With the sail and the outrigger they created sophisticated ocean-going vessels and did so thousands of years before humans anywhere else," said Howe.
‘Vaka Moana’ is also a touring exhibition developed by Auckland Museum featuring more than 200 artefacts from the museum’s Māori and Pacific collections as well as other New Zealand and international sources.
Rare carvings and a full-size inter-island voyaging canoe feature in the display which has toured Japan, Taiwan, Australia, the United States and Canada.
The ‘Vaka Moana’ exhibition is currently at the National Museum of Australia, and is due back at Auckland Museum in 2011.
More information:
Kupe exhibition opens in Rotorua
A nation in love with the sea
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