Making landfalls in the Pacific

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33065, 4 November 1972, Page 10

Making landfalls in the Pacific

We, the Navigators. By David Lewis. Reed.. 345 pp. Index, bibliography, illustrations. Polynesian prehistory is a field which has become very popular with general readers of non-fiction in the last 20 years, and names like Buck, Grimble, Heyerdahl, and Sharp immediately recall classics of modern literature and the controversies they have brought with them. David Lewis does not have the career of field research that Buck and Grimble had behind them (by profession he is a medical practitioner), nor does he have the penchant for self-conscious primitivism that can make such voyages the more sensational; he has, however, probably made a more useful contribution to the study of primitive navigation in the Pacific than any of these men, and this modest, well-written book contains a great deal of welldocumented information that should mark a major development in the evaluation of previous theories. When Lewis sailed into Auckland in December, 1965, he had covered the 2239 miles from Tahiti to New Zealand using only navigational methods identical with (or equivalent to) those of the early Polynesian voyagers. Certainly, he had made some important miscalculations, and on one occasion he allowed his safety officer to intervene (she was independently observing the course from the starboard hull of the 40-foot catamaran, using modem methods), but there could be little doubt that, within the terms of his experiment, he had proved that the traditional route of the Eastern Polynesian migration to New Zealand was navigationally feasible. Inevitably, some authorities were reluctant to accept Lewis’s claims at face value. Andrew Sharp, famous for his controversial theory of accidental voyaging, was cynical of the fact that Lewis had used a star map and a modern Admiralty chart because he could not hope to memorise star sequences and similar information in which a Polynesian navigator would be educated over many years. However, the chart was only a small-scale

lifeboat one, and it is easy to accept Lewis’s opinion that its information was not “anything like as comprehensive as that of an ancient Tahitian expert,” and, even considering the chart, it was surely an amazing feat that the 1630 miles from Rarotonga direct to New Zealand resulted in a landfall that was only 26 miles out. An opportunity to substantiate his findings further came to Lewis from a quarter of which he was not really aware in 1965 — modem Pacific navigators who still use the ancient methods. To pursue this avenue further, he purchased a 39-foot yacht and in 1968-69 sailed round numerous island groups talking to native navigators and handing the ketch over to them for trial voyages; the results of these investigations form the main body of this book, but, broadly, they showed that native navigational methods were much more effective than had generally been thought by recent scholars, and that traditional Micronesian methods were remarkably close to those of Polynesia. His chapters on steering by the stars and oh other directional guides show indisputably that a star map by itself is a poor substitute for native lore, and those on dead reckoning and calculation of currents also record surprising accuracy among the natives.

Much of this Information, including the details of the remarkable Carolinian sidereal compass (which is incompatible with the magnetic compass, and has survived for that reason), has been described by previous scholars; Lewis’s main achievement has been to evaluate it precisely. In the field of “expanded target landfalls,” however, he has made significant new revelations, which give some credence to the opinion that voyages of discovery were by no means as fortuitous as Sharp would argue, even though Lewis himself admits that original discovery “must always be a largely accidental event.” Birds, clouds, swell patterns, sea colour, seaweed types, and numerous other clues can indicate to a native navigator that land is close even though it may still be some distance beyond the horizon, or not easily visible.

The most surprising discovery in the area of expanded target landfinding would be how navigators in widely separated parts of Polynesia and Micronesia take directions from “Te lapa,” deep phosphorescent flashes which are quite different from ordinary surface phosphorescence. “Te lapa” is most conspicuous on dark, rainy nights, and is best seen “in the ‘middle sea,’ 80100 miles out, but it invariably indicates the direction of land. As you approach land it becomes scanty and finally disappears by the time the island (if an atoll) is well in sight. The particular kind of motion is said to be related to distance offshore. Far out at sea it moves relatively slowly; when land is near, say 10 or 20 miles away, it takes on a rapid to and fro jerking character.”

Because of the conditions he encountered, Lewis had only limited opportunities to observe how Te lapa was used, though he found navigators as far apart as the Santa Cruz Reef Islands, the Gilbert Islands, and Tonga who were familiar with it and whose descriptions were harmonious. He is unable to explain the phenomenon adequately, and the fact that it is best seen at great distances from land is quite baffling, and most difficult to reconcile with swell movement. However, there seems no doubt that Te lapa does exist and can be accurately used in landfinding; obviously, it needs to be investigated more closely, but in the meantime it allows a highly interesting new dimension to those who like to indulge in speculation about the various theories of ancient discovery in the Pacific.