DOUBLE CANOES AND MAORI DESIGNERS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2397, 8 February 1900, Page 63

DOUBLE CANOES AND MAORI DESIGNERS.

(Bt Richard H'cxky, Resolution Island.)

September 27, 1899,

As long as I can remember I have heard of double canoes and saw pictures of them with platforms across, and perhaps a hut on the platform, which looked all very nice and comfortable in theoiy and on smooth water; but of late years, since 1 learned something about the building and sailing of boats, I have been greatly troubled to know how those canoes were fastened together stiong enough to stand the see-sawing of the waves. I can build a fait boat .■mtl sail it about the sound, but I confess my total ignorance of how to fasten two of them together so that they would stand a single rough day at ?ea. I have long iron and copper nails, rivets, and bolts and beams, and the best of tools for bo; ing dcop hole.*, yet my be=t deign and Tvorkniaus-hip would probably only re&ult in Wiring rhe side?, out when the boats would be lahoui - ing in a sea, ami how vnnch more likely would this )J2 to happen with a Maori caiioo whose top sides were only h~M with flax lashings? Two small canoes hewn

out of single trees might be success" \ '•< tened together, because the resistance to the waves would not be so much out of proportion to the strength of the sides for fastening, but to do this with built up craft is altogether impracticable ; and the difficulty increases with the size of the boats. Why have we not double yachts and double steamers to counteract the rolling? The millionaire steel-worker, Bessemer, tried ie once and made a fool of himself, about 30 years ago, and yet we have members of a learned society of the present day discussing the deterioration of the Maori in having forgotten the use of the double canoe, "so useful, roomy, and seaworthy a vessel." — See "Transactions of the New Zealand Institute," vol. 26, page 535. This, I think, is a splendid example of the want of a little practice to mix T\ith the theoiy. I can understand a double canoe for its portability, and the ease with which it could be disconnected and hauled up on the beach ; also for its stability to fight upon. Many of the reported double canoes may have been only temporarily lashed together for this purpose. 1 can understand a pair of little canoes, like those described bjCook, in Du^ky Buy, because they could have been taken up the rivers and carried one at a time round the rapids into the many little lakes and level reaches and even over the mountains into the great likes of the interior, enabling the owners to raft their luggage and children over the dangerous fords ps they came or went, and to catch eels for food ; but as for a, sea-going craft, I think it was either a myth or a mistake. Anyone who thinks a Native could build a shelter on such a platform to withstand a rough d-xy has no idea of the port er of the waves to clear it away, separate the canoes, and bash them together. They would be much safer a mile apart, and every experienced boatman knows that, though he does not put it down in writing.

In Brett's '" Early History of ISTew Zealand," there is an account of a party of Maoris taking a missionary up the East Cca-st on a rough day when the canoe was swamped several times. The Maoris got lound it while one of their number baled it out and all got in again, ultimately reaching their destination, but the missionary died. Tins chows that the crew were inured to that sort of thing, and probably well used to it, because every man must have known his duty, and all must have worked together to clear the boat on a rough day. That is one reison why Natives object to carry ballast — they can often save their Crtnoes and their lives, too. The only rational alternative for ballast in a sailing canoe was die outrigger, but the Maoris v, ere poor hands with sails, and therefore had no outriggers. They were more inclined for figure heads and parades than the science of sailing — somewhat like ourselves a few hundred years ago. I suppose it will hardly be believed that it is only within our own memories that Englishmen have realised the superiority of flat sails, so that we need not throw stones at the Maoris about that matter. However, it is evident that either their tiaditions are all fables, or their naval architecture has greatly deteriorated since they came from Hiwaiki. In Auckland there is a fine wing to the museum with the greater part of its floor occupied by a long, level, Maori canoe, and the Aucklanderrf are very proud of it as a specimen of the Maori's work ; but it is only another example of the want of a little of the practical to mix with the theoretical. Remember, this canoe is over 100 ft long and nearly as level on the gunwale as the museum floor, so that with its warriors aboard and only about a foot of freeboard, it could not have lived a minute in a seaway. It is doubtful if she would have been safe on a rough day in Auckland harbour, tcTsay nothing of going- round the coast ami landing in the surf where required. So that there is a great falling-off in design, or else the authorities have chosen the very poorest specimen for exhibition. If that canoe was intended for a sea-going , craft, the designer was not one degree better than an idiot. Now, this old story of the double canoes should be threshed out by referring the plans to practical boatbuilders, especially to those who know something about the old style of building Maori canoes with the flax lashings on the side boards. lam confident that the idea of such being useful saa-going craft is all a mistake, and that (he Maori traditions of their voyages to and from Hiwaiki are about as reliable as ours of flying horses. No doubt, the ordinary single canoes may have often been blown .ivray, ard lived through the sea to land their occupant l on distant islands, but it is f-sr more 1 kely that tbose old seagoing islandei.-j knew how to build decked vessels nble to protect their food and water from the waves, and provide shelter in turns for the sailors that needed a rest below, to s.iy nothing about the wives and families. Either that, or they had the use of decked veftsels from other countries', and, perhaps, navigator.--, too. Probably the Chinese had the mariner's compass a thousand years ago, and the builders of the great ruins in Java, may havo had decked vessels long before that. Then why should not some of those have been blown away as well as the canoe? That is nob a matter of chance at all, but is almost a certainty, with a probability tli->t s'une of them did not want to lvturn (like the Pitcairners), but would have been glad of the hospihiliLy of the islanders, and glad to teach them shipbuilding and navigation in return for wives and homes and comparative peace. Some of Captain Cooks men tried to run away ;md stay with the islanders, and I saw a Pitcairn Islander on a steamer rhe other day tv ho would easily paps for a Ruapuke 3Jnori.

If our industrial oiyinisßtion had been de.-l'-oyed a few hundred years ago by tribal lighting, there would probably be none among n-i now able to build or «ul -a ■■Milnoy.er. The male Maori appears to have dcV'Jtcd his whole fitt^ntion to iiqhtmg, and ureyru-ing for the defence of his pa. r ' n uuigh pomrs of them w?re certainly able If de«'<?n and hew out a good little canoe, yet there their work as artisans seemed to end. Their carvings show a little iudustry, but also a very rubbishy taste, with a wani,

(ii 100-, ' i ' without a ghost of a sign of propoitiujj j.i picturing anything they saw. L'he Australian was quite an artist compared ■with the Maori, but, having no leisure for elaborate carvings, he drew his cunning pictures of animals and biids with charcoal on pieces of bark. The modern Maori is plainly the production of the survival of the best fighter, not the best artisan or the best sailor, and is, perhaps, of recent degeneration from a better people ; but, so far as we know his history, the truth about him is that, first, he was greatest of all as a murderer, and then as the concocter of rites and ceremonies and superstitions bad enough to have ruined tlie noblest race on earth. In fact, he had reduced robbery and revenge to a regular system, and included them in his acknowledged laws and customs. But the Maori women show a taste in artistic needlework that even Europeans need not be ashamed of, and this may be a legacy from foiiner times, saved through the marauding weirw c ir parties sparing the women of a better people, who handed it down, perhaps, in token of some old refinement, so deeply inborn that it has lasted through generations of barbarity till the present day. The Morions d : d not know how to fight, and with a lew more items to cultivate, such a people would have had scope for improvement in a great isolated country like New Zealand that did not exUt in their own little island, where they may have been only refugees from an old home in Xew Zealand, and we actually saw how they were exterminated almost in a day by the fighting Maori. Good sailing craft have little freeboard to catch the wind, but a good hold in the water, while the double canoe was just the reverse, with little hold_ of the water, and a hut on the platform to* catch all the wind and prevent the efficient use of sails. Such a craft might do to poke about the coasts and islands, where she could run for shelter and wait for a fair wind, but the idea of steering a course in her over the sea to some distant port is nothing short of the ridiculous. If the Maoris did not understand sails well enough to make their vessels " lie to ' in a gole, their wilful navigation of the ocean is all a myth, for their piddling would not last many rough days, and would have been of little use in a vessel big enough to carry food for them to reach anywhere, if they were blown back and forth by the wind. Evidently we know nothing of their former history, because their traditions like all other traditions, retain only the fanciful and poetical, and carefully forget everything useful and practical. Why did they not retain something of their implied system of geography and navigation, or even of the use of sails? To steer a boat on a long voyage by the sun and stars implies an intimate knowledge of the shape and motions of the earth and to do it without accurate instruments is a feat we cannot perform to this day.