We, the Navigators, The Ancient Art of Landfinding in the Pacific is a 1972 book by the British-born New Zealand doctor David Lewis, which explains the principles of Micronesian and Polynesian navigation through his experience of placing his boat under control of several traditional navigators on long ocean voyages.
David Lewis, after circumnavigating the world in a catamaran, decided to test his understanding of Polynesian navigation techniques by sailing the 2200 miles from Tahiti to New Zealand without any modern instruments (except the smallest of charts and a sky map). After arriving with a landfall only 26 miles in error, he learned that there were contemporary sailors in the Santa Cruz and Caroline Islands who still sailed large distances by the traditional methods and obtained support from the Australian National University to visit and sail with them. He did this in a 39-foot gaff ketch, Isbjorn, which he placed under the direction of the navigators Tevake and Hipour. These navigators spoke very little English, were illiterate and did not understand maps but were able to take him eventually on a 450-mile trip from Puluwat to Saipan and to return and teach him many of their techniques.
The book is largely based on these voyages, but there are extensive references to the literature.
Part 1 - The Puzzle
"Captain Cook in 1775 was uniquely fortunate in encountering Tupaia, a dispossessed high chief and navigator-priest of Raiatea who was the only highly qualified Polynesian navigator who was ever interviewed at length by Europeans." But generally the very idea that people without instruments, charts or writing, could have developed an elaborate and effective art (or "pre-science") of navigation was so utterly foreign as not even to enter the minds of most Europeans. Since then there have been the traditionalists such as Percy Smith who have uncritically accepted the migration legends of the Polynesians as literal history and those, such as Thor Heyerdahl, who dismissed these and emphasised drifting and one-way voyages.
Although the distances involved are thousands of miles, it's possible to traverse the whole ocean with voyages of not more than 310 miles with a few exceptions. The islands of the Pacific can further be grouped into "contact zones" in which the maximum distances are usually 50–200 miles. However, computer simulations have shown that pure drifting cannot explain the distribution of humans across the whole area.
Part 2 - Direction
"The most accurate direction indicators for Pacific Islanders, still used in many parts of Oceania, are stars low in the sky that have either just risen or are about to set, that is horizon or guiding stars... Although stars rise four minutes earlier each night... the points on the horizon where they rise and set remain the same throughout the year." Thirty-two such stars were used to form a "sidereal compass" by which directions are given (first described by José Andía y Varela in 1774). Those in the east–west direction which rise in a nearly vertical direction are the easiest to use. Other stars with the same declination must be memorised in order to continue throughout the night. In practice it is rare to require more than ten guide stars for a night's sailing—roughly twelve hours in the tropics—and fewer for an east–west course. On a cloudy night an experienced navigator can orient himself using only a few stars.
It is harder to use the sun during the day because of the changes in its position during the seasons, and it is necessary to use the swell of the ocean as an aid (not waves, which are local and variable). e.g. in the Santa Cruz group, three swells are considered to be present all round the year: the 'long swell' from the south east, the 'sea swell' from east-north-east and the 'hoahuadelahu' from the north-west. The helmsman detects the most reliable using balance.
Part 3 - Compensation and orientation
For accurate navigation it is essential to compensate for the effect of currents and leeway. Although there are usually swift currents around islands, the major currents take over more than 5–6 miles from land. The major currents are east to west in most parts of Polynesia and Micronesia, but there is a narrow band of the equatorial counter current going west to east. These can make a difference of 40 miles per day.
The prime method of coping with currents is by taking backsights on the land when leaving so as to be able to estimate the current and also the leeway (the angle the boat is drifting off the wind). On many islands, leading marks are set up to aid in this. The course is then adjusted to suit the conditions. There can be daily fluctuations in current but these are generally random and do not accumulate. Expert navigators can also detect currents from the shape of the waves, if the current is confined to the top layers of the water.
Their estimates of distance made good seems to be largely intuitive, based on long experience, and their sense of position derives from keeping in mind where 'home' and other islands are, which can be maintained even when blown far in a gale. They also use the stellar bearings of intermediate islands to judge their progress, even when these are out of sight (a technique known as etak). The memory of the relative position of islands is passed down the generations using the star compass so that a grandson might use a course that hasn't been followed since his grandfather used it.
Part 4 - Expanded target landfall and position
The navigation accuracy required to find an island in the Pacific by sight may be better than 1° and other methods are necessary to make the approach to an island. The basic technique is to "enlarge" the island by identifying signs of approaching land.
Observing the behaviour of seabirds which fly out to their feeding grounds in the morning and return in the evening is one of the most well-known of the techniques. For example, boobies regularly fly 30 miles from an island to forage and some varieties go to 50 miles.
In the Gilbert Islands, characteristic cloud patterns are the preferred means of locating islands. The swell of the sea can be both reflected by an island and refracted round it, giving clues to the experienced navigator in excess of 30 miles. With large land masses such as New Zealand the effect is more pronounced. Another sign which works best on dark rainy nights is deep phosphorescence causing flashes in the sea originating from the island and observable up to 80–100 miles away.
Navigators on several archipelagos were able to home in on an island by observing which stars were overhead, using it as a fix on latitude.
Part 5 - The Lonely Seaways
A Tongan tongiaki with bonito fishing canoe in foreground seen by Tasman, 1643.
The canoes with which the Polynesians explored the oceans were double canoes which tacked like a European sailing ship whereas the Micronesians used canoes with outriggers on one side which were tacked by reversing the direction of travel, so that the outrigger stayed to windward. The preferred size for long distances throughout Oceania was 50–75 feet, which were least likely to succumb in storms and could carry up to 50 people. The hulls were generally V-shaped made of planks held together by coconut fibre, which would be replaced after a long voyage. They were primarily sailing vessels with auxiliary power provided by paddles. Cook recorded a mean speed of 7 knots close-hauled, which was rather faster than his own vessels. Provisioning allowed for trips up to a month which could be extended by another two weeks without undue hardship. At the present day, the voyaging canoes in the Carolines are smaller, typically 26 feet with a crew of five or six.
The reasons for voyaging vary from recreation to one way trips for colonization. Some of these were accidental and achieved by drifting rather than sailing. Many canoes which storm-drifted to the Philippines from the Yap region made successful returns home. But because of prevailing winds, westerly drifts are far more common than easterly. Tahiti to Hawaii, 2000 miles across the prevailing winds is impossible to drift but fine for sailing. Arriving at Easter Island must have been fortuitous. Raiding and conquest were a traditional motive.
Reception
The Starpath School of Navigation in Seattle says "This is the classic study of Polynesian navigation by one of the world's greatest sailors and adventurers."[1]
In the American Anthropologist, Philip Devita said "Lewis' work is indeed a pioneering effort, a work that should provide Oceanic scholars with a clearly needed understanding of the indigenous navigational practices which remain transmitted in the oral tradition... The volume is essentially a report of Lewis’ experiments in testing the accuracy of Oceanic landfinding.".[2]
In Polynesian mythology, Hawaiki is the original home of the Polynesians, before dispersal across Polynesia. It also features as the underworld in many Māori stories.
The Polynesian Voyaging Society (PVS) is a non-profit research and educational corporation based in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi. PVS was established to research and perpetuate traditional Polynesian voyaging methods. Using replicas of traditional double-hulled canoes, PVS undertakes voyages throughout Polynesia navigating without modern instruments.
Hōkūleʻa is a performance-accurate waʻa kaulua, a Polynesian double-hulled voyaging canoe. Launched on 8 March 1975 by the Polynesian Voyaging Society, it is best known for its 1976 Hawaiʻi to Tahiti voyage completed with exclusively traditional navigation techniques. The primary goal of the voyage was to explore the anthropological theory of the Asiatic origin of native Oceanic people as the result of purposeful trips through the Pacific, as opposed to passive drifting on currents or sailing from the Americas. DNA analysis supports this theory. A secondary project goal was to have the canoe and voyage "serve as vehicles for the cultural revitalization of Hawaiians and other Polynesians."
Hawaiʻiloa is a mythical Hawaiian fisherman and navigator who is said to have discovered the island of Hawaiʻi.
The Micronesians or Micronesian peoples are various closely related ethnic groups native to Micronesia, a region of Oceania in the Pacific Ocean. They are a part of the Austronesian ethnolinguistic group, which has an Urheimat in Taiwan.
Proas are various types of multi-hull outrigger sailboats of the Austronesian peoples. The terms were used for native Austronesian ships in European records during the Colonial era indiscriminately, and thus can confusingly refer to the double-ended single-outrigger boats of Oceania, the double-outrigger boats of Island Southeast Asia, and sometimes ships with no outriggers or sails at all.
Taumako is the largest of the Duff Islands, in the Solomon Islands. This 5.7-kilometre-long (3.5-mile) island has steep sides and rises to a height of 400 metres above sea level. It is composed of basaltic lavas and pyroclastics like the other islands in the Duffs.
Pius "Mau" Piailug was a Micronesian navigator from the Carolinian island of Satawal, best known as a teacher of traditional, non-instrument wayfinding methods for open-ocean voyaging. Mau's Carolinian navigation system, which relies on navigational clues using the Sun and stars, winds and clouds, seas and swells, and birds and fish, was acquired through rote learning passed down through teachings in the oral tradition. He earned the title of master navigator (palu) by the age of eighteen, around the time the first American missionaries arrived in Satawal. As he neared middle age, Mau grew concerned that the practice of navigation in Satawal would disappear as his people became acculturated to Western values. In the hope that the navigational tradition would be preserved for future generations, Mau shared his knowledge with the Polynesian Voyaging Society (PVS). With Mau's help, PVS used experimental archaeology to recreate and test lost Hawaiian navigational techniques on the Hōkūleʻa, a modern reconstruction of a double-hulled Hawaiian voyaging canoe.
Satawal is a solitary coral atoll of one island with about 500 people on just over 1 km2 located in the Caroline Islands in the Pacific Ocean. It forms a legislative district in Yap State in the Federated States of Micronesia. Satawal is the easternmost island in the Yap island group and is located approximately 70 kilometers (43 mi) east of Lamotrek.
Stick charts were made and used by the Marshallese to navigate the Pacific Ocean by canoe off the coast of the Marshall Islands. The charts represented major ocean swell patterns and the ways the islands disrupted those patterns, typically determined by sensing disruptions in ocean swells by islanders during sea navigation.
David Henry Lewis was a sailor, adventurer, doctor, and scholar of Polynesian culture. He is best known for his studies on the traditional systems of navigation used by the Pacific Islanders. His studies, published in the book We, the Navigators, made these navigational methods known to a wide audience and helped to inspire a revival of traditional voyaging methods in the South Pacific.
Polynesian navigation or Polynesian wayfinding was used for thousands of years to enable long voyages across thousands of kilometers of the open Pacific Ocean. Polynesians made contact with nearly every island within the vast Polynesian Triangle, using outrigger canoes or double-hulled canoes. The double-hulled canoes were two large hulls, equal in length, and lashed side by side. The space between the paralleled canoes allowed for storage of food, hunting materials, and nets when embarking on long voyages. Polynesian navigators used wayfinding techniques such as the navigation by the stars, and observations of birds, ocean swells, and wind patterns, and relied on a large body of knowledge from oral tradition.
The history of navigation, or the history of seafaring, is the art of directing vessels upon the open sea through the establishment of its position and course by means of traditional practice, geometry, astronomy, or special instruments. Many peoples have excelled as seafarers, prominent among them the Austronesians, the Harappans, the Phoenicians, the Iranians, the ancient Greeks, the Romans, the Arabs, the ancient Indians, the Norse, the Chinese, the Venetians, the Genoese, the Hanseatic Germans, the Portuguese, the Spanish, the English, the French, the Dutch, and the Danes.
Ben Rudolph Finney was an American anthropologist known for his expertise in the history and the social and cultural anthropology of surfing, Polynesian navigation, and canoe sailing, as well as in the cultural and social anthropology of human space colonization. As “surfing’s premier historian and leading expert on Hawaiian surfing going back to the 17th century” and “the intellectual mentor, driving force, and international public face” of the Hokulea project, he played a key role in the Hawaiian Renaissance following his construction of the Hokulea precursor Nalehia in the 1960s and his co-founding of the Polynesian Voyaging Society in the 1970s.
Polynesia is a subregion of Oceania, made up of more than 1000 islands scattered over the central and southern Pacific Ocean. The indigenous people who inhabit the islands of Polynesia are called Polynesians. They have many things in common, including language relatedness, cultural practices, and traditional beliefs. In centuries past, they had a strong shared tradition of sailing and using stars to navigate at night. The largest country in Polynesia is New Zealand.
Wa are traditional sailing outrigger canoes of the Caroline Islands, Palau, and Yap. They have a single outrigger. They are similar to the sakman of the Northern Marianas.
Sakman, better known in western sources as flying proas, are traditional sailing outrigger boats of the Chamorro people of the Northern Marianas. They are characterized by a single outrigger and a crab claw sail. They are the largest native sailing ships (ladjak) of the Chamorro people. Followed by the slightly smaller lelek and the medium-sized duding. They are similar to other traditional sailing ships of Micronesia, like the wa, baurua, and the walap. These ships were once used for trade and transportation between islands.
etak is a word of Micronesian origin for a distinctive cognitive and mnemonic approach to oceanic navigation and orientation involving a notional reference point or "island", called etak, and triangulation based on it. The system under that name was found in the Caroline Islands, and the literal meaning of etak is "refuge". Alfred Gell described it as a way of encoding dead reckoning applied to sea journeys. It is an example of a dynamic cognitive map.
Micronesian navigation techniques are those navigation skills used for thousands of years by the navigators who voyaged between the thousands of small islands in the western Pacific Ocean in the subregion of Oceania, that is commonly known as Micronesia. These voyagers used wayfinding techniques such as the navigation by the stars, and observations of birds, ocean swells, and wind patterns, and relied on a large body of knowledge from oral tradition. These navigation techniques continued to be held by Polynesian navigators and navigators from the Santa Cruz Islands. The re-creations of Polynesian voyaging in the late 20th century used traditional stellar navigational methods that had remained in everyday use in the Caroline Islands.
Te lapa is a Polynesian term for an unexplained and scientifically unproven light phenomenon underneath, or on the surface of, the ocean. Te lapa has been loosely translated as "flashing light", "underwater lightning", "the flashing", or "something that flashes". It was used by historic and modern Polynesians as a navigation aid to find islands in the Pacific Ocean. In some instances, it has been theorized to be bioluminescence or electromagnetic in nature. Other hypotheses include the interference patterns of intersecting waves creating a raised curve acting as a lens, but would not explain the source of light. David Lewis speculated that te lapa may originate from luminescence of organisms, or related to deep swell, ground swell, or backwash waves from reefs or islands.
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