MAORI NAVIGATORS

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 900, 18 February 1930, Page 14

MAORI NAVIGATORS

OLD FEATS OF SAILING One of the strange things in the fAvorld of yachting is the complete inid ifference shown by twentieth century Maoris to the sea. Fifty years ago Maoris were numerous among the sail-ing-ship crews and their Polynesian forefathers were daring seamen. In their outrigger or their double ranoes they coulrl sail just as fast off the wind, sometimes faster, than many a schooner. They lashed a leng steer oar for a le© board and knew the use of seaanchors. Some or the double canoes ■were two-masted, one at opposite ends of the two craft, so that instead of tacking the crew hoisted sail at one end or the other as required. If he was dismasted the skipper always had a second stick ready. Of 'course, a double canoe was an expensive boat. Big trees were scarce and to get two of asimilar size was more than twice as difficult. The outrigger was, therefore, a general substitute. Tasman saw double canoes in use in Massacre Bay; but both that type and the outrigger dropped out of use for travelling on rivers and in protected bays, until knowledge of how to handle or construct them was lost, just as we are losing our knowledge of sailing big boats. Sails were made in lateen style or hoisted that way reversed. About Honolulu the sailing canoe has lingered, the plaited sail being made with ribs of wood like a fan radiating from the foot of the mast. On the walls of eaves found recently on Kaingaroa Plains and in the cliff wall at Arapuni, there are drawings of canoes fitted with sails, possibly a last effort of some old hand to record the things he had seen in his youth, but which had then vanished. Capatin Cook, when he picked up a Tahitian chief to act for him as interpreter, was astonished that he could, by placing small stones on the deck, whow Cook where Samoa, Marquesas, Cook and Fiji groups, as well as 16 other groups, were situated—indicating a knowledge of hundreds of square miles of the Pacific. The Hawaiians had invented a crude type of fixed angle sextant, in all probability a forerunner of the primitive types from which we developed our modern instruments. They called it the magic gourd. It was half a gourd or even half a coconut shell with four small holes at the ends of diameters at right angles on the horizontal plane when the shell was held open end up. Water was placed in the shell until it filled to the line of holes. In other words a water-level was utilised. Then the side of the shell was cut down until, sighting through one of the holes and over the lip of the shell, the North «tar was just visible at certain times of the year. The voyager at sea could fill up his magic gourd, sight on the star and be reasonably sure that he was either above or below the latitude of his own island. He had then to work east or west as required until he found it. The bird and fish life, too, were indications of the latitudes and nearness ot land, even in more modern times The old hands working to New Zealand from the islands kept sufficiently far to the east to be sure they were east of The country. Then when they lost the flying-fish and began to pick up gannets and other birds they knew thev were in the latitude of New’ Zealand ? nd^^V, rned west until they made a landfall. The Maoris did the same. On the voyage to New Zealand calls were made at Cook Islands and the -Kermadecs and most of the canoes made the East Cape.