The Evolution of Culture, and Other Essays

by Augustus Henry Lane-Fox Pitt-Rivers

Contrivances for sailing near the wind with the single outrigger canoe have led to the introduction of several other varieties of this class of vessel. It is necessary that the outrigger should always be on the windward side. The outrigger acts as a weight on the windward side, to prevent the narrow canoe from being blown over on the opposite side. When it blows very hard, the men run out on to the outrigger, to give it the additional weight of their bodies. Wilkes says that whenever the outrigger gets to the leeward side, there is almost invariably an upset. The outrigger probably is pressed too deeply into the water, and meeting with too much resistance, breaks the poles. To meet this difficulty both the canoe and outrigger are, in some parts, made pointed at both ends. When they wish to tack, instead of luffing and coming about, they bear away, until the vessel gets on the opposite quarter, and then, by shifting the sail, they sail away again stern first. This system is pursued in Fiji, in parts of New Guinea, and northward, in Kingsmill Islands (Wilkes).

Another mode of meeting this difficulty consists in having two outriggers, one on each side. This is employed in the Louisiade Archipelago (No. 1260), in parts of New Guinea, and to the north, in the Sooloo Archipelago. Yet another method remains to be described. In Samoa the canoes are built with bow and stern, and the outrigger is pointed towards the fore part only. As these vessels can only sail one way, the outrigger, in tacking, must necessarily be sometimes on the leeward side; to meet this, they rig out a platform corresponding to the outrigger platform on the opposite side; this, for distinction’s sake, we may term a weather platform. It has no outrigger log, nor does it touch the water, but when the wind blows so heavily as to press the outrigger down on the lee side, they run out on the weather platform, and counterbalance the effect of the wind by their weight. This contrivance is used in some parts of New Guinea, where, it may be observed, the varieties of the outrigger canoe are more numerous than in most of the other islands. It is also used in the Solomon Isles, where the weather platform is of the same width as the outrigger platform; and probably in some of the other islands to the north.

Finally we have, in the Asiatic Archipelago, a contrivance which may be said to be derived partly from the double outrigger, and partly from the weather platform last described. In proportion as the simple dug-out canoe began to be converted into a built-up vessel, and to acquire greater beam, they began to depend less and less on the support of the outrigger. The double outrigger necessarily presented considerable resistance to the water, but the vessel was still too narrow to sail by itself. A weather platform had, however, been found sufficient to balance the vessel on one side, and the next step was to knock off the outrigger log on the other side, thereby converting the outrigger platform into a weather platform; the two platforms projecting one on each side of the vessel, on the level of the gunwales, without touching the water, and thereby acting on the principle of the balancing-pole of a tight-rope dancer, whilst the resistance to the water was by this means confined to that of the hull of the vessel itself. These double weather-platform boats were also found more convenient in inland waters, in the canals in Manilla, and elsewhere.

De Guignes, in 1796, mentions a contrivance of this sort in the Philippines, but from the account, it is not quite clear whether he refers to a double weather platform, or a vessel with an outrigger and a weather platform. He says that the boats at Manilla are very sharply built, and furnished with yards, which serve as balances, on the windward side of which, when the wind blows hard, the sailors place themselves to counterpoise the effect of the wind on the sails. This contrivance does not, however, always ensure safety, for at times the bamboos which form the balance break, in which case the boat founders and the crew are lost. Dampier, however, in 1686, clearly speaks of the double weather platform at Manilla. He says that the difference between these Manilla boats and those at Guam, in the Ladrones, is that, whereas at Guam there is a little boat, fastened to the outriggers, that lies in the water, the beams or bamboos here are fastened transverse-wise to the outlayers on each side, and touch not the water like boats, but one, three, or four feet above the water, and serve for the canoe-men to sit and row and paddle upon. He says, that when the vessel reels, the ends of the platform dip into the water, and the vessel rights itself. Still further north, at Rangoon, on the Irrawaddy, we find the same contrivance described by Symes in 1795. He says that the boats are long and narrow, sixty feet in length, and not more than twelve in the widest place; they require a good deal of ballast, and would have been in constant danger of upsetting, had they not been provided with outriggers which, composed of thin boards, or oftener of buoyant bamboos, make a platform that extends horizontally six or seven feet on the outside of the boat from stem to stern. Thus secure, he says, the vessel can incline no further than until the platform touches the surface of the water, when she immediately rights; on this stage the boatmen ply their oars.

This constitutes one out of many points of evidence that might be mentioned, serving to show that the arts and culture of the Burmese, and of all this part of Asia, have been derived from the Malay Archipelago more probably than the reverse.

The outrigger canoe itself has never, I believe, been known on the Irrawaddy within the memory of man, but, as already seen, it is used in the Nicobar and Andaman Isles and on the coast to the south.

These outriggers, or balancing platforms, appear gradually to have diminished in size as the vessel increased in beam, and there can be little doubt that the rude stages or balconies outside the gunwales represented in the models of many of the larger vessels used in these seas are the last vestiges of the outrigger. No. 1278 of my collection is an example of this.

7. Rudders, Sails, and other Contrivances.

All the various items of evidence which I have collected, and endeavoured to elucidate by means of survivals, whether in relation to modes of navigation or other branches of industry, appear to me to tend towards establishing a gradual development of culture as we advance northward. Although Buddhism and its concomitant civilization may have come from the north, there has been an earlier and prehistoric flow of culture in the opposite direction—northward—from the primaeval and now submerged cradle of the human family in the southern hemisphere. This, I venture to think, will establish itself more and more clearly, in proportion as we divest ourselves of the numerous errors which have arisen from our acceptance of the Noachian deluge as a universal catastrophe.