Warships and their story

by R. A. Fletcher

STERN-POSTS OF MAORI WAR CANOES.

From Examples in the Dominion Museum, Wellington, New Zealand.

A MAORI WAR CANOE.

From Angas’s “New Zealand.”

The canoes of that mysterious people, the Maori of New Zealand, well repay attention in greater detail than is possible in this book. The origin of the people themselves is unknown, though, if their traditions are to be accepted, they migrated a few hundred years ago from certain of the islands in the Central Pacific, partly conquered and partly absorbed the people whom they found there already, and have remained ever since. There has been more than one such expedition. There are affinities between the Maori and the Hawaians. Did the Maori come originally from Hawaii, or is there some connection between them and the ancient Egyptians, as is held to be indicated by certain points of resemblance in their carvings and mural decorations? In what sort of canoes did they cross the ocean, and how did they find their way? Unfortunately, the old chiefs who held the traditions have all died, and it is only owing to the painstaking researches of a few scholars who recognised the need and value of preserving what could still be learnt, that anything at all is known of the history of this strange people. Their legends tell us that some of their canoes were of great size; some could carry fires or places for cooking the food, and others were double canoes. One of the latter is said to have had a platform connecting the two hulls, and bearing a house; it was a three-masted vessel. All the New Zealand canoes had names of symbolical or historical interest. One of them was called Marutuahi, which, translated literally, means a slaying or devouring fire.[8] The dimensions of the historical or legendary canoes are not known. The straight, tall kauri pines of the North Island enabled large canoes to be built; one is said to have been 110 feet in length, and many of the later canoes were 60 to 80 feet long, and held a hundred to a hundred and fifty men. These boats had long, overhanging bows ornamented with a figurehead and two carved boards extending some little distance along either bow. Between these boards and resting on the stem the carved figurehead was placed and was often adorned with tufts of feathers. A mast set rather far forward and raking aft supported a triangular mat sail, the foot of which extended along the boom one and a half times to twice the length of its height, and enabled the canoe to sail very near the wind. The stays of the mast and the sheets of the sail were of plaited flax. The drawbacks to these canoes were that having no keels they made great leeway, and that their length made them awkward to manage whenever they were caught in anything like a rough sea; they could not meet the seas end on, but lay in the trough of the waves, and were so well handled that disasters were few. In rough weather they were covered with flax mats over a portion of their length to prevent the seas breaking inboard.

The long pine hull was of great strength, but to render it more seaworthy topsides were lashed along the sides of the hull from end to end of the vessel with braids of flax fibres,[9] and the seams and holes were caulked with a species of down. As a precaution against leakage and to strengthen the joint, a long, thin batten was lashed over the outside of the joint.

The decorations of the Maori canoes are wonderful. The spiral pattern often seen in their carvings is taken from the unfolding of the frond of a fern, and has been supposed to symbolise the unfolding of life or the attainment of a planned enterprise. The greatest care and the most artistic efforts were lavished upon the carvings of the prow and stern boards. These boards were very large and always removable. The log from which the stern-board was fashioned was generally about 15 inches in diameter and 6 to 15 feet in length, and in its complete state was covered with conventional and elaborate patterns. The figurehead log was about 6 feet in length and 4 feet wide, and 2 to 4 feet in thickness. Both were of hardwood and coloured red with kokowai or ochre. If the figureheads represented the dead chiefs who had joined the immortals in the Maori heaven, they must have lost in the other world what little beauty was left to them in this world after being tattooed. Not a few of the figures are extraordinarily grotesque, and the weird effect of the red ochre is heightened by the introduction of bright shiny eyes made of the inner shell of the haliotis. Many also show the tattoo marks which were supposed to add to Maori beauty, and most bore bunches of feathers of the kaka and albatross, and on gala days were further adorned with an elaborate and gaudy feather wig. The thin batten, already alluded to, covering the join of the topside and hull, was always stained black. Gannet feathers were inserted to cover the lashings and contrasted vividly with the black batten and the reddened canoe. The sides of many canoes also were painted in wavy lines of red, white and black, as though in imitation of the wave motion. Streamers of pigeon tail feathers hung from the top of the stern-board to the water; even the sail point on the boom bore its tuft and streamers of feathers.

A LAKATOI NEARLY COMPLETED.