A LAKATOI UNDER SAIL.
From Photographs supplied by the Hon. J. E. Jenkins.
The dug-out, as the type common to all the Pacific islands, usually has the outrigger attached; it can only be used in still waters. Very frequently it is duplicated to form a double canoe, or even three may be used abreast and covered, together with the intervening spaces, with a deck upon which a deck house is erected. As the deck extends a considerable distance beyond the sides the amount of deck space thus obtained is very great, as can well be imagined if the hull be formed of three canoes each 50 or 60 feet long, and the deck extends 3 or 4 feet on either side and is nearly square. If canoes with outriggers were employed as double canoes they were placed with the outriggers lashed together.
The accompanying illustrations of a New Guinea boat or “lakatoi” show how these vessels are arranged. They each carry two short pole masts which support immense spars of bamboo or other light material to which sails of palm leaves are attached. These sails are so constructed that they can be hauled up or down their spars as required. They have been described as suggesting when under full sail gigantic lobsters holding up their claws in distress. The houses upon them are formed of rattan and palm leaves. An idea of their dimensions may be formed by comparing in the illustrations the vessels themselves and the men and women upon them.
Not the least amazing features of these boats are that long sea voyages were undertaken in them, and that in spite of their size not a nail was used in their construction, the whole thing being tied firmly together with coco-nut or other fibre.
The Fijian canoe was very similar to that just described. The Tahitian “pahi” is frequently 80 feet in length, of the raft-boat type, and bears a distinct likeness to the “balsa” of Ancient Peru, and has some of the features of the catamarans of the Chatham Islands, and “has a closer likeness still to a Chinese junk, with its high latticed stern work.”[10] These pahi were broad in the beam, neatly planked over inside, and were fitted with a bulkhead or inner casing, and had the usual elevated carved stern, sometimes consisting of one post and sometimes of two. These vessels were capable of covering 120 miles a day without much difficulty if the wind suited. The Pacific Islanders, says the same authority, “in the early days of Polynesian enterprise (about 1400 A.D. and earlier) would make voyages of over a thousand miles at a time, taking the sun as their compass by day and the moon and stars by night, adapting the time of their sailings to the shifting of the Trade wind ... veering from north-east to south-west in its appointed season.”
CANOE FROM SHORTLAND ISLAND.
