Maritime anniversary #3

Next year, give or take a few centuries, will be the four-thousandth anniversary of the kick start of the great Polynesian conquest of the Pacific.

The remote ancestors of the natives of Tahiti, the Marquesas, Hawaii, Tonga, Samoa, and New Zealand were skilled sailors who burst into the western Pacific from the archipelago of southeast Asia about 1400 BC, to settle in the islands of Fiji.  About a thousand years before Christ was born, they colonized Tonga and Samoa, where Polynesian language and culture developed.  Fifteen hundred years passed by, and then, perhaps because of overcrowding, perhaps because of the pressure of war, or perhaps just for the excitement of adventure, men and women sailed out from this ancestral cradle, fanning out across the broad Pacific, and exploring more of the earth’s surface than anyone ever before. 

It was a feat made possible by the evolution of the double-hulled canoe into a stable voyaging vessel, capable of freighting a heavy load of plants, animals, provisions, and people.  The big, graceful craft ranged as far east as Rapanui (Easter Island), and are very likely to have made a landfall in South America, either introducing the kumara (sweet potato), or carrying kumara sprouts back to Polynesia.  At a time when sailors in the Mediterranean were just starting to experiment with the fore-and-aft sail, Polynesian canoes powered by lateens made the tough 2,500-mile voyage to Hawaii, and then back again, battling cross-currents, the doldrums, and contrary trade winds.  Two hundred years before the era of Columbus, Magellan, and Drake, Polynesians crossed two thousand miles of storm-tossed ocean, reaching far south to find the mountainous, deeply embayed islands of New Zealand.

This enormous accomplishment makes the celebrations of the circumnavigations of Cook, Magellan et al seem a little silly, does it not?  But never mind, any kind of anniversary makes a good excuse for a party.

Another anniversary (of sorts) is Tupaia, my biography of the great priest-navigator from Raiatea  -- TUPAIA, who enabled the success of Captain Cook's circumnavigation of New Zealand in 1769.

Today, as well as being the seventh anniversary of the first printing of this highly successful book,  is the launch of the FIRST ILLUSTRATED DIGITAL EDITION, published by Old Salt Press.

Buy it at all internet bookstores, including Amazon.