The Sailing Performance of Ancient Pacific Canoes

Abstract

The islands of the Pacific Ocean were settled in a series of remarkable episodes of maritime migration. This chapter investigates the navigational and technological innovations that allowed Lapita canoes to sail east across the prevailing winds through Island Melanesia 3000 years ago and, after a “long pause” of at least 1500 years in West Polynesia, for Polynesian canoes to sail upwind into central East Polynesia. Lapita sailors invented the navigational technique of latitude sailing to transition from coastal seafarers to ocean explorers. Their canoes were dugouts raised by planks and stabilized by outriggers with fore-and-aft sails, and their seascape was a narrow latitudinal band of tropical islands. In the second episode some East Polynesian voyaging canoes had sophisticated planked hulls with improved upwind performance and they used Oceanic spritsails, and their seascape spanned latitudes from the northern tropics to the sub-Antarctic. These conclusions are based on archaeology and yacht engineering tests of relevant sails in a wind tunnel and canoe hulls in a towing tank, and simulated voyages by a virtual canoe based on the earliest-known archaeological East Polynesian voyaging canoe found at Anaweka, New Zealand, closely match the real voyages of the experimental replica canoe Hokule’a throughout Polynesia.