Navigation way back when

Practical: navigation

Jack Finlay reflects on the Pacific's first seafarers and their legacy to us.

On the wall of my room there hangs a Micronesian stick chart, purchased from a handicraft shop in the Marshall Islands. People often ask me what it is, and why - in an age of electronic charts - I value it so highly.

Modelled on the ones used in the past as teaching devices for aspiring young navigators, the stick chart comprises strands of bamboo and pandanus reed crossing one another in a series of straight and curved lines. Each one represents the movement of a swell across the open sea. At various points within the structure small shells are clustered to indicate atolls and island groupings. Here and there the timber strands are bent to indicate the refraction of ocean swells around a landmass.

Even for a modern Western mind it is easy to see the concepts that are represented within the chart, such as how passages between islands could be undertaken in the knowledge that if certain swell lines were kept at predetermined angles to the course of a canoe, specified destinations would be reached.

Complex examples of stick charts exist today in many museums throughout the Pacific, most notably the Bishop Museum in Honolulu. Charts like these were once part of the huge body of knowledge that made up a traditional navigation lore built on an understanding of sea swells, star paths, and a myriad other natural phenomena such as the flights of birds, bio-luminescence in the water, cloud reflections and so on.

Select few
Navigation and its practice underpinned early life in the Pacific. The teaching of it was carefully guarded and passed only to a selected few, who carried the enormous responsibilities of wayfinding for their people. They were the agents of exploration, of finding new places for settlement when islands became overcrowded or when food became short, of forging trade routes, of widening the gene pool, all the way through to ending the curiosity as to just what lay beyond the far horizon.

From the huge body of knowledge that now exists on Pacific non-instrument navigation there are many episodes that amaze me.

A sense of position
On Cook's first voyage to the Pacific (1768-1771), while in Tahiti to observe the transit of Venus, Joseph Banks befriended a Polynesian named Tupia. He was recognised by the English as a type of priest, but 200 years later, in his 1972 opus We the Navigators, David Lewis more correctly identifies Tupia as a navigator-priest. When the Endeavour departed Tahiti for England, Tupia was on board.

In the months that followed Ð as the ship meandered over thousands of miles of open ocean, from the latitudes of 48¡ south to 4¡ north - Tupia was at all times able to correctly point in the direction of Tahiti. Unfortunately the English never tried to find out how he was able to do it, and the opportunity was finally lost later in the voyage, when Tupia succumbed to the fevers of Batavia.

Mau Piailug
A relatively recent example as to just what went into the making of a navigator can be gauged by the background of the Micronesian navigator Mau Piailug. With Pacific canoe migrations long finished - and their traditional navigation techniques all but lost in the march of "progress" - Mau was chosen in 1976 to navigate the Hawaiian double-hulled canoe Hokule'a on its original passage from Hawaii to Tahiti. At the time he was one of the last known Pacific navigators with the knowledge and physical ability to undertake such a voyage.

Mau's education as a navigator had begun at the age of one on the tiny Micronesian island of Satawal, when he would from time to time be placed in tidal pools around the island to begin the process of "feeling the waves". The succeeding years saw him versed under the guidance of his grandfather in the skills of star-path navigation, the reading of ocean swells and all the other tools of trade of the Pacific navigator.

Mau successfully guided the Hokule'a to Tahiti in 1976, and again in 1980. On that latter trip he began the imparting of his knowledge to the young Hawaiian Nainoa Thompson, who subsequently navigated Hokule'a to all corners of the Pacific.

Thompson has described Mau as someone who could "unlock the signs of the ocean world, and feel his way through the ocean".

Tevake
In the course of doing part of the research that would make up We the Navigators, in 1968 David Lewis voyaged with the elderly Santa Cruz Islander Tevake, observing his swell-steering, star-finding, dead-reckoning and orientation techniques.

Some time after he returned to Australia to write up his research Lewis received a letter from a missionary enquiring on behalf of Tevake whether he had completed the writing up of his work. Lewis replied in the affirmative. Months later Lewis received a second letter from the missionary: Tevake was dead. The old and dying navigator, scorning land-based custom, and knowing that his navigational techniques would be passed on via Lewis's book, had bidden formal farewell to his family, and simply paddled his canoe out to sea on a voyage of no return.

What does it mean today?
So where do these things fit in, and what relevance do they have for the average yachtie? At the end of the day I'm no different from anybody else. I'm just as happy as the next man or woman to use a GPS and chartplotter, to listen to a weather forecast on my radio and enjoy the benefits of any number of other technological advances that come my way.

But at the same time, even given all this, deep inside me, some other part never quite wants to give up on the senses, on intuition, and those inexplicable urgings to just look around me at the clouds, to feel the wind, to watch the sea, to fit things together and allow the natural rhythms of my world give up their lessons. Most cruising yachtsmen and women I know do the same thing.

How many times do we steer at night by the stars, perhaps moving from one to another as each climbs in the sky? How often are we aware of the boat's motion in relation to the swells it's riding over? How often do clouds give us the first inkling of distant land? How often do overfalls alert us to the fact that the tide has turned and is now running against the prevailing sea and swell? How often do we become sufficiently attuned to our surroundings to gauge our speed through the water without having to look at an instrument?

The examples are many, and in the exercise of these intuitive skills we are in some way the legatees of one of humanity's greatest seafaring sagas - the peopling of the Pacific.

That's why I value the stick chart on my wall.

AUTHORS BIO.
Jack Finlay has been sailing, surfing and diving for most of his life. A retired miscellaneous worker, he has cruised and raced in Australian and western Pacific waters. He lives in the Victorian coastal town of Torquay and sails out of Geelong.