Ancient navigation

[Wotname]

Very nice first post Atomj; welcome aboard CF and thanks

[atoll]

Originally Posted by gjordan

Dr David Lewis, wrote WE THE NAVIGATORS, about Polynesian voyaging. He wrote at least one other book on the same subject. Facinating reading!!! I believe he was aboard the Hokulea on the trip from Hawaii to Tahiti. I was in the Tuamotus when the voyage was nearing Tahiti, and the locals were glued to the radio, for any information about the canoe. It was celebrated in Ahe when the canoe reached Tahiti. My uncle gave me a copy of" We The Navigators" the next Christmas, and I didnt get any sleep that night. I could not put the book down. _______Grant.

i once had the privilidge of meeting dr david lewis in aitutaki , cook islands where we shared the tiny anchorage for a week,facinating guy.

we made him the guest of honour at my 30 th birthday party!

[Neeltje]

... And to think I almost got lost on the ICW...

[GordMay]

Greetings and welcome aboard the CF, atomj.

[atomj]

I read We, the Navigators cover to cover .. more than once. I thought the writing was clear, and I liked his adventurous research style. He seemed open-minded to being convinced by results - the best kind of scientist. Wish I could have met him.

He did sail on the first voyage down to Tahiti on Hokulea. Unfortunately he said he and Mau never really hit it off. I wonder if it was some kind of unintended slight. When Lewis was researching Micronesian navigation he sailed with Hipour of Puluwat, a nearby which was some kind of rival navigation center to Mau Piailug's island of Satawal. When the Satawalese heard that Hipour navigated to Saipan and back on David Lewis' yacht, some of them, including Mau I think, did the same journey in a traditional canoe. Something of an arms race, but with navigation! Ben Finney met Mau and recommended him for the Hokulea navigation project because not long before, the last Polynesian navigator, Tevake, one day said all his goodbyes and just up and sailed off toward the horizon, never to be seen again. Crazy history ... the new and the old crashing into each other.

[MBWhite]

To anyone interested in this topic, BY FAR the best book I have read is
"Finding your way without map or compass" by Harold Gatty.

It was originally titled "Nature is your guide; how to find your way on land and sea by observing nature" so if you have that one it is the same book.


If you are not that aware of Mr. Gatty, he was one of the preeminent navigators back in the 20's and 30's, and was navigator on quite a few record breaking flights back then when it really was a wild frontier in the air.


He was asked to be the navigator for Amelia Earhart IIRC, but was doing something else and had to decline.


In WW2, life rafts for Naval Aviators were issued with a book on emergency navigation, called "The Raft Book", and Mr. Gatty was the author.


This book contains not only that same information, but a ton of other stuff as well including much on the Polynesians, whom he had a particular interest in. One of the things I learned in this book is that the Polynesian route of inhabitating the Pacific islands corresponds to migratory bird routes, and this is supported archeologically as well.

The book is less than $10 new:

http://www.amazon.com/Finding-Your-Way-Without-Compass/dp/048640613X

And the earlier paperback can be found even cheaper.

Google books has a "preview" with quite a bit of the book available:

http://books.google.com/books?id=L3GUuDU0NiQC&pg=PA164&source=gbs_toc_r&ca d=4#v=onepage&q&f=false

I'd suggest anyone interested should at least look at chapter 19, where it also has the best description I have ever read about those crazy looking navigational charts woven with sticks, twine, and sea shells.

Anyway, a good addition to any cruising bookshelf!

Regards to all,

Mark

[FSMike]

The Polynesian Voyaging Society's catamaran Hokule'a has arrived in Key West. This traditional vessel with traditional methods of navigation will continue up the USA east coast, making several stops on the way.
For further information visit hokulea.com.

[barnakiel]

They were not navigators. They were wanderers. Cook was a navigator.

b.

[FSMike]

Well, at the time that Cook was in the Pacific I'd say he was "wandering" because he had no idea what was out there.
On the other hand, the Polynesians and Micronesians were "navigating " to and from locations that they knew existed. Sounds like they were navigating to me.
Why are you so quick to disparage the ideas of different cultures?

[AD28]

The Polynesians colonized the entire Pacific and traveled back and forth upon it, and invented multihulls. Greatest mariners on earth.

Here's some more books about them:
The Barefoot Navigator

The Last Navigator

Hawai'iki Rising


--oh, almost forgot to say: The Polynesians, and the Arabs, have been sailing weather rigs (felucca, crabclaw, sprit rigs) for 3000 years. The westerners/europeans only figured out the Bermudian rig a few hundred years ago...

[jackdale]

Cook utilized a Polynesian navigator.

Tupaia: The Remarkable Story of Captain Cook's Polynesian Navigator by Joan Druett - Books - Random House Books New Zealand

[barnakiel]

Originally Posted by jackdale

Cook utilized a Polynesian navigator.

Tupaia: The Remarkable Story of Captain Cook's Polynesian Navigator by Joan Druett - Books - Random House Books New Zealand

A pilot. Not a navigator. Cook was the navigator. Bligh was the other.

Urban legends among the cruising people are taboos and at times they verge on religion. But legends are just legends.

When Europeans sailed thru Polynesia, Polynesian settlements were inland. Polynesians were not sailors but farmers and warriors. If you travel on a ferry from one bank of the river to the other this does not make you a sailor nor a navigator. If you go fishing it does not make you a navigator either.

I like your use of the word utilised. It partly responds to the question I got asked once: "Why are you so quick to disparage the ideas of different cultures?"

b.

[jackdale]

Originally Posted by barnakiel

A pilot. Not a navigator. Cook was the navigator. Bligh was the other.

Urban legends among the cruising people are taboos and at times they verge on religion. But legends are just legends.

When Europeans sailed thru Polynesia, Polynesian settlements were inland. Polynesians were not sailors but farmers and warriors. If you travel on a ferry from one bank of the river to the other this does not make you a sailor nor a navigator. If you go fishing it does not make you a navigator either.

I like your use of the word utilised. It partly responds to the question I got asked once: "Why are you so quick to disparage the ideas of different cultures?"

b.

Pilots are used in coastal waters.

What is a Marine Pilot - The BC Coast Pilots - BCCP

Tupaia, a gifted linguist, a brilliant orator, and a most devious politician, could aptly be called the Machiavelli of Tahiti. Being highly skilled in astronomy, navigation, and meteorology, and an expert in the geography of the Pacific, he was able to name directional stars and predict landfalls and weather throughout the voyage from Tahiti to Java.

Though he had no previous knowledge of writing or mapmaking, Tupaia drew a chart of the Pacific that encompassed every major group in Polynesia and extended more than 4,000 kilometres from the Marquesas to Rotuma and Fiji. He was also the ship's translator, able to communicate with all the Polynesian people they met. As a man of high social ranking, Tupaia performed as an able intermediary, interpreting local rituals and ceremonies. - See more at: Tupaia: The Remarkable Story of Captain Cook's Polynesian Navigator by Joan Druett - Books - Random House Books New Zealand

[captain58sailin]

I am in the Polynesians were and may still be some of the greatest navigators ever camp.

[Factor]

Originally Posted by barnakiel

They were not navigators. They were wanderers. Cook was a navigator.

b.

Rubbish. Actually try reading "we The Navigators" by Dr David Lewis about how the Polynesians NAVIGATED. As for your contention that they lived inland and didn't navigate, are you just inventing stuff now. How the hell do you think the Maroi got to NZ about 800 years before Lt Cook.

You could also try reading a number of books by Sir Tom Davis, NASA Scientist, Cook Islands Prime minister and author.

for example VAKA ....

This saga of Polynesian voyaging is told by one of its most distinguished sons. Sir Tom Davis, Pa Tuterangi Ariki, KFE, is himself a navigator of some renown as well as a scientist of international repute and a former Prime Minister of the Cook Islands. He gives, a fascinating account of 300 years of voyaging of a single historic canoe by his own forebears as told in their traditions.
Polynesians are people of the outrigger canoe. In the beginning, they sailed from south-east Asia, through the islands of Indonesia and Melanesia. They settled in Tonga and Samoa around 1500 BC and later sailed on to the Cook Islands, the Society Islands, Marquesas, Tuamotu, Easter Island, Hawaii, New Zealand, even to Micronesia. The communication between their communities offered by their swift voyaging canoes was a major reason for the maintenance of basic systems of language, social structure and numerous cultural similarities for more than 3,000 years.

Only Ariki (royal paramount chiefs) commanded the resources to build, maintain and operate large voyaging canoes. Their life was accompanied by cyclical problems of over-population and struggles for power and territory. The technology of Takitumu, the voyaging canoe, which is the focus of this novel, was developed to serve the purposes, whims, intrigues and passions of those who sailed her over a period of 300 years.