Canoes of the New Hebrides Group

Forster speaks of canoes of the New Hebrides as being small (not exceeding 20 ft. in length), of indifferent workmanship, and without ornament, but provided with an outrigger. Those seen at the island of Tanna, however, seem to have been larger; he describes them as follows: "Their form resembled that of the canoes at the Friendly Islands, but with this difference, that the workmanship was very inferior at Tanna. They have outriggers to all their canoes, and some may contain twenty people. Their sails were low triangular mats, of which the broadest part is uppermost, and the sharp angle below. A long piece of timber, hollowed out in the middle, forms the bottom of the canoe, and upon this one or two planks are fixed, forming the two sides, by means of ropes of the coconut-fibres. These ropes are drawn through the round holes in several knobs on the insides of the planks, by which means the latter are not pierced with a single hole. Their oars are ill-shaped and very clumsily made."

This singular plan of leaving knobs on the inside, through which lashing-cords were passed, was probably allied to the method employed south of New Guinea, and referred to by Wallace.

Speaking of Melanesian canoes, the Rev. G. Brown, author of Melanesians and Polynesians, says: "The canoes generally used by the natives were dug out of soft wood, and had very wide outriggers attached to them. The paddles used were long and pointed. The position of the chief or the most important person in the canoe was in the middle, and not in the front as in Polynesia. Some of their canoes which were used for going long distances were built of soft thin planks sewn together on the inside, and the seams covered with a damp-resisting gum obtained from trees. These canoes were called mon, and had no sails."

"In The Savage South Seas we are told that the largest canoes are made in Malekula, from whence the natives go long voyages to trade with other islands: "The poles supporting the outrigger are run through holes in the side of the canoe, and lashed into position…. On Rano, a little island near Malekula, are three or four very fine specimens of large war-canoes lying on the beach. I mention this, as it has been said by many writers who have visited these parts that the New Hebrides natives never possessed large canoes, whereas these are far larger than any in the Solomons…. The larger is considerably over thirty feet from stem to stern, and the bow rises up to a height of over ten feet." An illustration shows part of one of these canoes. Its sides are built up of planks lashed together. The mode of attaching the float to the booms is peculiar: the end page 358of the boom being placed on the float, a. number of wooden pegs are driven into or inserted in the float on both sides of the boom, and inclined over it so as to enclose it. This method of securing the boom to the float is a remarkably primitive one, and bears a clumsy appearance. The various modes of attaching floats to booms through-out the Oceanic area, and their distribution, is one of some interest.

A small type of New Hebrides canoe depicted in the above work show rude dugouts resembling the disinterred Henley canoe in the Dominion Museum, with inward-trending sides and two outrigger booms lashed to both gunwales.