Canoes of New Caledonia

Forster's remarks on the double canoes of New Caledonia are as follows: "We were surrounded by about twenty canoes, each of which was provided with sails, and consisted of two hulls, connected by a platform of boards, on which lay a heap of soil and ashes, where the natives kept a constant fire…. They had fires upon every canoe, having laid some stones and ashes on the platform to prevent any accident."

Labillardière wrote in 1793: "The savages came in double canoes…. Their mast was fixed at an equal distance from the two canoes, and towards the fore part of the platform by which they were page 361 page 362 joined together. They are not so skilfully constructed as those of the Friendly Islands, to which they are much inferior in the point of sailing."

Mr. John F. G. Stokes, of Honolulu, tells us in volume 1 of Occasional Papers of the Bishop Museum that Chinese and Japanese sails were trapezoidal and square sails; those of Formosa and the Liu Kiu Islands resemble Chinese sails, as also did those of the Philippines. The sails of the Malayan Archipelago are rectangular or rhomboidal; these are found as far eastward as New Guinea, though modified at various places. Eastward of New Guinea another form appears. "The shape of this," says Mr. Stokes, "may be said to have resembled an attenuated arrow-head with the haft removed and the tips of the thin barbs contracted. The sail was provided with a sprit and a boom of equal length, the sprit being about twice the height of the mast, and having the lower end stepped in a chock on the deck near the foot of the mast. The sailing-canoes were double, and sometimes treble, and carried two or more sails. The shape of this sail held with little variation among the islands to the eastward almost as far as Fiji, and then became merged into the triangular sail of the Fijians…. The New Caledonian sails were simply described as triangular…. To the north and north-west of Fiji, among the Gilbert Islands, Micronesia, and the Marianas, the sails page 363 were more of the lateen type than any others in th6 Pacific, but differed from the lateen in having, besides a sprit or yard, a boom of almost equal length…. These vessels sailed close to the wind, and were shaped bow and stern alike … the outrigger was always kept to windward of the hull when sailing, for if to leeward the weight of the wind might easily force it under water, and a capsize would promptly ensue."

The "arrow-head" sail described above may have been the prototype of the "half-moon" Tahitian sail, and of the Hawaiian form. It is certainly allied to the Santa Cruz form.

The later researches of Mr. Hornell show that the triangular sail of Polynesia is used in certain parts of Indonesia.

Missionary Turner wrote as follows of canoe-making at New Caledonia: "They felled their trees by a slow fire close to the ground; took four days to it. Burned off the branches also, and, if for a canoe or house post, the length of log required. If for a canoe, they cut a hole in the surface of the log, kindled a small fire, and burned down and along to confine the fire to a given spot; and in this way they hollowed out their logs for the largest canoes."