Chapter I
voyaging practices are frequently inferred2. The
Early European Descriptions of
Oceanic Watercraft:
Iberian Sources and Contexts
By
Carlos Mondragón* and Miguel Luque Talaván**
Early Sources for the History of Oceanic Navigation
When it first became a domain of specialist interest,
research about Oceanic watercraft was directed to issues
of geographical distribution and variety of form, i.e.
styles and construction technologies (Haddon and Hornell
1975, Neyret 1974). Eventually, typologies of form -
which are directly relevant to the history of migration,
movement and cross-cultural borrowings - gave rise to
investigations that focused on function, with special
reference to navigational techniques and maritime
practices in specific localities (e.g. Gladwin 1970, Lewis
1994, Finney 1979, 1996). More recently, approaches to
Pacific navigation have begun to incorporate temporal,
social and ecological factors that are refining our
understanding of long-term processes, transformations
and the broader social significance of watercraft in island
communities (e.g. Munn 1986, Irwin 1992, Kirch 2000,
D’Arcy 2006). However, this accumulated body of
research suffers from an important limitation that is
directly relevant to the long-term historical reconstruction
of Oceanic watercraft and maritime knowledge, namely a
surprising dearth of historical descriptions regarding
indigenous navigation systems and technologies.
The paucity of the historical record has had important
consequences for the way in which traditional navigation
is characterised and understood. An important example of
this can be seen in the elaboration of long-term
chronologies, in which the evolution of pre-modern
voyaging is abstracted from a limited pool of data and
often elides the particular circumstances within which
specific descriptions arose (e.g. the style and biases of
specific authors and contrasting value systems during
cross-cultural encounters, all of which influenced the
manner in which particular descriptions were
constructed)1. For instance, it is well known, and the
seminal overviews proffered by Lewis (1994) and Finney
(1998) bear this out, that two specific regions, namely the
Western Carolines and Tahiti, have become exemplary
*
El Colegio de México, cmondragon@colmex.mx
**
Universidad Complutense de Madrid
1
Inadequate attention to historical context is all the more
evident in this case in light of the fact that it has long been
addressed as a key subject of debate and theoretical elaboration
by social and cultural historians working on a broad range of
topics in Pacific historiography.
9
culture areas from which broader assumptions regarding
particularities arising from authorship also extend to the
presence of those Pacific islanders who became
informants for the early observers of Oceanic
technologies but whose apparent expertise or social
standing may not always have been strictly representative
of the core knowledge practices of their maritime region.
More importantly, there has often been an underlying
instrumentalist bias in the study of Oceanic watercraft
that fails to recognise - and analytically disassociate itself
from - the rationalist, post-Enlightenment prejudices of
early Euro-American travellers whose interests leaned
heavily towards form and function while marginalising
the intricate value systems and local ontologies within
and through which oceangoing vessels were constructed,
used and conceptualised.
One relevant effect of the problems mentioned above is
that the study of ‘navigation’ in the Pacific has often been
rendered as a seemingly universal - by which read
culturally homogeneous - phenomenon of primarily
technical nature that is characterised by ‘localised
manifestations’ into which existing typologies and
evolutionary progressions can be conveniently inserted.
The overall result of these limitations has been the
establishment of a circular logic in which the study of
navigation becomes an exercise in addressing technical
lacunae in the incomplete historical, archaeological and
ethnographic records while effectively marginalising the
multifarious value systems, ecological transformations
and ontological nuances that are inherent to the existence
of watercraft and traditional maritime knowledge (e.g.
Feinberg 1988, Feinberg et al. 1995).
The purpose of the present chapter is to present and
discuss some of the earliest European descriptions of
Oceanic maritime technology while exploring hitherto
overlooked aspects of the context in which these sources
were produced. The sources for these materials are of
2
In the case of the Carolines, a wealth of information was
originally gathered in the early twentieth century by Wilhelm
Müller in Yap and its immediate context (cf. Alkire 1984); this
was later greatly supplemented by the in-depth studies of
Gladwin (1970), Lewis (1994) and, more recently, D’Arcy
(2006), whose cumulative insights allow a highly detailed
reconstruction of navigational systems in Western Micronesia
from the late eighteenth century to the present. Interestingly,
Lewis has observed that, “The most detailed facts about a
Pacific orientation system come from the Caroline Islands in
Micronesia, where it can be studied in operation today.
Unfortunately, no systems of comparable sophistication have
survived, or have even been described, elsewhere in Oceania.”
(1994: 167). By contrast the Tahitian data were first gathered in
the eighteenth century as a result of Cook’s now famous
interactions with Tupaia (cf. Salmond 2004; Di Piazza and
Pearthree 2007), and while they represent one of the most
prolific sources for the analysis and revival of navigation in
Eastern Polynesia, they are nevertheless more fragmented than
is the case with the Carolinian material.
CARLOS MONDRAGÓN AND MIGUEL LUQUE TALAVÁN
Early Modern Iberian authorship - i.e. written by late
Renaissance Portuguese and Spanish observers - and
appear in personal journals and maritime diaries that were
composed between 1567 and 1606 during the course of
three expeditions that sailed to the South Pacific from the
Viceroyalty of Peru. The first two of these voyages were
commanded by Álvaro de Mendaña y Neira, a Spanish
notable who visited the Marquesas and Solomon Islands
in 1568 and 1595, while the third voyage was
commanded by Pedro Fernández de Quirós, a Portuguese
navigator who first visited the South Seas as principal
navigator for the second Mendaña expedition and
subsequently returned to the Solomons, and ventured into
north Vanuatu, while commanding imperial Spain’s last
foray into the South West Pacific3.
However, the principal contribution of this chapter is not
simply to offer a selection of scattered documents for the
historical reconstruction of Oceanic navigation. Rather, it
seeks to emphasise the ambiguous acts, contradictory
motivations and frequently incommensurable value
systems that informed the culture contacts that gave rise
to the first European descriptions of Oceanic watercraft.
In this respect, we hope to contribute to the ongoing
revision and refinement of scholarly understandings and
reconstructions of the Oceanic past, especially in relation
to the period just prior to and following first contacts with
European peoples (cf. Kirch and Rallu 2008).
In the sections that follow, readers will notice an obvious
contrast between the content and length of the first and
second excerpts presented below, and their accompanying
analysis. The first of these texts consists of a succinct
account about a brief crisis that was precipitated by
Spanish seamen after their forceful seizure of an
indigenous vessel on the island of Furona in the central
Solomons (Figure 1). While this excerpt contains no
details regarding the form and function of the vessel in
question it offers a useful point of entry for an exploration
of the possible social worlds, values and acts that
surfaced in respect to Oceanic watercraft during the
earliest encounters between Islanders and Europeans. By
contrast, the second text offers a unique report, rich in
technical detail, of a large voyaging canoe that was
sighted in the South East Solomons by the Quirós
expedition of 1606. In this case the meticulous attention
given to the form and features of the indigenous vessel
provides a singular opportunity to pinpoint its cultural
3
These voyages are well known to Pacific historians and have
been the subject of numerous studies (e.g. Jack-Hinton 1969,
Hilder 1980, Spate 1979, Baert 1999, Luque and Mondragón
2005, Maroto Camino 2005, Angleviel et al. 2007); however,
the set of excerpts offered below represent our particular
selection, transcription and translation of various original
manuscripts that are kept in Spanish and Portuguese archives
and had been previously published in English but suffer from
inadequate translation and have generally been inaccessible or
marginalised in previous research about the early history of
European culture contact in the Pacific.
10
origins, which, as we will argue, may indicate the
existence of ongoing contact between some of the
Solomons outliers and far-flung maritime communities of
Western Polynesian extraction during the early
seventeenth century.
Of Pig Tusks and Canoes
In early 1568, the Spanish aristocrat Álvaro de Mendaña
y Neira spent several months exploring a previously
unknown archipelago in the South West Pacific that he
named the Solomon Islands4. The impressions of the
Spanish seamen about the people and landscapes of the
region which they examined were registered in several
accounts, the longest and most widely known of which
was penned by Hernán Gallego, who was the pilot major
(piloto mayor, chief navigator) of the expedition5.
In his chronicle Gallego describes various encounters
with coastal communities from Santa Isabel and the
surrounding areas. One of these contacts took place in
May of 1568 on Furona, named San Jorge by the
Spaniards, a large island located near the south west tip of
Santa Isabel: […] at a distance of five leagues there was
an island which the naturals [i.e. indigenes] call
Varnesta, and its chief, Benebonafa. This island creates a
channel with Santa Isabel […] running from Southeast to
Northwest, in which there is a village with over three
hundred dwellings. There were many pearls in this island,
and the Indians do not give them much heed; they offered
them all as ransom for a canoe [canoa in the original]
which had been taken from them; they also brought some
4
The name was in lyrical reference to the fabled land of Ophyr,
from which King Solomon extracted his legendary trove of
treasure - the equivalent of which Mendaña hoped to find and
extract from the Austral regions of the Pacific.
5
The best known version of Gallego’s personal account - whose
authorship is commonly attributed by mistake to Mendaña or
Quirós - is a manuscript version that was transcribed in the
eighteenth century from the original documents written by
Gallego, which are now lost. This eighteenth century transcript
is kept at the Real Biblioteca del Palacio Real in Madrid and
provided the basis for subsequent lengthy and often incomplete
versions of Gallego’s chronicle that were put together with the
account of Quirós’s 1606 voyage. This compilation was
eventually published as a single set of documents, see Justo
Zaragoza (1876-1880), Historia del descubrimiento de las
regiones austriales, hecho por el general Pedro Fernández de
Quirós, 2 vols., Madrid: Imprenta de Manuel G. Hernández (a
single volume facsimile of Zaragoza’s edition was recently
published under the imprint of José Manuel Gómez-Tabanera,
Madrid: Dove, 2000); in turn, the Zaragoza edition served as the
basis for the English translation by Markham etc., but was
revised, expanded and published as Pedro Fernández de Quirós
(2000), Descubrimiento de las regiones austriales, with an
introduction by Roberto Ferrando Pérez, Madrid: Dastin
(Colección Crónicas de América 12). The materials from
Gallego which we present in this section have been quoted and
translated directly from the eighteenth century manuscript kept
at the Palacio Real in Madrid.
 EARLY EUROPEAN DESCRIPTIONS OF OCEANIC WATERCRAFT: IBERIAN SOURCES AND CONTEXTS
teeth, which seemed to be from a great animal; these they
valued greatly, and said [to the Spanish] to take them and
go back to their canoe [i.e. the patache, or launch, in
which the Iberians had arrived] (Quirós 2000: 48-49).
Gallego provides no further details about the ‘canoe’, nor
about the inhabitants of Furona and the circumstances
under which their vessel was seized. However, in the
Figure 1: Island Melanesia, with the location of Taumako and the Central Solomons.
In view of current demographic and settlement patterns, it
is plausible to imagine that the Furonese may have
belonged to an ancestral Bughotu language community
with relations to south and central Santa Isabel6. The
complicated history of internal migrations and forced
displacement in this region makes it impossible to
ascertain the precise origin of the coastal people who
engaged with the Mendaña expedition on Furona.
(According to at least one written account from the first
period of sustained contact with Euro-American traders
and missionaries, by the mid-nineteenth century “the
infertile and deserted island of San Jorge” was no longer
inhabited; cf. Jackson 1975: 69). However, the
6
Geoffrey White believes that the very first islanders with
whom the Spaniards encountered, on the east coast of Santa
Isabel, belonged to the Cheke Holo family of language groups.
At present, the Cheke Holo represent the majority language
group in Furona itself, apparently as a result of recent migration,
and are also present along much of central and north east Santa
Isabel. Cheke Holo is subdivided into two groups, Maringe and
Hograno, which are apparently the language of choice for trade
in Santa Isabel and neighbouring islands; however, Cheke Holo
differs markedly from Bughotu, and it is this division that
currently marks the great divide between North West and South-
Central Solomons languages, cf. White (1991), Gordon (2005).
11
absence of technical information regarding this ‘canoe’ it
is worth pursuing the available historical, linguistic and
ethnographic data about the region in which Furona is
situated with a view to exploring some of the possible
values and motivations that may have guided the actions
of the ancestral inhabitants of this community during their
encounter with the Iberian seamen.
contemporary social map of Santa Isabel and Furona - as
reconstructed with particular reference to the
anthropological writings of Geoffrey White - indicates
that its pre-European coastal peoples inhabited a highly
diverse sociolinguistic environment that was rich in inter-
island exchange, trading and raiding activities7.
7
A present-day snapshot of the linguistic differentiation that has
characterised this region was produced by White during his first
approach to Santa Isabel, in 1975, and is worth quoting here at
length: “The sparse population [of Santa Isabel] belied the
distance traveled in terms of linguistic diversity. Between our
departure point in Bughotu [on the south east corner of Santa
Isabel] and our subsequent arrival in Buala, thirty-five miles up
the coast, we would traverse regions of three distinct language
groups (of four spoken on the island); Bughotu spoken by
almost one-fourth of the island’s population; Gao by a
diminishing six percent; and Cheke Holo by over half of the
population […]. Furthermore, we crossed a major linguistic
divide, separating two language families located in the central
and western parts of the Solomons archipelago. The Bughotu
language is similar to languages spoken in Nggela,
Guadalcanal and Malaita; whereas Cheke Holo, Gao and the
fourth Isabel language, Zabana or Kia, are more closely
associated with languages in the western Solomons” (White
1991: 23).
CARLOS MONDRAGÓN AND MIGUEL LUQUE TALAVÁN
Importantly, these three forms of interpenetration would
have relied on specific types of watercraft, which were
likely to have been a special source of wealth and value.
As White has observed, in reference to the ‘war canoes’
that were specific to headhunting expeditions: “In this
complex of trading, raiding and ritualizing, the canoe
was a highly strategic device that also acquired
considerable symbolic significance. Canoes allowed the
most intrepid raiders to travel across long distances, and
so move anonymously to seek wealth outside the
encumbrances of local networks of obligation or intrigue.
The large war canoes were both a means to wealth and a
symbol of power, particularly spiritual power that could
be evoked and enhanced through ritual propitiation”
(1991: 87).
In view of the need to put values and processes in proper
context, it is relevant to point out that the ‘considerable
symbolic significance’ of ‘war canoes’, as described
above by White, is a phenomenon that was exacerbated as
a result of the increased cycles of ritualised violence that
followed the first long-term Euro-American intrusions
into the central Solomons during the nineteenth century
(cf. Bennett 1987: 33-38). Nevertheless, the point here is
to register the intense and ongoing ties of
interdependency that have bound coastal societies across
the Solomons since well before the sixteenth century, and
that in the past these connections were sustained by a
wide range of indigenous vessels. As is the case in other
Pacific contexts, these vessels represented objects of great
value, not only as a result of the significant effort and
time that were invested in their construction, use and
maintenance, but also in terms of the broader social,
ecological and ritual associations that they embodied.
That the ancestral inhabitants of Furona attributed
significant value to the ‘canoe’ that Gallego mentions is
not at issue. This is despite the fact that the precise nature
of the vessel - was it a simplified outrigger, a dugout
employed to ferry cargo, or a sophisticated ‘war’ canoe of
the kind described by White? - will remain forever
unknown. However, the ritualised exchange by which its
‘ransom’ was secured invites additional commentary.
The key act in the exchange that took place on Furona
was not the offering of pearls, whose value to the
intruders may have been evident to the islanders from the
outset, so much as the ‘teeth’ from ‘some large animal’
which were eventually brought out and offered to the
Spaniards8. Whatever the particular circumstance that led
to the offering, its main purpose appears to have been
twofold, if one is to go by Gallego’s account: on one
hand, it clearly aimed to propitiate the Spaniards into
restoring the vessel that they had forcibly taken, while on
8
“It is likely that first encounters with European explorers
produced anomie, in which conventions were quickly suspended
or abandoned due to mutual incomprehension.” Meleisea and
Schoeffel (1997:130).
12
the other appealing to those powerful, incomprehensible
and unpredictable foreigners to return to their boat and
depart.
As regards the ‘teeth’ on offer, they appear to have been
circled pig tusks of the large spiral shape that represent an
object of considerable value within the broader regimes
of prestige and ritualised exchange that underpin the
graded societies of the Solomons and Vanuatu9. It is well
known that pig’s tusks function as markers of rank and
power, which in the Solomons, and parts of North and
Central Vanuatu is often related to the notion of
generative potency, or mana10. But whatever the
particular forms of social value that they carry, the point
is that circled tusks are embodiments of social relations
and power. Hence, whether the ‘teeth’ of ‘some great
animal’ that were presented to the European seamen were
pig’s tusks of the full-circle variety or belonged to
another large animal such as a whale, they were clearly
artefacts of considerable exchange value and their
unilateral presentation constituted a significant ritual
concession.
While the specific rationale that led to the offering of the
‘teeth’ must necessarily remain obscure, one further
observation regarding the life-worlds of sixteenth-century
Furona may help to shed light on the nature of indigenous
maritime activity, and the form in which the islanders
9
The importance of pigs across Melanesia is well known and
has been elaborated upon in numerous studies (e.g. Jolly 1984;
Rodman 1996). Nevertheless it is worth noting that the region
where the above contacts took place offers one of the highest
levels of ritual elaboration in respect of pig exchange and the
controlled flow and display of spiral tusks. What William
Rodman has written about Vanuatu can equally be applied to the
central Solomons: “[…] tusks are a product of culture rather
than a given of nature. The magnificent tusked boars used in
high-ranking and other ceremonies […] would not develop their
tusks without human intervention in natural biological
processes. […] tusks are a sign of the leader and a substance on
which leadership is based. Europeans tend to think of the value
of a pig as residing exclusively in its flesh; pigs are walking
pork chops, protein on the hoof. Ni-Vanuatu see things
differently. Most would tell you that, indeed, pigs are good to
eat, but they also would say that the most valuable pigs are not
the biggest, but those with the best-developed tusks. […] It takes
seven or eight years for a boar to develop full-circle tusks.
Relatively few pigs attain this ideal” (Rodman 1996: 160).
10
Mana is a pan-Oceanic term that is extant in the Bughotu
language of central and south east Santa Isabel, although the
neighbouring Cheke Holo languages of central Santa Isabel use
a different term, nolaghi, to denote the same phenomenon
(White 1991: 38). This form of productive capacity is primarily
related to successful horticultural production and the nurture of
immediate kin, but as White explains, “Beyond the narrow
functionality of bountiful gardens and the like, maintaining a
ritual dialogue with ancestral spirits was the primary means of
acquiring spiritual power (nolaghi, mana) - the ultimate source
of personal strength, well-being and success in wordly affairs”.
(ibid.). For further discussions about mana see Keesing (1984),
Shore (1989), Kirch and Green (2000).
 EARLY EUROPEAN DESCRIPTIONS OF OCEANIC WATERCRAFT: IBERIAN SOURCES AND CONTEXTS
chose to react (i.e. ritualised exchange) when faced with
unprecedented intruders.
In respect to watercraft, it is possible to reflect on the fact
that the Furonese may initially have associated the
Spanish seamen with the Polynesian world, whose
oceangoing vessels and regular approximation routes to
Santa Isabel and Furona mirrored those of the
Spaniards11. In effect, the size and form of the Spanish
caravels may not have been completely alien to the
Furonese, given the broad comparisons that could be
drawn between a European caravel and a Polynesian
waka - both being large oceangoing vessels equipped
with sails and rigging. Despite the lack of hard evidence
to back such a claim, this possibility is quite plausible in
view of the links that bound Furona to the rest of the
central Solomons and beyond. Four hundred years ago the
peoples of the south and central Solomon archipelago
were in regular contact with several Polynesian Outliers,
and perhaps even some parts of Western Polynesia
(Tonga, Samoa and Fiji, whose inhabitants had raided or
colonized islands such as Anuta, Tikopia, Taumako,
Bellona and Rennell). Hence, the Furonese may have had
at least some previous experience of fair-skinned
seafaring peoples and would therefore not have found the
European intruders to be completely unfamiliar.
Moreover, prior to their arrival in the Solomons,
Mendaña’s ships had stumbled into Ontong Java, 250
kilometers to the north of Santa Isabel. According to
Gallego’s account, the Polynesian inhabitants of Ontong
pointed out the route that Mendaña should take in order to
arrive at the Melanesian archipelago. Thus, in their
approach to the east coast of Santa Isabel the Spanish
ships first appeared to local inhabitants as large
oceangoing vessels travelling precisely along that route.
Although the implications of this scenario must
necessarily remain speculative, they remind us that there
are relevant alternatives to the tired but long-lived
theories that hold that Pacific Islanders in first contact
situations inevitably held European strangers to be
supernatural and superhuman beings. Elsewhere I have
argued that it is necessary to make a distinction between
the idea that European intruders in early encounters were
perceived as gods or ancestral beings, that is, spirits of a
deific and superhuman nature (Mondragon 2006). This
idea finds its origins in a centuries-old Euro-American
presumption which holds that the sudden appearance of a
‘superior’ race amongst a technologically and politically
‘backward people inevitably provokes the naïve
11
In turn, it is likely that the people Furona had advanced
notice, by way of those of their Cheke Holo and Bughotu-
speaking neighbors who first encountered and had to deal with
the Spaniards many weeks prior to their arrival on Furona, of
the presence of aggressive and unpredictable pale seamen
coming from Ontong Java. In response to the worrisome actions
of the Spaniards along the east coast of Santa Isabel, where they
had murdered several islanders and plundered some villages.
13
superstitious amazement of primitives. Although this
presumption has gradually been discarded from the
scholarly literature on ‘first contacts’, it continues to
inform popular ideas about civilisation and backwardness,
particularly in cultural regions that are characterised by
small-scale agrarian societies, such as is the case for
much of rural Melanesia12.
At the Crossroads of the South West Pacific:
Taumako and the Western Polynesian World
One of the most peculiar canoe types found in the Pacific
is known as ‘canoe of Lata’, or te puke in the language of
the tiny Polynesian Outlier of Taumako, the largest of the
Duff Islands in the South East Solomons. For a long time,
perhaps centuries, the inhabitants of Taumako have been
the exclusive guardians of the knowledge practices
involved in constructing te puke. According to a recent
study, “[m]ost canoes of this description have been
constructed on Taumako on order from other
communities in the Santa Cruz Islands and elsewhere in
the Solomons” (Feinberg and George 2007: 3)13.
The outstanding features of the te puke are its unique
submerged hull and ‘slender foil’ or ‘delta wing’ sail,14 a
recent description of which will serve as a contrast for the
historical excerpt that follows: “Lata, a widely recognized
Polynesian culture hero, is said to be the first person to
build and sail a voyaging canoe of the type known as te
puke. These are built with a roundish hull that is
hollowed out from a single log. The top is boarded over
and made watertight, except for the area enclosed by a
riser box, which provides access for bailing and stowage
of nonwater-sensitive cargo and ballast. When under sail
the hulls are almost entirely submerged. The crew stays
on top of one of two platforms that straddle the riser box
and outrigger beams. Although there is one outrigger
float (ama) per canoe, it may be fashioned from as many
as four float timbers lashed together, depending on how
12
The relevant point here is that even though these associations
had some basis in certain encounters (e.g. some first encounters
documented during the 1930s in the highlands of Papua-New
Guinea (Connolly and Anderson 1987, Edward L. Schieffelin
and Crittenden 1991), they did not necessarily erode local
peoples’ ability to perceive themselves as capable agents
throughout the course of any given encounter.
13
Exclusivity of construction and distribution/exchange rights
for particular canoe types is not uncommon and occurs
frequently in this region; e.g. Judith Bennett has observed that
“[b]efore regular contact with Europeans, the inhabitants of
Santa Ana, Santa Catalina, and the Surville Peninsula of San
Cristobal [Makira] had obtained their large plank-and-rib
canoes from other areas. Because the large canoes were
expensive to purchase, smaller outriggers were made for
everyday use” (Bennett 1987: 37).
14
Until recently this sail type was commonly known as a “crab
claw” sail; however, the term “crab claw” denotes an
asymmetrical shape, while recent research has determined that
the delta wing model is in fact symmetrical (Mimi George, pers.
com.).
CARLOS MONDRAGÓN AND MIGUEL LUQUE TALAVÁN

much flotation is needed. The crew situates itself on
whichever platform is most appropriate for sea conditions
and the trim of the cargo. The predominantly submarine
hull is subject to less surface tension and wave action
than more conventional hulls, making them considerably
faster. To the best of our knowledge, this hull design is
unique to Taumako vessels. Like the vessels of the central
outlier atolls, as well as some from the Polynesian
heartland (e.g. the Tongan kalia), te puke are equipped
with shelters on the outrigger platform. [Furthermore]
Taumako sails are made from panels of plaited pandanus
mats, sewn together vertically to form a graceful, slender
foil, or delta wing shape. […] The design resembles
‘crab-claw’ sails of Tahiti and Hawai’i as depicted by
artists on early European voyages of exploration, but its
symmetrical shape, with long, slender, arcing wingtips,
has few parallels in Oceania” (Feinberg and George
2007: 2-3)15.
construction and navigation in Taumako. The insights
gleaned from these efforts appear to substantiate the
possibility that te puke have been present in Taumako for
the past two or three centuries17. However, the evidence
collected thus far does not allow for a detailed
reconstruction of the long-term evolution of canoe types
in this locality. Moreover, as is the case with most other
voyaging revival processes in the Pacific, contemporary
claims regarding the exclusivity, uniqueness and antiquity
of local knowledge must be approached with a critical
view to actual historical evidence (cf. Finney 2003). In
the case of the South East Solomons, these claims, and
the scanty evidence available for the reconstruction of
long-term trends in maritime knowledge practices
underscores the fact that if ever there were a specific
community for which it would be fortunate to possess
accurate pre-modern data points in respect of canoe
design, it would have to be Taumako.

Further information documented by George in As it happens, the most significant description of an

collaboration with various local knowledge experts,16 Oceanic vessel to arise from the early Iberian exploration
suggests that the inhabitants of Taumako asserted a of the Pacific was produced four centuries ago in this
degree of control over the manufacture and dissemination very island, but has not hitherto been the subject of
of te puke-type watercraft across their local region in the specific analysis. It is to this unique historical description
recent past (Figure 2). Whether this has been a centuries- that we now turn.
old practice is impossible to tell, but it is apparent that
they currently perceive themselves to be the exclusive
holders of the technical expertise and social values
associated with the construction and use of this canoe
type.

The fact that the hull shape and sails of the te puke may
be unique to Taumako has various implications for the
history of maritime technology in the South East
Solomons and beyond (Figure 3). On one hand, the
obvious specificity of a given design invites questions
regarding the length of time that it may take for particular
elements to arise in relation to a canoe type, and
subsequently change to the point where cumulative
modifications give rise to a distinctively new kind of
vessel. On the other hand, there is the matter of local
knowledge, the evolution of inter-island networks and
regional patterns of technological borrowing. How long
have the submarine hull design and crab-claw sail of te
puke been present in Taumako? More broadly, what can
they tell us about the history and geography of cultural
exchange in this region that sits uneasily at the frontier of
several paradigmatic culture areas - namely Island Figure 2: Two views of contemporary Taumako te puke.
Melanesia, Western Polynesia and Micronesia? Both images by courtesy and © Marianne George and
The Vaka Taumako Project.
In recent years there has been a small but valuable
17
research initiative dedicated to understanding and This research has been informed by the significant field
supporting the building practices and cultural values experience in the South East Solomons of the anthropologist
associated with the indigenous revival of te puke Richard Feinberg, and his recent fellow researcher Marianne
George, who currently heads an ambitious recovery and revival
effort known as the Vaka Taumako Project (cf. Feinberg 1995,
15
I am especially grateful to Rick Feinberg and Marianne Feinberg and George 2007, see also the VTP website,
George for allowing me to quote from this advanced draft of www.vaka.org, which constitutes the largest concentrated
their ongoing work on the te puke of Taumako. database on te puke design, building practices and cultural
16
Especially the te aliki Kaveia (Mimi George, pers. comm.). values).

14
 EARLY EUROPEAN DESCRIPTIONS OF OCEANIC WATERCRAFT: IBERIAN SOURCES AND CONTEXTS

Figure 3: Idealised rendering of a Taumako te puke in motion. Note the submerged hull in contrast
with the ama (outrigger float). Image courtesy and © Herb Kawainui Kane.

In April of 1606, three ships commanded by Pedro
Fernández de Quirós unexpectedly came upon the Duff
Islands while vainly searching for the large island of
Santa Cruz (Ndeni), which Quirós had previously visited
when acting as chief pilot for Mendaña’s second
Solomons expedition in 1595. Seeing that Taumako was
the closest and largest of the visible islands in this group,
the Portuguese navigator ordered his men to drop anchor
near to what he described as a “village on a small reef
outcropping” (Quirós 2000: 235), which might perhaps
correspond to the present-day small island of Tahua,
which lies within the barrier reef off the South East coast
of Taumako (Figure 4, 5).

Figure 4: “Sketch of the Duff’s Groupe”, published in A Missionary Voyage to the Southern Pacific
Ocean, Performed in the Years 1796, 1797, 1798 in the Ship Duff commanded by Capt. James Wilson
(London: T. Chapman, 1799).

15
CARLOS MONDRAGÓN AND MIGUEL LUQUE TALAVÁN
The ensuing cultural encounter with the local islanders
lasted nine days. During this time the Iberians and the
people of Taumako - represented by a chief identified as
both Tumai and Falique, this last most likely being a
corruption of the title ta ariki - played out a series of
tense and asymmetric exchanges that were dominated by
the Europeans’ coercive attempts at replenishing their
onboard stocks of food and fresh water18. Eventually, to
the islanders’ relief - as perceived quite explicitly by at
least two of the Spanish seamen, namely Prado and
Bermúdez - the Iberians departed after having secured
their desired provisions, in addition to four Taumako boys
who were kidnapped with the intention of eventual
display at the imperial court in Madrid19.
Setting aside the violence and repercussions of the
unsettling presence of the Iberians on Taumako, the
length of time during which they remained in close
proximity to the local community - approximately twelve
days - prompted some of the European seamen to produce
extensive and detailed descriptions about the indigenous
technology and material culture which they were able to
observe.
Figure 5: Contemporary topographic chart of
Taumako.
18
Quirós had been navigating blindly on dwindling rations
through the Eastern and Central Pacific for several months, and
by the time they disembarked in Taumako his crew were in no
mood for exercising politesse with savages. See Luque and
Mondragón (2005) for a detailed description of the criteria that
led Quirós to trace the route which eventually took his ships to
the Duff Islands.
19
Two of the prisoners quickly jumped ship within sight of
Taumako, while a third escaped a few days later when the
Spaniards sailed past Tikopia; a fourth Taumako youth
remained aboard, was baptized as Pedro, and made it as far as
Mexico City before succumbing to death.
16
Specifically, two important accounts of the encounter on
Taumako have survived: they are Quirós’s official
logbook, which was actually written and kept by his
personal scribe, Luis de Belmonte Bermúdez, and the
diary of Don Diego de Prado y Tovar, a Spanish aristocrat
and military engineer whose artistic skill and trained eye
gave rise to the following exceptional description, which
we quote in full, with lengthy comments in respect of the
measures that Prado employed and their contemporary
metric conversions: “In this village we found some
embarkations capable [of carrying up to] sixty persons,
with which they navigate, very different they are from
those of Europe and each one of them demands as much
sail as one of our own vessels; they are [built] as follows:
resting atop two thick logs [vigas, understood here as the
two tree trunks that constitute the basic double hull
catamaran structure of the vessel that he is describing],
each log has a length of sixty feet [“pies”, approx. 16.68
mts] and a perimeter of ten and eight, by which I mean
the circumference of each log [i.e. 18 feet, approx. 5 to
5.82 mts. in circumference]; above these [logs] they
construct the body of their embarkation, which is made
up of twelve beams [“latas” in the original Spanish,
meaning slender beams],20 each of which lies [rests
horizontally] from one log to the other, and each of which
is thirty feet long and is bound to each of the two logs;
each beam has a circumference of half a length [“media
vara”, half a Castilian yard, approx. 417 mm]; above the
beams they place an arched structure [made up of] thirty
sturdy wooden poles, each of which is one palm’s length
in thickness [approximately one hand’s length], such that
they resemble a half-dome which is held together by eight
poles that run horizontally from one side to the other [of
the structure] and [each of] whose thickness and
circumference measure one half of one foot [“medio pie”
= 139 mm] and one foot and a half [417 mm] respectively
[Prado refers to the circumference and diameter of the
eight poles that act as roof beams holding the domed
structure together]; these are tied with strong cords made
from the fibres of the coconut shell; this arch is around
ten and six [16] feet high; and above this domed structure
they place a further quantity of slender sticks which are
configured into a square shape that makes up the upper
deck [“combés”] of the vessel on which those who must
tend to the sail can travel. The floor [of this upper deck]
is constituted by a strong layer of cane [Prado probably
refers to bamboo] which is very well fastened and
fashioned with a trapdoor by which people can enter and
depart [from the inside of the arched structure below]; in
the middle of the arched structure they place a further
[smaller] table made of poles in the manner of planking,
upon which they carry their food and drink, [this last of]
which they decant inside hollow canes, each of which
carries up to half a sack of liquid [“arroba”, the official
20
At this time lata (also bao) was equivalent to an English
“beam”, according to O’Scanlan de Lacy 2003: 333, and
Appendix: 66) and the Vocabulario Maritimo of 1722.
 EARLY EUROPEAN DESCRIPTIONS OF OCEANIC WATERCRAFT: IBERIAN SOURCES AND CONTEXTS
measure of the sacks in which cereals had to be
transported to market in late sixteenth century Spain] and
is very well fastened and placed on the beams which are
in the water [Prado refers to the “latas”, or beams that
lie horizontally across the two main trunks or hulls and
make up the basic deck of the vessel], to which stones are
also fastened in order to act as ballast; furthermore, from
the logs in the water [the two outrigger trunks] long poles
emerge which reach up the sides of the vessel, they being
higher [than the floor of the upper deck] by one length
[“vara”, or vara Castellana, approx. 835mm], and very
well fastened, and upon these [the poles that stick up
slightly from the upper deck] they secure their parapet
from strong canes [Prado seems to refer to a reinforced
handrail made of several long poles whose lower ends
are fastened to the two hulls and whose upper ends are
secured to the upper deck, and further reinforced with
horizontal bamboo poles in order to form a guardrail
which acts as protection for those standing on the
uppermost part of the vessel]. The mast is made of three
thick bambous, with a pulley and yard, and it is placed in
the middle of the embarkation, which demands as much
sail as our own vessel. On the extreme end of the [two
hulls] trunks, the ends that lie on the poop of the vessel,
they have high seats with two big oars placed above them,
with which they govern the vessel. With the wind coming
from the poop they must probably navigate well: if it is
from the side they are worthless. They [the vessels]
demand little water [i.e. not much depth in order to float]
and have no need of a launch with which to disembark.
Their bread is sahagu [sago], and further ahead [I]
describe the manner of its manufacture. To the sides of
the logs [hulls] they have some sticks and seats from
which they row with canalets, which are a sort of small
oar in the shape of paddles with which one can strike
small balls; each is two lengths tall [“dos varas de
largo”, approx. 1.67 mts] and is the same as those that
are used all around these lands, from Borneo to the
Malacas. (Prado, translated from old Castilian, as
transcribed and presented in the appendix to Hilder
1990: 209)21.
21
In the interest of presenting the original Spanish version of
Prado’s description to as wide a specialist audience as possible,
we offer it herewith: “En este pueblo hallamos unas
embarcaciones capaces de sesenta personas con que ellos
navegan, muy diferentes de las de Europa y demandaban cada
una de ellas tanta vela como nuestro navio; que son de la
manera siguiente: sobre dos vigas gruesas, por dentro de cada
una tiene de largo sesenta pies y de grueso diez y ocho pies,
digo de cirumferencia cada una; sobre estas arman su
embarcación, esto es doce latas atravesadas de una viga a la
otra, que cada una es larga treinta pies y encajadas en las
dichas vigas; y tiene de grueso cada una media vara; sobre
estas vigas ponen unos arcos de palo grueso de un palmo cada
uno y son treinta, a manera de una bóveda, con ocho palos
atravesados por los lados, de medio pie de grueso y pie y medio
de ancho; atados con fuertes cordeles de estopa de cáscaras de
cocos; estos arcos son altos como diez y seis pies cada uno;
sobre esta bóveda tienden otros palos más delgados
17
The exceptional detail that Prado provided in respect of
the form, dimensions and individual components of the
vessel that he observed invites detailed commentary, not
least because it appears to point to a type of voyaging
canoe that was rather different from the te puke, but no
less surprising in terms of its possible origins and
significance for ancestral connections and technological
borrowings across the Solomons outliers during the early
seventeenth century.
First, however, it is necessary to clarify one of the
greatest difficulties posed by Prado’s text, which arises
from his peculiar style of technical description (for which
see Mondragón 2007) and, most importantly, the criteria
for the measurements that he employed. In effect, the
size, shape and form (lengths and widths) that appear in
the above excerpt were proper to a very specific moment
in the historical record, namely the years 1590 to 1613,
during which Imperial Spain first began to impose an
official standard for measurements on all of the shipyards
located within the Spanish peninsular territories. These
measures applied equally to the written description of
watercraft, and they appear to be the ones that Prado
used, which is not surprising given the fact that he was
trained as a military engineer, was clearly fastidious when
it came to technical drawings and descriptions, and was
very likely aware of the official standards for
measurement required by the Spanish Crown.
Prior to 1590 the two most common standards of
measurement employed in the shipyards of Renaissance
Spain hailed from the northern and southern coastal
regions of the Iberian Peninsula. The northern shipyards,
which lay along the coastline facing the Bay of Biscay,
functioned according to the so-called Basque-Cantabrian
atravesados en cuadrado que hacen el combez del navío donde
va la gente que gobierne la vela. El suelo es una estera fuerte de
cañas muy bien hecha con su postigo para entrar y salir la
gente; en el medio de estos arcos tienen otros palos a modo de
tablado donde llevan las comidas y bebida, la cual llevan
dentro de cañutos que cada cañuto cabe media arroba de agua,
muy bien atados y arrumados en las latas que están en el agua,
atan algunas piedras para lastre; donde las latas de la agua
salen unos palos hasta el combés, una vara mas altos, muy bien
atados y en ellos arman su parapeto fuerte de cañas fuertes. El
mástil es de tres cañas muy gruesas, con su polea y verga de
caña, puesto en el medio de dicha embarcación que demanda
tanta vela como nuestro navio. En los estremos de las vigas de
la popa tienen asientos altos, con dos remos grandes, puestos en
ellos, con que gobiernan el navio. Con el viento en popa
caminarán bien; si es del lado a la bolina no valen nada.
Demandan poco agua y así no han menester batel para
desembarcarse. El pan de éstos es sahagu, como adelante se
dirá de la manera que lo hacen. Por los lados de las vigas
tienen unos filaretes y asientos de donde reman con sus
canaletes, que son una suerte de remos hechos como palas de
jugar a la pelota pequeña, de dos varas de largo cada una y de
éstos usan por toda esta tierra hasta el Borneo e islas Malacas”
(Prado, in Hilder 1990: 209).
CARLOS MONDRAGÓN AND MIGUEL LUQUE TALAVÁN

system of measurement, which was the preferred system with the Seville-Guadalquivir (Atlantic) coasts and the
of measurement within the Spanish court prior to 1590. broader maritime region of Andalucia.
Those that were common to the south were associated

Figure 6: Tongan kalia; note the double catamaran, the lower deck with shelter and the upper deck with reinforced
railing, which is evocative of the vessel in Prado’s description. Image by courtesy and © Herb Kawainui Kane.

Figure 7: Earliest European rendering of a tongiaki, as depicted by Schouten and Le Maire in 1616. Note the long
steering paddle being handled from the poop deck.

18
 EARLY EUROPEAN DESCRIPTIONS OF OCEANIC WATERCRAFT: IBERIAN SOURCES AND CONTEXTS
The growing confusion produced by these disparate
systems in the context of imperial overseas expansion and
increasing production of ships in late Renaissance Spain
was first tackled in 1590, when King Phillip II attempted
to unify Peninsular standards of measurement in his
“Royal Decree [cédula real] of August 20, 1590”22.
While it is beyond the scope of this contribution to
provide detailed commentary regarding the contents of
the Decree of 1590, several different historians have
managed to accurately summarise the cédula’s
complicated and multifarious conversions - which are
essential to deciphering Prado’s description - as follows:
• Pie de burgos [one foot]23 = 0.2786m / 278mm.
• Codo de ribera [one elbow’s length]24 =
0.5747m
• Vara castellana [one Castilian length] = 8359m /
835mm
• Toneladas [one tonne] = 1.518 m3.25
When these measures are applied to Prado’s 1606 text, it
emerges that the dimensions of the vessel that he
described are quite different from those of a Taumako te
puke. Indeed, the most significant feature in the
watercraft depicted by Prado, which is made clear from
the outset of his text and determines the basic nature of
the vessel in question, are the two ‘thick beams’ [vigas
gruesas] that he identifies as constituting the main body
and foundation for the rest of the features that they
support - i.e. the lower deck, arched shelter, upper deck,
mast. In effect, these ‘beams’ represent the structure of a
double hulled vaka which, we would argue, appears to be
most closely related to the vakalua (double hulled vaka)
common to Tonga or the Solomons atoll of Sikaiana,
whose presence in contemporary Taumako oral narratives
points to the existence of past exchanges between
Sikaiana and Taumako in direct reference to maritime
knowedge and canoe building.26 Compelling as the
Sikaiana data may be, however, on the basis of existing
data we would posit that the double-hulled canoe
22
This decree is known as the Cédula Real de 20 de agosto de
1590, and is discussed and reproduced in full in Casado Soto
(1988: 84-94).
23
So called because it was a close adaptation of the pre-existing
Cantabrian (hence Burgos) “foot”.
24
So called because it was also adapted from existing
Cantabrian measures, hence the reference to ribera, or riverine
deltas, which is a common term for bays and inlets along the
North West Spanish coast (Cantabria, Asturias, Galicia).
25
See especially Casado Soto (1988: 58-72), and Rubio Serrano
(1991: 93-96; 1998: 77), cf. also Veitia Linage (1672: 170, 182).
26
Specifically, Mimi George reports that “te aliki Kaveia and
other elderly people from Taumako (mostly deceased in recent
years) who have sailed extensively on te puke understood from
their teachers that te puke design was an innovative
improvement on vakalua […] that preceeded Lata’s invention of
te puke.” (George, pers.com.).
19
described by Prado more closely resembles a Tongan
kalia such as the one depicted in a recent idealised
rendering by Herb Kane (Figure 6).
The proximity of the double catamaran Tongan kalia
pictured above with the one that was observed by Prado
on Taumako is underscored, in particular, by the double
catamaran structure sustaining an upper deck with
reinforced railing. However, there is an additional feature
in Prado’s description - the ‘high seats’ rising above the
poop of the vessel, which he believed to function as a
platform for the manipulation of two long steering
paddles/rudders - that does not correspond to the overall
design of a Tongan kalia. By contrast, these elevated
platforms for steering paddles would seem to be
analogous to an element that is present in another type of
Tongan vessel known as a tongiaki (Figure 8, 9). What
makes this canoe type particularly intriguing for the
identification of the Taumako vessel is that there is
documentary evidence for the active use of tongiaki in the
Western Polynesian context only a few years after
Quirós’s arrival in the Duff Islands. The source in
question dates to 1616, when the Dutch voyagers Willem
Cornelis Schouten and Jacob Le Maire encountered a
canoe, identified as a tongiaki in the open sea to the north
of Niatoputapu, between Tonga and Samoa. An engraving
of this vessel, composed from spoken descriptions after
the actual encounter, was published in 1619 in Schouten’s
account of the voyage, and represents one of the earliest
graphic renderings of an Oceanic voyaging canoe (Figure
7).
Conclusion
Notwithstanding the strong resemblances in the features
of both the Tongan kalia and the tongiaki in relation to
the voyaging canoe described by Prado in 1606, it would
be speculative, on the basis of existing evidence, to draw
any direct identification between these three types of
vessels. Nevertheless, two important conclusions can be
drawn from this brief overview of Iberian historical
sources.
First, that the canoe that the Spanish seamen encountered
on Taumako was clearly not related to a te puke, insofar
as Taumako te puke are known to us in recent times.
Importantly, whatever the specific design and indigenous
name given to the watercraft that Prado observed, it
appears to have exhibited a number of basic structural
features and elements (double hull, raised upper deck
with railing, and steering paddles resting atop a poop
deck) that strongly suggest a direct correlation with long-
distance voyaging canoes of the vakalua type that were
common in outliers such as Sikaiana and parts of Western
Polynesia, particularly Tonga, during the early years of
the seventeenth century. More importantly, the vessel
described by the Spaniards may also have been of a kind
in which elements of different canoes were present, but
CARLOS MONDRAGÓN AND MIGUEL LUQUE TALAVÁN

which is no longer extant, in which case it would D’Arcy, P.

constitute a fascinating exemplar of the ongoing 2006 The People of the Sea: Environment, Identity,
transformations that have given rise to current canoe and History in Oceania. University of
types across this region.27 Hawai’i Press, Honolulu.
Damon, F.
In this respect, one of the most intriguing possibilities that (in press)“On the Ideas of a Boat: From Forest
arises from the above evidence is that at least one, and Patches to Cybernetic Structures in the
perhaps more, of the Polynesian outlier communities of Outrigger Sailing Craft of the Eastern Kula
the South East Solomons region were engaged in direct Ring, Papua New Guinea”. In T. Kaartinen
communication and technological borrowing with parts of and C. Sather (eds.), Beyond the Horizon:
the broader Western Polynesian world four hundred years Essays on myth, history, travel and society in
ago. While they continue to be speculative, such a honor of Jukka Siikala. Studia
scenario may help to broaden the scope for discussion Anthropologica Fennica, vol. 2. Finnish
regarding the nature and historical development of inter- Literature Society, Helsinki.
island voyaging, borrowing and contacts in this Davenport, W.
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the Polynesian Society 73: 134-142.
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27
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(George, pers. com.; see also Davenport 1964).

20
 EARLY EUROPEAN DESCRIPTIONS OF OCEANIC WATERCRAFT: IBERIAN SOURCES AND CONTEXTS

Figure 8: Two double-hulled tongiaki, moored and with their masts and sails lowered, at the bay in Tongatapu, Tonga,
as pictured by Isaac Gilsemans, who travelled with Abel Tasman to the South Seas in 1643.

Figure 9: A contemporary rendering of a tongiaki from Tonga. Image courtesy and © Herb Kawainui Kane.

Gordon, R.G. Irwin, G.

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