A Tribute to the Native

Canoe

By Harold Cooper

WHEN the naval history of the war in the Solomons comes to be writ ten, sandwiched modestly between lengthy disquisitions on the part played by battleships, aircraft-carriers and other imposing units of the Allied fleet, there should be at least a few brief sentences of tribute to the humbler vessel—the native canoe.

The canoe used by the Solomon Islanders has few refinements. It is of a primitive dugout type and, as one Brit ish officer explained to me, “it’s like a bicycle—whether it works or not depends entirely on the person riding it.” And whereas the islanders themselves travel blithely to and fro in these frail craft with the unthinking skill of a cyclist, steering their few inches of freeboard safely through the roughest seas, the Japanese who have ventured to go avoyaging in floating stock stolen from the natives have almost invariably ended among the sharks.

Nowadays, if the Japanese use these canoes at all they lash two or more of them together, a precaution which gives added safety but means exchanging the knife-like motion of a giant fish for the wallowing gait of a turtle.

There is many an American soldier or sailor in the Solomons who has reason to be thankful for the strong arms and stout paddles which the crews of these tiny craft have always been ready to place at the disposal of the Allied cause.

Native owned and operated canoes have brought wounded pilots safely back to their bases through Japanese-patrolled waters, have carried supplies to ground forces temporarily isolated by the enemy and have maintained a regular mail ser vice to lonely outposts on the further fringe of the sprawling battle zone.

It is the proud claim of these native mariners that, of the many hundreds of European personnel they have carried on board their canoes, every man has been delivered safely at his destination. We have hailed the gallant exploits of the little ships of the Royal Navy. The even littler ships of the Solomons have also done their bit.

Gunner E. M. Keith Coates, of the AIF, is recovered from the wound he received at the Battle of Buna, and is still carry ing on in New Guinea. Keith Coates was in the New Hebrides—mostly Port Obry, Santo—for about 15 years. He joined up in September, 1940, and served in the AIF in the Middle East,