Voyage

Easter Islanders’ Long Sea Voyage Other Small Boat Journeys Recalled

From a Special Correspondent in Tahiti TWO small boats from Easter Island put out on December 23, 1947; but, when a few miles at sea, a sudden storm sprang up and only the smaller of the two succeeded in getting back to the island.

The larger one was carried out of sight of land and, almost six weeks later, was washed up on the shores of Reao Island, one of the Tuamotus, 1,800 miles from its home.

The boat that made this incredible journey is smaller than an ordinary ship’s lifeboat; its unwilling passengers were four adults and two children, who some how managed to live on a meagre supply of fresh water, doled out meticulously by the thimblefull, and on the fish that they themselves caught.

Their sufferings and privations were great. There were long hours when they toiled at the oars in tropic calms, the sea a dazzling sheet of glass by day and an ominous expanse of blackness at night.

There were other times when they rode out storms, helplessly tossing at the mercy of the elements. When the little boat reached the French Colony she was equipped only with a badly-torn jib.

Wnen the castaways were reported, the Governor of French Oceania made haste to send a relief ship to bring them to Papeete. They were reluctant to leave the small craft that had sheltered them so long, but were finally persuaded to do so by the captain of the rescue ship.

They are now in Papeete anxiously awaiting a chance to return to Easter Island. Although they are of mixed Polynesian and Melanesian descent, they have few contacts with the rest of Poly nesia these days. Easter is a depend ency of Chile and the Islanders speak Spanish fluently.

WITH this long ocean voyage by small boat fresh in our minds, it is op portune to recall other hazardous small-boat voyages of comparatively re cent times.

One was the journey of the crew of the four-masted American schooner “El Dorado”, which had been bound from the American Pacific coast to Antofagasta.

She had encountered heavy weather, which had resulted in her abandonment, whereupon her company had taken to the only boat she carried.

A course was steered for Easter Island, where the captain and his men arrived after a run of 11 days. They stayed there for over three months, and then decided to try to get back to civilisa tion. Once more they put to sea in their lifeboat and, after a passage of 2,500 miles, over open sea, they reached Tahiti.

In that same year another American sailing ship, the four-masted barque “Amaranth,” was totally wrecked on Jarvis Island when on a voyage from New South Wales to San Francisco. Her crew, after some time on the island, took to two boats and set a course for Samoa, over 1,000 miles away. In less than two weeks they were safe—one boat made Pago Pago, in American Samoa, and the other got to Apia.

The “Amaranth” had broken in two a few hours after she struck, the boats were launched and the crew reached Jarvis Island. There was grim amuse ment for them in a sign that confronted them as they struggled ashore. It said: “This island is leased by His Britannic Majesty, King Edward the Seventh, to the Pacific Phosphate Com mission of London and Melbourne. . .

All Trespassers will be prosecuted.”

Captain Nielson, of the “Amaranth” remarked, when he eventually got back to San Francisco, that it would have taken more than an old sign to keep them off dry land right then. The island, in any event, was deserted and did not look as though it had been worked for years.

Another well-known four-master which was lost at the same period was the “Americana.” She, however, was not so fortunate and disappeared completely on a voyage between Australia and America.