The "Magic" Of Polynesian

Navigation Is Now Legend

By Brett Milder

Although it can be a serious business when adrift in the open ocean looking for a little piece of terra firma, navigation is not any more exempt from myths and legends than are the other arts and professions. In fact there used to be such an air of black magic about it that any navigator in the Middle Ages who owned a compass had to keep it m his bottom drawer along with the crystal ball and other aids to navigation, for fear of being denounced for collusion with the Devil. Progress in navigation and astronomy, as well as anatomy and medicine, was held to be dangerous to the Catholic faith, as subversive to Bible teaching.

The Polynesians, on the other hand, kept the secrets of navigation to the priests, who jealously guarded their knowledge, and the result has been that we have never been able to find out much about their methods.

As soon as the much-maligned Euro pean vessels and missionaries ap peared in any group, native naviga tion generally ceased altogether.

Local priests and navigators were put out of business by the economic fact that European vessels and navigation were so much safer and quicker. But then the legends lingered on, and are still coming to light, after over 100 years, so that all we can do is to record them like other legends, in the hope that some of them may contain valuable clues.

Most of them are quite unsupported by any material evidence, the only exception being the navigational stones at Arorae in the Gilberts.

I think that we should beware of the tendency to attribute local know ledge to all natives in the Pacific, as many writers have assumed that the methods of navigation used in Micronesia were also used by the Polynesians, who arrived in the Pacific one or two thousand years earlier.

One story I heard at Kavieng in New Ireland, and therefore Mela nesian for a contrast, was that the locals once used a coconut compass to give the north. This was done by floating a sliver of bamboo (or perhaps the midriff of a coconut frond), in a coconut shell of water.

I suppose the sharp end pointed north, though I don’t know whether it was true north or magnetic north like the anthills in Arnhem Land.

This may have arisen, if we allow our fancy full rein, from the old Chinese method of floating a compass needle in a straw to allow it freedom of movement and of rotation. The

earliest known European compasses are said to have had the needle stuck through a cork at right angles, to get a similar effect. I have never been game to put this in print before, but as far as I know it’s the first story of any Melanesian navigation.

Fred Fawcett-Kaye, who has been in touch with Lord Howe Atoll (in the BSIP) for 10 or 15 years, told me of one occasion when sailing between Nukumanu and Lord Howe, and being out of sight from both, he asked a native of Lord Howe what direction his island was at the time.

The native tied a rope around one

ankle, and dived over the side and down to three or four fathoms. When he returned aboard he pointed out the direction correctly Fred thought that he may have been able to hear distant breakers at that depth, as the island was only about 15 miles away at that time.