The Spaniards will 'launch'

The Lost Caravel

Robert Langdon, executive officer of the Pacific Manuscripts Bureau, Canberra, has found an enthusiastic advocate for his forthcoming book, The Lost Caravel, in the person of the Spanish Ambassador to Australia, Senor Don Alberto Pascual Villar.

Even though the book is still some months from publication, the Am bassador has already interested a Spanish publisher in a Spanish trans lation and is planning a launching party at the Spanish Embassy in Canberra for the English edition which is to be brought out by Pacific Publications (Aust) Pty Ltd.

The Embassy first heard about The Lost Caravel when the author sought the Ambassador’s assistance in ob taining a colour transparency of a painting by a Basque artist depicting the departure for the Moluccas in 1525 of the expedition of Garcia Jofre de Loaisa. The Embassy duly obliged, with the result that the dust jacket of The Lost Caravel will be graced by a most striking and colour ful picture.

The picture recalls the golden age of Spain and sets the tone of the book, which tells how the Loaisa ex pedition, then comprising four ships, passed through the Strait of Magellan on May 26, 1526.

Five days later, the ships were separated by a storm. One, the caravel San Lesmes vanished.

The book goes on to tell how, in Langdon’s view, the ship was wrecked in the Tuamotu Archipelago, how the crew survived and inter-married with the local women, and how they and their descendants spread over the next 250 years to many parts of Polynesia, and influenced the whole course of Polynesian history, includ ing the design of Polynesian voyaging canoes.

Weeks after PIM (Mar Up Front, p iii) published first news of the book, the sceptics marshalled their forces. Herb Kane, part-Hawaiian, commercial artist and organiser of the Polynesian Voyaging Society, fired the first broadside in the Hono lulu Advertiser.

More shots have been fired since then in the Honolulu Advertiser’s columns, not all trying to blow Lang don’s theory to bits.

Ernest V. Perry, something of a humorist and open to be persuaded either way, wrote that he hoped to be among the first purchasers of The Lost Caravel, partly because “Robert

Langdon is my kind of man. He puts me in mind of another gutsy fella— Erich von Daniken (Chariots of the Gods?). In view of the fact that man’s resistance to change is directly proportional to the degree of change, 1 find myself hoping that the remark able similarity of their views and the concomitant findings of each will serve with equal force to shatter the stupid shackles of legendary and tra ditional beliefs.”

Writing from the other camp, R.

H. Gulmon argued, in a reply to Perry, that “The Polynesians’ epic voyages of discovery and colonisation had long since been completed and the outposts of Polynesia, Hawaii, Easter Island and New Zealand were already thriving colonies when the ‘lost caravel’ and its crew of wander ing Iberians met disaster on Amanu atoll.

“The great voyaging canoes, con structed without the aid of metal tools or fasteners, and capable of open ocean voyages of 2,000 miles or more, were unique Polynesian achievements as were the navigational techniques by which they were guided. Furthermore, the canoes so accurately described by Cook and his contemporaries in the late 18th century bore no discernible marks of European influence. It therefore seems probable that Polynesian voy aging traditions, at least, will survive publication of ‘The Lost Caravel’

Mr Perry, attacked Herb Kane’s commentary in the Advertiser (PIM, May, p 23) with “Mr Kane’s poorly researched words do not hold water, and I suspect he honours tradition more than the scientific research he advocates. He, and others like him, should look to Guam and the Philip pines before screaming ‘foul’ at Robert Langdon”, Mr Langdon took up the gauntlet in April (PIM, May p 25) when he wrote that his book made no men tion of the Marquesas but dealt with a Spanish ship “that came to grief in 1526 on Amanu atoll, which is in the Tuamotu Archipelago”. Mr Kane had referred to Marquesan canoes.

He continued, “I should mention, however, that the evidence I have used is not ‘very obscure’ as Mr Kane seems to think. It is all taken from readily available literature, most of which may be consulted at such places as the Bishop Museum or the Gregg M. Sinclair Library, University of Hawaii.