Canoe (waka)

Polynesian islanders were immensely skilled boat builders and equally accomplished navigators. They travelled great distances across the Pacific Ocean in sailing canoes, navigating by reading wave patterns, the stars and cloud formations.

This canoe (waka) is one of the earliest documented surviving artifacts to have been brought to Europe from the eastern Pacific and was the first object from the region to be acquired by the British Museum. No account has been given of its collection, but it was acquired at Nukutavake in the Tuamotu Islands archipelago in June 1767 by Captain Samuel Wallis during the voyage of HMS Dolphin.

The people of Nukutavake were very reliant on these types of canoes to source food from the sea, as well as to navigate to nearby islands. The Tuamotus are low-lying islands with few forests, or trees large enough for a hull to be crafted from a single trunk. Instead the hull is composed of forty-five wood sections bound together with continuous lengths of plaited coir, a coarse fibre made from the seed of the coconut palm. It probably had an outrigger (a parallel hull) to balance it in the waves. There is a pointed prow, a broken stern with a broken figure, whose flattened legs are carved on either side of the stern. Sheared off at the waist, the figure would have faced into the canoe. A single plank seat survives to suggest the manner of its use and on the upper edge of the left side there are burn marks made by fishing lines.

Wallis and his crew preceded Captain James Cook whose first eastern Pacific voyage was in 1768. Wallis brought this particular example back to England lashed to the deck of HMS Dolphin. Given this treatment it is in remarkably good condition.

Suggested readings:

Dr S. Hooper, Pacific encounters : art & divinity in Polynesia 1760-1860 (London, The British Museum Press, 2006).

P. Snow and S. Waine, The People from the Horizon (London, McLaren, 1986). 

© The Trustees of the British Museum