This saga of
Polynesian voyaging is told by one of its most distinguished sons. Sir Tom
Davis, Pa Tuterangi Ariki, KFE, is himself a navigator of some renown as well as
a scientist of international repute and a former Prime Minister of the Cook
Islands. He gives, in the form of a novel, a fascinating account of 300 years of
voyaging of a single historic canoe by his own forebears as told in their
traditions.
Polynesians are people of the outrigger canoe. In the
beginning, they sailed from south-east Asia, through the islands of Indonesia
and Melanesia. They settled in Tonga and Samoa around 1500 BC and later sailed
on to the Cook Islands, the Society Islands, Marquesas, Tuamotu, Easter Island,
Hawaii, New Zealand, even to Micronesia. The communication between their
communities offered by their swift voyaging canoes was a major reason for the
maintenance of basic systems of language, social structure and numerous cultural
similarities for more than 3,000 years.
Only Ariki (royal paramount chiefs) commanded the resources to
build, maintain and operate large voyaging canoes. Their life was accompanied by
cyclical problems of over-population and struggles for power and territory. The
technology of Takitumu, the voyaging canoe, which is the focus of this novel,
was developed to serve the purposes, whims, intrigues and passions of those who
sailed her over a period of 300 years. This book is destined to become a
classic.
