We, the Navigators

In this book, David Lewis—a physician, anthropologist, and world sailor—traveled around the Pacific, consulting with respected navigators from many islands about their understandings and the natural cues on which they relied for inter-island voyaging. Lewis reinforced many of Gladwin’s points and also made me acutely aware of regional variation.

Along the way, he commented that canoes in the “Polynesian Outliers” (islands inhabited by Polynesian people but located in territory commonly identified as “Melanesia” or “Micronesia”) are built with an interchangeable bow and stern. That was not true on Anuta, the Polynesian Outlier on which I had conducted my doctoral research,… show more.

This is really a one-of-a-kind scientific textbook. Though technical, it reads like an adventure novel. Lewis was part scientist, part adventurer, part sailor, and an excellent author. The book is full of charts, sketches, and photographs that take you to the South Pacific atolls of Polynesia and Micronesia. This book is not for the day sailor. Written in 1972, Lewis learns and masters the art of ocean navigation from native-born seafarers, like Tevake, who in the middle of nothing knew exactly where he was. He and others learned the skills from their fathers, using only the stars, wind patterns, reflective… show more.

First published in 1972, We the Navigators is a classic of modern Polynesian history. Lewis, who died in 2002, was a British physician and sailor who in 1967 quit his day job to sail around the Pacific studying traditional navigation. Based on interviews with navigators in the Santa Cruz and Caroline Islands, as well as many hours of firsthand observation, We, the Navigators represents the first attempt to codify and document the non-instrumental navigational knowledge and practices of the world’s most accomplished seafarers.