Why am I passionate about this?
My book builds on the foundation laid by my five recommended books (as well as several others). Anuta is a remote Polynesian community in the Solomon Islands. It is one of the few remaining islands where voyaging canoes are still constructed regularly, constitute a part of everyday life, and where inter-island travel in such canoes never ceased. I was first there for a year in 1972–73 and was introduced to Anutan maritime practice. During that visit, I took part in a four-day voyage to Patutaka, an uninhabited island thirty miles away.
Richard's book list on Pacific wayfinding
Why did Richard love this book?
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, and I thought the discrepancy was worth a brief comment in a professional journal. I began writing, and by the time I was done, I had a first draft of my book on Anutan seafaring.
3 authors picked We, the Navigators as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
This new edition includes a discussion of theories about traditional methods of navigation developed during recent decades, the story of the renaissance of star navigation throughout the Pacific, and material about navigation systems in Indonesia, Siberia, and the Indian Ocean.
- Coming soon!