The Ra Expeditions

by Thor Heyerdahl

  The four taciturn Indians, Demetrio, Jose, Juan and Paulino, and their equally calm Bolivian interpreter, Senor Zeballos, a museum curator from La Paz, organized the building of Ra 11 in masterly fashion with a handful of Moroccan helpers. They were all so silent that I constantiy had to put my manuscript aside and look out of the tent, only to see that the building work among the palm trees really was progressing at full speed, with gestures and brief grunts in the Aymara tongue, Spanish and Arabic.

  The Indians first stacked up two huge untidy rolls of those papyrus stalks, elegantiy wrapped in a thin papyrus mat, which was woven so that all the ends turned inward and were squashed flat. Before the ropes were drawn tight, these two thirty-foot cylinders were so thick that no one could get on top without the help of scaffolding. In the open passageway between these two big rolls, a much thinner roll of the same length was now made, to which both the large ones were to be bound. This was done by first

  winding a rope several hundred yards long in a continuous spiral that at the same time encircled both the thin central roll and one of the thick outer rolls. A second rope was then run, without touching the first, in a complementary spiral round the thin roll and the other thick outer roll. So when these two independent spiral ropes were drawn tight by the united strength of the Indians, each of the big rolls was forced closer and closer to the little one in the middle, until it was jammed between them and ended up squeezed right into them, forming a completely invisible core. Thus, only the two big rolls remained visible, pressed tightly together all along their center line. This resulted in an unshakably compact, double-cylinder hull, with" no knots or crisscross ropes, and all that remained was to extend the hull on the same principle, to produce the elegant upswept peaks at bow and stern. A sausage-shaped bundle was finally bound on either side of the deck to give it breadth and to break the waves. Then we lashed on ten aossbeams as a base for the light basket cabin, the steering-bridge poles, and the foot plates for the heavy bipod mast. Ra II was finished, thirty-nine feet long, sixteen feet wide at center, six feet deep. The cabin was thirteen feet long and nine feet wide, tailor-made for eight people, if we lay four by four, feet together, stretched out like Egyptian mummies. Not only was Ra II about ten feet shorter than Ra I, but her cross section was also rounder and thus much slimmer. I thought with regret of all the buoyant papyrus—almost a third of it—left lying unused on the buildingsite this time. But neither rewards nor arguments could persuade our Aymara friends to add a single stalk or a single day's work to the boat. This was the absolute limit of their scope, and they wanted to be off posthaste, home to their abandoned wives on Lake Titicaca.

  "A pleasant voyage and welcome to Suriqui Island," Demetrio had said kindly, pulling off his stocking cap as the garden wall crashed and their masterpiece disappeared from the buildingsite.

  'To Suriqui Isalnd?" we said bemusedly.

  "Well, if not actually to our little island, welcome to our side of Lake Titicaca in any case."

  Geography was obviously not the Aymara Indians' strong point. They did not realize that they themselves had built Ra II on the other side of the Atlantic and had come down from a lake that

  lay twelve thousand feet above sea level. But they knew how to build reed boats with a perfection no engineer, no model-builder, no archaeologist in our modern world could emulate.

  "Rigid as a block of wood," said Carlo. We both breathed a sigh of relief after a brightly lit cargo boat had thundered close by us without running us down. "Rigid as a block of wood, but we're sinking," he added.

  "The sinking won't last. So far we have been carrying too much load in proportion to the amount of papyrus under water."

  "Norman thinks we should have daubed all the papyrus with pitch as it says in the Bible."

  "Not necessary," I said. "It's only the cut ends that absorb water. That was why we dipped the last inch of most of the reeds in pitch this time."

  But in fact I, too, was beginning to wonder if we should not have covered the whole vessel with a thick layer of pitch. Tlien we would not have sunk as much as half an inch. Perhaps the ancient Egyptians had done this inside the exposed reed mat for otherwise the wall paintings would certainly have shown the reed boats as black, not green and yellow.

  Several clergymen had written to me after Ra I, pointing out that according to the Bible Noah's ark was daubed with pitch, and Moses' mother had explicitly used pitch on the papyrus basket in which she had launched her son on the Nile for Pharaoh's daughter to find drifting among the reeds. The idea had not just come out of thin air. There was surface pitch lying about for the asking in those days and it was in common use in ancient Egypt and Asia Minor. Nevertheless we had seen from Ra I that tightly bound papyrus floated without pitch too, as long as the ropes held.

  The ropes. On Ra I we had used much thicker ropes, and Mussa and Omar had knotted together hundreds of short, independent loops, that held even if others were chafed away. At first glance the Indians' rope lashing looked quite absurd. They had used only a single thin rope in a continuous spiral from bow to stern. Moreover, they had blankly refused to use a rope more than half an inch thick. They said that in this way the rope would be subject to a more even strain, and even if it broke the lashings would not fall away, because wet papyrus would grip the rope. Could we rely on

  Captions for the following four pages

  102. The starboard side had not enough papyrus left to keep the cabin above water and numbers of sharks put a stop to all further repairs. Norman and Georges salvage the mainsail. (Above)

  103. The port side was undamaged and still afloat with the whole cargo. Norman and the author on board, Georges in the yacht's rubber dinghy. (Below)

  104 and 105. Farewell Ra, see you later. Norman, Santiago and Georges hoist a small sail on two oars on the storm-racked vessel, which sails the last leg of the voyage west alone. The reed bundles had carried us three thousand miles in eight weeks. Inset, from left, Yuri, Santiago, Carlo, the author with monkey, Norman, Abdullah, and Georges with duck.

  106. Thanks for the lift, Ra. You have proved that even landlubbers can sail thousands of sea miles on papyrus bundles. You have proved that men from east and west and north and south can live and work together for the common good, even in cramped quarters.

  ,..-^B^.--r^

  /^^--■-^

  # ^

  Captions for the preceding four pages

  107. Ra n, built by Indians from Lake Titicaca, was perfectly designed and crossed the Atlantic without loss or damage to a single papyrus stem. (Above)

  108. Madani Ait Ouhanni from Morocco collected samples of the oil clots floating all over the Atlantic. (Left)

  109. Kei Ohara from Japan took most of the films of the Ra 11 expedition. (Right)

  110. Ra 11 was ten feet shorter than Ra I and had a crew of eight instead of seven men.

  111. In fifty-seven days Ra 11 crossed the Atlantic from Safi in Morocco to Barbados in the West Indies.

  them? On whom else could we rely? Everyone on board was aware that this was a new experiment. We could have used the Chad method again, with the improvements we now knew to be necessary, and then we would not have been exposed to this fresh uncertainty. The fateful bowstring from the curly tail down to the deck behind the cabin was in position now, and wise from experience, we had also concentrated the cargo on the lee side, but otherwise Ra 11 was full of unknown qualities. Not only were we afraid that the very thin long rope, all that held us together, might snap in heavy seas, but while Ra I lay on the water as comfortably as a mattress, Ra 11 rolled so that we could neither sit nor stand without hanging on to something. On the very first day we tried in vain to rig hand ropes, because there was nothing to catch us at the edge if we fell. And we were sailing fast.

  While the papyrus was still lying high in the water we skimmed over the wavetops with the sea frothing round our bows, and covered 95 nautical miles (or 177 kilometers) on the first day. It was all we could do to hold the big sail. Once both
sheets blew out of our hands and another time the wind tore them to shreds, so that the mainsail, twenty-six feet high, twenty-five feet wide at the top by the yard and sixteen at the bottom, hung like a gigantic flag, battering, flapping and slapping until we expected the vessel to disintegrate. On the very first night we had rushed past the islet off Mogador, where one of the Phoenician purple-dye factories had been, at such close quarters that we could see the lights of every single house on the mainland behind it. On the second day the squalls off the Sahara coast were so violent that we had to lower the whole sail at the risk of tearing the high slender papyrus bow to ribbons in the process. On the third day the wind died. It died so completely that sailing was out of the question and in the end we lay yawing helplessly. Now the coast had disappeared in a wall of fog and we twisted and tugged and hauled on heavy rudder-oars and on the ropes to a heavy slack sail, in order to avoid shipwreck. We were aware, with every little gust of onshore wind, that we were only a few hours from the cliff walls. Fortunately, equally feeble puffs of offshore wind, especially at night, carried us safely away from the shore again.

  The wind did not return. On the fourth day there was a flat calm.

  "We're sinking/' said one man after another. It was easy to see in calm water. The whole craft was on its way down, sinking by at least four inches a day. This was quite new to us. Nothing like this had happened on Ra I. Had the long spiral rope of the Indians not succeeded in compressing the papyrus sufficiently? Or was it a different kind of papyrus this time?

  Santiago went round unobtrusively with pencil and paper, taking an anonymous opinion poll on whether we thought we would cross the Atlantic alive, or fail. Two thought we would get across, six thought we would fail. I don't know who the other optimist was. Perhaps it was Norman, who always said that if only we cleared Cape Juby safely, we could let the craft steer itself, America barred the way ahead in all drections. Or perhaps it was Carlo, who suffered from an incurable devotion to Ra I because he thought Ra II had become too much the perfect sailboat.

  We were sinking frighteningly fast, and if the current had not maintained its hold on the sinking vessel, we would scarcely have stirred from the spot. It was only the fourth day when Georges came to me with an unwontedly solemn expression to say that Santiago the quartermaster and Carlo the chef thought we had far too much food and water and should get rid of everything that was not absolutely indispensable at sea. He picked up a goatskin and began to finger the stopper preparatory to emptying the contents overboard.

  "But that's the drinking water!"

  "Better to ration the drinking water than sink before we have passed the Canary Islands. This time we have to make it!"

  "Let's start dumping things overboard, it's great fun," Santiago tried to joke in an unusually hollow voice.

  "We must throw out all the food that needs long cooking." This came in almost cheerful tones from Carlo. "The Primus stoves are lousy this time. One is burnt to pieces and the other doesn't heat properly."

  Yuri stuck his head out of the cabin, looking extremely grave, and behind him I could see Madani, speechless, but with anxiously

  inquiring eyes. Kei stood like an inscrutable china figure on the steering bridge, betraying none of his feelings. Norman was busy fixing our position.

  "We're sinking," said Yuri slowly, "and we know from the last time that what goes down never comes up again. We must throw out everything we can, at once."

  Norman was following the argument silently. The atmosphere was explosive. No wind, insufficient buoyancy. Wliy had this not happened last time? Could the home experts, wrong last time, be right now, in giving us two weeks to stay afloat? We had in fact voluntarily spent ten days floating in Safi harbor to allow the bundles to absorb water so that the light, top-heavy boat with its giant sail would not overturn. We had left port four days before, so now the two weeks had passed. The papyrus rolls were already half under water.

  "Let's throw out those two reed boats on the foredeck," Norman suggested. "We don't need them as lifeboats and we've got a three-man inflatable raft for filming this time."

  We had barely time to attach a message in a bottle to the largest reed boat before eager hands pushed it into the sea. The other vanished overboard so fast that we had no time to tie anything to it. Farewell. They floated sidelong, like balloons, with faint wind toward land. We had no idea then that the message would be found by a lone guard on a barren Sahara beach a few days later. We ourselves lay deep, letting the current carry us parallel to land.

  Then a big sack of potatoes went overboard. Potatoes need lengthy cooking. Then two whole jars of rice. Flour. Corn. Two sacks, contents unknown. A wicker basket. Better to starve than sink. Then most of the grain for the chickens went. A big beam, planks and hardwood boards for splicing and repairs. More full jars. Madani looked at me anxiously, big-eyed. Kei exposed his teeth in an inscrutable grin and stared up at the sail. A heavy cofl of rope plunged overboard. A whetstone. A hammer. Georges' heavy iron spike for repairing the boat vanished forever in the depths. Books and magazines floated about us in the calm water. Some had only their bindings torn off. Every ounce counted I agreed. And yet I passionately disapproved at the same time. We had thousands

  of miles ahead of us. We had barely set out from land, and at this rate we would need food and spare materials for months. But they were right. We were sinking. Why? How long would it continue? I tried to convince first myself and then the others that the submersion would stop as soon as there was enough papyrus under water for its buoyancy to offset all the heavy cargo we had stacked hastily on board on the last day before departure on May 17. Now it was May 20, We were still sinking just as fast.

  Yuri resolutely started to tear up a little plank deck we had lashed on top of the papyrus in front of the mast. It had been such a pleasant thing to have. Yesterday Santiago and Georges had used it as a stage in a lively display of clog dancing and clowning with which they had entertained the rest of us as we lay drifting on an almost glassy sea. I got him to save a plank or two to walk on so that we would not stumble between the two thick papyrus rolls when we began to roll on high seas again.

  But somebody was sitting in the shelter of the cabin, throvdng all our almost weightless Egyptian karkade tea into the sea. And the earthenware stove with all our charcoal. Lavatory paper. Spices. Nothing seemed light enough to be safe.

  There was a lump in my throat. Some of the crew were smiling joylessly. Others wore a look compounded of shame and misery. Better to let the havoc run its course within controllable limits than to let anyone be inwardly consumed by the dangerous feeling that we had not done everything that could be done, should we continue to sink. The greatest danger would be for anyone's own peace of mind to suffer. But then the chickens began to flutter overboard. Two of the men took hatchets and knives and were about to cut the whole chicken coop loose so that it could be heaved out to sea. Without a proper Primus stove we could not eat poultry. Then it was time to halt the frenzy. The chickens' days were ended, but Georges pleaded for the solitary duck, which to Safi the monkey's indignation was allowed to strut freely about the deck and nip her tailless stern just as the first Sinbad had done on Ra I. Safi had added a few inches to her stature, but was still the same carefree scamp as when we first had her as our mascot on the eadier voyage. The empty chicken coop on the foredeck I myself broke up and turned into a light dining table, though

  there were some who wanted to get rid of both this and the crude benches, arguing that we could eat with plates and cups in our hands. But this brought a unanimous protest from the two of us who regarded meals as real high points in the day's program.

  "In any case, morale on board will collapse if we begin to live like pigs," stated Norman, as an experienced naval officer.

  Our minds were at peace. The air had been cleared, as though by a lightning rod, and for once there was really room to move about on board without mountaineering. But the wind had not returned.

  The next d
ay was equally still, and the next as well. And the next. We simply lay where we were. It did not look as if we were sinking any more for the time being, but neither were we making any visible progress.

  "The statistics say 1 per cent calm here in May," said Norman, putting his finger on the navigational chart. "We have had 100 per cent for a full week."

  We tried to work the long, heavy rowing oars. No use. But we seemed to be out of immediate danger. We jumped into the sea and enjoyed life. The sun blazed down on us while the Canary Islands and Africa on either side lay hidden in the haze. Cold, refreshing water. Norman swam with the duck in tow. Safi hung by her back legs reaching for the surface of the water. Inviting water. But in heaven's name, could we never get away from those little black oil clots, floating above and below the surface? Madani had actually netted some samples every day since we left. This time we were going to make a more systematic investigation, day by day. Last time we had only noticed the pollution when the water was so filthy that we could not overlook it. But the report and samples we had sent to the Norwegian delegation to the United Nations had aroused so much interest that more thorough observation was clearly worthwhile, now that we had our noses to the surface again. We used the sea from morning to night, as toothbrush glass, washbasin, bidet and bathtub. Fortunately there was enough space between the clots for us not to bump into them. We dived under the papyrus bundles. Crystal clear. Lots of fish. Striped pilot fish and spotted pampano waggled about in R