FROM RAFT TO RAFT
FROM RAFT TO RAFT
An Incredible Voyage from Tahiti to
Chile and Back
By BENGT DANIELSSON
From the narrative of ALAIN BRUN
Translated from the Swedish by F. H. LYON
Skyhorse Publishing
Copyright ©1960 by George Allen & Unwin, Ltd.
Copyright renewed ©1988 by George Allen & Unwin, Ltd.
Published by arrangement with Doubleday, an imprint of The Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file. ISBN: 978-1-62087-782-1
Printed in the United States of America
CONTENTS
Introduction AN IMMORTAL SEA ROVER
1 APPRENTICESHIP
2 EASTWARD BOUND
3 WE START ALL OVER AGAIN
4 ALL WELL ON BOARD
5 WET FEET
6 WE LOSE OUR BALANCE
7 NEW RAFT, NEW HOPE
8 TOWARDS SAMOA
9 RAKAHANGA
Introduction
AN IMMORTAL SEA ROVER
It was early one morning at the end of October 1956. While most of my fellow-passengers on board the French Pacific Line’s ten thousand-tonner Tahitien were still asleep, I hurried up on deck to get the earliest possible sight of the most beautiful island in the world, Tahiti, to which I was now returning for the fifth time. It was still pitch dark, and it was a long time before I could distinguish with difficulty a jagged silhouette to starboard. Were we already so near my longed-for goal? My uncertainty was soon removed, for only a quarter of an hour later the first faint light of dawn revealed that it was the neighbouring island of Moorea I had seen. At the same time, and just as suddenly, the central peaks of Tahiti, more than 7000 feet high, stood out clearly against the quickly lightening sky thirteen miles farther east. The mountains, cleft by erosion, with their many ridges and valleys, were at first as grey and lifeless as a moon landscape, but the nearer we came and the higher the sun rose into the sky, the greener, softer and richer in changing colours they became.
Astonished and delighted to find that the picture I had preserved in my heart during my two years’ absence had been so faithful a copy of reality, I let my eyes travel round the scene I had known so well, from the historic Matavai Bay to eastward to the bare Cape Tataa in the west, whence, according to an old Tahitian tradition, the souls of the dead dived down into the sea to return to Havaiki, the Polynesians’ legendary fatherland and paradise. Although the whole population were converted and had been regular churchgoers for more than a hundred years, during my earlier stays in the island I had actually met now and then a wrinkled old man or woman who still believed in this simple transmigration theory. As I slowly went back to my cabin to pack, I wondered how many of these old people I should find still alive.
When I returned to my look-out post on the upper promenade deck about an hour later, with the rest of the family, we were already at the opening in the coral reef off the little capital Papeete, whose ungainly concrete buildings and sun-bleached plank houses, mercifully enough, were almost concealed by the flowering flame, or royal poinciana, trees along the water-front. Everywhere I saw well-known landmarks which summoned up pleasant and amusing recollections. With the pilot in charge, the ship glided swiftly in through the narrow entrance, and now we could even make out the names of the white copra schooners which were moored at the quay.
Suddenly I started. What on earth was that queer craft lying there right in front of the Post Office, in just the same place where our one and only Kon-Tiki raft had found sanctuary nine years before? For a few seconds I almost thought that time had stood still and that it really was our balsa raft which lay there, but a friendly “bon jour’ from the harbour-master, who had just come aboard, quickly brought me back to reality. When I looked more closely I saw too that the raft at the quay differed from ours in several respects, most notably in being built of bamboo and having two double masts. Bursting with curiosity, I asked my friend the harbour-master whence this new raft came. He gave me a searching look and replied:
‘She doesn’t come from anywhere, for she was built here. Are you pulling my leg, or do you really mean to say that you have not yet heard of Eric de Bisschop’s new expeditionr1 He’s going to sail to Chile in that tub—Tahiti Nui he calls her—at the beginning of next month, with four other lunatics. Here in Tahiti people have been talking of nothing else for months past.’
A few minutes later we were at the quay, and our conversation was interrupted by a party of noisy friends, who embraced us in the Tahitian manner and hung such masses of wreaths round our necks that we were almost stifled by the strong scent of the flowers. At least as many more friends were waiting for us on the quay. When at last we had done with all the customs and passport formalities and got into the waiting taxi, we were almost buried under wreaths. So I only got a hasty glimpse of the shining yellow bamboo raft as we drove past her along the quay, but that was enough to set my imagination working.
‘Queer, your not realizing at once that that was your friend Eric’s raft,’ my wife Marie-Thérèse said with a teasing smile as we rolled along between the palm groves which began immediately outside the town.
She was right. I ought to have realized immediately that the only person in Tahiti who could have thought of anything of the kind was that incurable sea rover Eric de Bisschop. I use the words sea rover because they are undeniably the most suitable, but I hope that they will not suggest anything like dirtiness, vulgarity and poverty, for in appearance, manners and birth Eric was a real aristocrat and, despite his Flemish name, came of a genuine French family of title. He himself never used the title of Baron he had inherited from his father, but on the few occasions when I heard anyone else do so I could not help thinking of another famous Baron, von Munchhausen, for like him Eric used to tell the most incredible stories—though his stories, unlike those of the German, were all true. Another but less important difference was that all Eric’s strange adventures had been at sea. Eric loved the sea with the same unreasoning, passionate love which other men have for particularly attractive women. Unfortunately his love was unretumed, for most of his many voyages had ended in disaster—from which, however, he had in some way or another always managed to escape alive. Altogether he had been saved from a premature and apparently certain death in the billows no less than six times, which must be a world record in its way.
When Eric’s violent passion for the sea first made itself noticeable in his teens, his worried parents tried to canalize it as best they could by having him trained as a hydrographer, knowing that most able hydrographers finished up as departmental chiefs in the head office of the hydro-graphic service. But, as Eric had feared, his duties were very much of a routine nature, and when the first world war broke out he was glad to leave them and take command of a minesweeper. But he had not been at sea in the English Channel for many days when a German submarine sank his vessel. Eric, who could not swim, was fished out of the water in the nick of time by a French patrol boat. After this the service became so uneventful and monotonous that he promptly exchanged it for the newly created air arm. But he di
d not thereby lose contact with the sea: on the contrary one might—at the risk of being taken to task for cheap humour—say that this was intensified, for while on reconnaissance over the Mediterranean some time later, his engine stopped unaccountably and he fell from a height of some 2500 feet. The pilot of another flying boat managed to get down to sea level and keep the unconscious Eric afloat till a rescue boat arrived. The rest of the war he spent in hospital.
During the enforced period of rest that followed Eric fell in love, got married, took over a timber business and for several years lived an almost normal citizen’s life. But by degrees his longing for the sea got the better of him: he bought a three-master, in which he began to carry timber between West Africa and France. One stormy day the cargo shifted, and before the crew could shorten sail the ship capsized and sank. Eric and a few of his men were picked up by another vessel, which by a stroke of luck happened to be passing the scene of the disaster at the right moment. Simultaneously with the loss of his beloved three-master his marriage was shipwrecked. The reason was simply that his intractable need of liberty made him unsuited to the married state. Consequently his first wife was no more able to keep him than any other of the many women in his life.
In better spirits than for a long time he spent the last money in his pocket on a steamer passage to China. He himself declares in one of his frank and charming books that it was the ‘mysteries of the Pacific’ that drew him so far afield. At the same time he sought for ‘something which could entirely fill his life and make it worth living’. This was of course an extremely vague programme, more natural in a teenager than in a man of thirty-seven. Eric, however, sensibly enough began his new life by joining the police force in the French Concession in Shanghai, which gave him an opportunity both of forming rather more concrete plans and of earning enough money to carry them out.
A few years later—to be exact, at the end of 1932—his plans had crystallized and he was ready to start on a cruise in the South Seas to study the ocean currents. His vessel was a junk of forty tons, Fou Po, designed by himself, and his companion was a colleague from the police force ten years younger than himself: Tatibouet was his name, but Eric always called him Tati. Hardly had they left Shanghai when a fearful cyclone came sweeping down from the north and gave Fou Po an unwelcome free ride which did not end till she fetched up five days later on the rocky northern coast of Formosa. A band of slant-eyed men made their way out to the wreck and rescued the half-drowned partners in misfortune. Next day, when they had more or less recovered and returned to the scene of the wreck, they found to their consternation that their noble rescuers had also taken care to strip the vessel of all loose and detachable objects.
Any other man would certainly have given up all plans for a long voyage after such a catastrophe, but Eric possessed two qualities, obstinacy (not to say pig-headedness) and charm, which came to his help now as they had done so often before and were to do so many times in the future. Only a few months after his return to China he had persuaded a well-disposed French consul to present him with the necessary timber, and with Tati and a few Chinese workmen he completed a new junk, which he naturally christened Fou Po II. Compared with her predecessor’s forty tons, the new junk was of only twelve tons, a more suitable size for a crew of two—or perhaps I ought to say a captain and a crew of one, for Eric was and always remained the obvious and natural leader. To make his now very slender funds last a little longer, Eric had what seemed to him the brilliant idea of investing the greater part of them in a stock of Chinese antiquities, convinced that he could sell these at a good profit in foreign ports.
Fou Po II exceeded all Eric’s and Tati’s expectations, and no cyclones appeared. They reached Mindanao, the most southerly of the Philippine Islands, without mishap, and set out thence across the Pacific to begin their studies with a close investigation of the strong counter-current which according to the charts flows right across the Pacific from west to east in this latitude in exactly the opposite direction to the trade winds. One of the most important anthropological articles of faith at this time was that the Polynesians had used this route on their long voyage by canoe from their primeval home somewhere in Asia to the distant South Sea islands. But no anthropologist or oceanographer had studied the equatorial counter-current, as this important ocean current was called, at all thoroughly, and the little that was known of it was based on casual and scattered observations. In his enthusiasm Eric decided to follow it for its whole length all the way to the Galapagos Islands, about 9000 miles, a distance corresponding to about a third of the world’s circumference.
It was as important to ascertain the breadth of the current as its direction and strength, and therefore, instead of setting his course due east for the distant Galapagos Islands, Eric began to make long tacks. By this method, of course, not such rapid progress was made, and a month later Fou Po II was only 600 sea miles nearer her destination, which at this rate it would take more than a year to reach. This did not cause Erics enthusiasm to flag in any way, but as time passed Tati became more and more dissatisfied and gloomy. Eric lent only an absent ear to the lamentations of his crew and placidly continued his zigzag course, becoming more and more convinced that the equatorial current was too weak, and the wind blowing the opposite way too strong, for the Polynesians ever to have been able to make use of it during their migrations. Eric’s interest in Polynesian navigation and anthropology, which finally became his dominating interest, dates from this time.
If Tati had been the only passenger on board Eric would certainly have continued to pay no attention to his opinions, for where a discovery was to be made, or a theory proved correct, he was always ruthless. But about this time he found that masses of unwelcome stowaways were also on board—namely a whole colony of ship-worms, which had bored their way into the planks below the water-line. Eric, therefore, at last broke off his studies and turned back to have the hull repaired and sheathed with copper plates at some convenient shipyard in what was then the Dutch East Indies. After a short search he found a yard at Ceram in Amboina, where some clever natives did the work well and quickly. This unexpected outlay, however, made such a big hole in his funds that he at once decided to make a trip to Sydney in order to sell some of his Chinese antiques.
Instead of taking the shortest route through the Torres Strait, Eric chose to sail right round Australia from the western side—a more sensible decision than it seems, for strong following winds should normally have helped them to make a quick and easy passage. Unfortunately the winds did not behave at all as they should, according to the charts and the nautical manuals, and instead of helpful favourable winds the unlucky pair met with such violent gales that their junk was reduced to a wreck. By superhuman efforts they at last succeeded, more dead than alive, in getting ashore at the little pearl fishing village of Broome, on the north-west coast of Australia.
As they still wanted to get to Sydney they decided to make their way through the Torres Strait, shallow and full of reefs. Unfortunately Fou Po II lacked something which most of the boats which venture into those waters have; namely, a motor. All Erics skill and Tati’s sharp eyes did not prevent them from running aground again and again, and finally they were dismasted just before they slid out into the open water of the Gulf of Papua on the other side of the Strait. Their beloved junk drifted helplessly into the mouth of a river on the south coast of New Guinea and stuck fast in the deep mud of the bank amid a tangle of uprooted trees, broken-off branches and other debris. While they were trying to get their bearings, a party of naked savages with nose-pins and sharp-pointed spears emerged from the belt of mangroves and gazed at them hungrily. This gave Eric and Tati an unpleasant reminder that most of the natives of New Guinea were still cannibals. They were firmly convinced that the savages would soon return with the head cook of the tribe and a large cooking pot, but when after a long time they did reappear they had with them a couple of neatly dressed missionaries and a long rope.
When the two valiant
partners at last continued their voyage at the beginning of 1935, after an exceedingly pleasant time with both converted and unconverted cannibals, Eric decided that they could just as well wait till they got to California (!) to sell their Chinese antiques, and despite Tatis protests steered up towards the Equator to resume, in passing, his interesting studies of the current. Except that Eric was so weakened by malaria, which he had contracted in New Guinea, that he fell into the water during a visit to the Solomon Islands and would certainly have been drowned if the faithful Tati had not jumped in after him, all went well. After two months of zigzagging Tati, quite understandably, was again sick to death of the equatorial counter-current and obstinately demanded to be put ashore at once. Eric saw at last that he must give way to his crew of one if it was not to mutiny.
The nearest land was the Marshall Islands—one of which, Bikini, later became world-famous—but Eric was not particularly keen on landing there, for the Marshall Islands, like all the other Micronesian islands, had been Japanese mandated territory since the end of the first world war, and the Japanese had always brusquely turned away all foreign visitors. Tati, however, had now a fixed idea, to get ashore, and he would not listen to reason. Eric, therefore, landed on the nearest atoll, Jaluit, with unpleasant anticipations. These were justified, for the Japanese commandant immediately subjected the unexpected vistors to a third degree cross-examination which he assured them would not end till they had confessed that they were American spies. But when a fortnight had passed, and Eric and Tati had still not made the desired confession, the commandant suddenly lost patience: without a word of apology he sent them on board the junk again and roughly ordered them to leave the Marshall Islands as quickly as possible. They took him at his word and immediately hoisted all the sail the rigging would carry.
From Raft to Raft Page 1