The “Maoae” had no radio, but we had. But it would be impossible to get a salvage vessel from Tahiti until the “Maoae” would have had ample time to roll herself into wreckage. Yet for the second time that month the Raroia reef was balked of its prey.
About noon the same day the schooner “Tamara” came in sight on the horizon to westward. She had been sent to fetch us from Raroia, and those on board were not a little astonished when they saw, instead of a raft, the two masts of a large schooner lying and rolling helplessly on the reef.
On board the “Tamara” was the French administrator of the Tuamotu and Tubuai groups, M. Frédéric Ahnne, whom the governor had sent with the vessel from Tahiti to meet us. There were also a French movie photographer and a French telegrapher on board, but the captain and crew were Polynesian. M. Ahnne himself had been born in Tahiti of French parents and was a splendid seaman. He took over the command of the vessel with the consent of the Tahitian captain, who was delighted to be freed from the responsibility in those dangerous waters. While the “Tamara” was avoiding a myriad of submerged reefs and eddies, stout hawsers were stretched between the two schooners and M. Ahnne began his skillful and dangerous evolutions, while the tide threatened to drag both vessels on to the same coral bank.
At high tide the “Maoae” came off the reef, and the “Tamara” towed her out into deep water. But now water poured through the hull of the “Maoae,” and she had to be hauled with all speed on to the shallows in the lagoon. For three days the “Maoae” lay off the village in a sinking condition, with all pumps going day and night. The best pearl divers among our friends on the island went down with lead plates and nails and stopped the worst leaks, so that the “Maoae” could be escorted by the “Tamara” to the dockyard in Tahiti with her pumps working.
When the “Maoae” was ready to be escorted, M. Ahnne maneuvered the “Tamara” between the coral shallows in the lagoon and across to Kon-Tiki Island. The raft was taken in tow, and then he set his course back to the opening with the Kon-Tiki in tow and the “Maoae” so close behind that the crew could be taken off if the leaks got the upper hand out at sea.
Our farewell to Raroia was more than sad. Everyone who could walk or crawl was down on the jetty, playing and singing our favorite tunes as the ship’s boat took us out to the “Tamara.”
Tupuhoe bulked large in the center, holding little Haumata by the hand. Haumata was crying, and tears trickled down the cheeks of the powerful chief. There was not a dry eye on the jetty, but they kept the singing and music going long, long after the breakers from the reef drowned all other sounds in our ears.
Those faithful souls who stood on the jetty singing were losing six friends. We who stood mute at the rail of the “Tamara” till the jetty was hidden by the palms and the palms sank into the sea were losing 127. We still heard the strange music with our inner ear:
“—and share memories with us so that we can always be together, even when you go away to a far land. Good day.”
Four days later Tahiti rose out of the sea. Not like a string of pearls with palm tufts. As wild jagged blue mountains flung skyward, with wisps of cloud like wreaths round the peaks.
As we gradually approached, the blue mountains showed green slopes. Green upon green, the lush vegetation of the south rolled down over rust-red hills and cliffs, till it plunged down into deep ravines and valleys running out toward the sea. When the coast came near, we saw slender palms standing close packed up all the valleys and all along the coast behind a golden beach. Tahiti was built by old volcanoes. They were dead now and the coral polyps had slung their protecting reef about the island so that the sea could not erode it away.
Early one morning we headed through an opening in the reef into the harbor of Papeete. Before us lay church spires and red roofs half hidden by the foliage of giant trees and palm tops. Papeete was the capital of Tahiti, the only town in French Oceania. It was a city of pleasure, the seat of government, and the center of all traffic in the eastern Pacific.
When we came into the harbor, the population of Tahiti stood waiting, packed tight like a gaily colored living wall. News spreads like the wind in Tahiti, and the pae-pae which had come from America was something everyone wanted to see.
The Kon-Tiki was given the place of honor alongside the shore promenade, the mayor of Papeete welcomed us, and a little Polynesian girl presented us with an enormous wheel of Tahitian wild flowers on behalf of the Polynesian Society. Then young girls came forward and hung sweet-smelling white wreaths of flowers round our necks as a welcome to Tahiti, the pearl of the South Seas.
There was one particular face I was looking for in the multitude, that of my old adoptive father in Tahiti, the chief Teriieroo, head of the seventeen native chiefs on the island. He was not missing. Big and bulky, and as bright and alive as in the old days, he emerged from the crowd calling, “Terai Mateata!” and beaming all over his broad face. He had become an old man, but he was the same impressive chieftainly figure.
“You come late,” he said smiling, “but you come with good news. Your pae-pae has in truth brought blue sky (terai mateata) to Tahiti, for now we know where our fathers came from.”
There was a reception at the governor’s palace and a party at the town hall, and invitations poured in from every corner of the hospitable island.
As in former days, a great feast was given by the chief Teriieroo at his house in the Papeno Valley which I knew so well, and, as Raroia was not Tahiti, there was a new ceremony at which Tahitian names were given those who had none before.
Those were carefree days under sun and drifting clouds. We bathed in the lagoon, climbed in the mountains, and danced the hula on the grass under the palms. The days passed and became weeks. It seemed as if the weeks would become months before a ship came which could take us home to the duties that awaited us.
Then came a message from Norway saying that Lars Christensen had ordered the 4,000-tonner “Thor I” to proceed from Samoa to Tahiti to pick up the expedition and take it to America.
Early one morning the big Norwegian steamer glided into Papeete harbor, and the Kon-Tiki was towed out by a French naval craft to the side of her large compatriot, which swung out a huge iron arm and lifted her small kinsman up on to her deck. Loud blasts of the ship’s siren echoed over the palm-clad island. Brown and white people thronged the quay of Papeete and poured on board with farewell gifts and wreaths of flowers. We stood at the rail stretching out our necks like giraffes to get our chins free from the ever growing load of flowers.
“If you wish to come back to Tahiti,” Chief Teriieroo cried as the whistle sounded over the island for the last time, “you must throw a wreath out into the lagoon when the boat goes!”
The ropes were cast off, the engines roared, and the propeller whipped the water green as we slid sideways away from the quay.
Soon the red roofs disappeared behind the palms, and the palms were swallowed up in the blue of the mountains which sank like shadows into the Pacific.
Waves were breaking out on the blue sea. We could no longer reach down to them. White trade-wind clouds drifted across the blue sky. We were no longer traveling their way. We were defying Nature now. We were going back to the twentieth century which lay so far, far away.
But the six of us on deck, standing beside our nine dear balsa logs, were grateful to be all alive. And in the lagoon at Tahiti six white wreaths lay alone, washing in and out, in and out, with the wavelets on the beach.
APPENDIX
MY MIGRATION THEORY, AS SUCH, WAS NOT NECESSARILY proved by the successful outcome of the Kon-Tiki expedition. What we did prove was that the South American balsa raft possesses qualities not previously known to scientists of our time, and that the Pacific islands are located well inside the range of prehistoric craft from Peru. Primitive people are capable of undertaking immense voyages over the open ocean. The distance is not the determining factor in the case of oceanic migrations but whether the wind and the current have the same gener
al course day and night, all the year round. The trade winds and the Equatorial Currents are turned westward by the rotation of the earth, and this rotation has never changed in all the history of mankind.
INDEX
A
Agurto, see Alvarez
Ahnne, M. Frédéric
Air Force laboratory
Air Material Command
Alvarez, Captain Agurto Alexis
Amazon expedition
Ambjörg
American military attaché in Ecuador
Amundsen, Christian
Andes
Angatau
Angelo
Antarctic
Ants
Arabia
Army supply department
Asia
Atlantis
Australia
Aztecs
B
Bahr, Consul General
Bajkov, Dr. A. D.
Balsa rafts
Balsa trees, wood, logs; see also Kon-Tiki
Bamboos, giant
Bandidos
Bank of Norway
Barnacles
Behre, Professor
Bengt, see Danielsson
Berg, Egil
“Big-ears”
Bird dance
Blue shark
Blue whale
Bonito
Boobies
Bottle gourd
British Columbia
British Military Mission in Washington
Brooklyn
Brown shark
Bryhn, Consul General
Buchwald, Don Federico von; Don Gustavo von
Bustamante y Rivero, Don José (President of Peru)
C
Cachalot
Callao
Canary Islands
Cari
Carl
Caucasus
Centerboards
Central America
Chicago, university at
Chile
China
Christensen, Lars
Coca plant
Coconut, coconut palm
Coelenterates
Cohen, Dr. Benjamin
Colossi on Easter Island
Columbia University
Columbus
Cook, Captain
Cook Islands
Copepods
Copra
Coquimbo Valley
“Cowrie”
Crosby, Bing
Cuevas, Frank
Cumulo-nimbus
Currents: Humboldt South Equatorial; crosscurrents off Peruvian coast; toward Central America; around Galapagos Islands
Cuttlefish (squid)
D
Dangerous (or Low) Archipelago
Danielsson, Bengt; joins expedition at Lima; takes seventy-three books with him on raft; pursues sea turtle; as steward is responsible for rations; restricted to special provisions by way of experiment; concussion in stranding of raft; salvages kitchen utensils; goes as envoy to chief on Raroia; dances the hula; receives Polynesian name
Disney, Walt
Diving basket
Dolphin (dorado)
Dolphin (toothed whale)
E
Easter Island
Ecuador
Eels
Egypt
Erik, see Hesselberg
Eskimos
Explorers Club
“Eye of heaven”
“Eye which looks toward heaven”
F
Fangahina
Fatu Hiva
Fenua Kon-Tiki
Finnmark
Fire-Tiki
Flying fish
Foreign liaison section of War Department
Fred Olsen Line
Freuchen, Peter
Frigate birds
G
Galapagos Islands
Gempylus
Germans invade Norway
Germany
Gestapo
Giant bamboos
Giant ray
Glover, Admiral
“Golden navel”
Great Bear
Great Rapa
Greenland
Greenwich Village
Guardian Rios
Guayaquil
Guayas, Rio
H
Haakon, King
Hal, see Kempel
Harpoon
Haskin, Colonel
Haugland, Knut; war experiences; agrees to join expedition; arrives in New York; at Lima; experiments with radio aerials; sights whale shark; radio under difficulties; has a swim with a shark; establishes radio contacts; rescues Watzinger; goes ashore on Angatau; he and Watzinger treat sick boy with penicillin; receives Polynesian name
Haumata
Hawaii
Head-hunters
Heavy water sabotage
Herman, see Watzinger
Hermit crabs
Hesselberg, Erik; agrees to join expedition; coming by sea from Oslo to Panama; arrives at Lima; takes position of raft; harpoons whale shark; occupations on board; has idea of diving basket; develops photographs; navigates raft along Angatau reef; attacked by eels becomes a hula dancer; receives Polynesian name
Hiti
Hotu Matua
Hula dancing
Humboldt Current
I
Iguanas
Illa-Tiki
Ilo
Incas
India
Indians (South American); see also Incas
Indonesia
Indonesian race
Ipomoea batatas
J
Japan
Jellyfish
Johannes
Jorge
K
Kama
Kane
Kayak
Kempel, Harold
Kimi
Kirkenes
Knut, see Haugland
Kongo
Kon-Tiki
Kon-Tiki (raft) construction; pessimism of foreign observers, and Norwegian seamen; trial trip in harbor; christened; towed out to sea; performance in heavy sea; logs’ absorption of water; strain on ropes; course changes; daily life on raft; tropical garden on board ; invaded by small crabs; floating aquarium under raft; comic appearance at sea; masters heavy storm; weaker in joints after storm; stranding on Raroia reef; brought into lagoon; towed to Tahiti; shipped on board “Thor I”
Kon-Tiki Island
Ku
Kukara
Kumara potato; see sweet potato
Kura
L
Lagenaria vulgaris
Lamour, Dorothy
Latacunga
Lewis, Colonel
LI 2 B
Lianas
Lie, Trygve
Lima
Little Rapa
“Long-ears”
Lono
Los Angeles
Low (or Dangerous) Archipelago
Lumsden, Colonel
M
Machete knives
Malaya
Malayan peoples
Mangareva
“Maoae”
Maroake
Marquesas Islands
Mata-Kite-Rani
Mata-Rani
Maui
Mauri
Mayas
Melanesian peoples
Meteorological Institute
Mexico
Military Mission in Washington, British
Monoliths; see Easter Island
Munthe of Morgenstierne, Wilhelm von
Munthe-Kaas, Colonel Otto
Murmansk
N
National Geographic Society
Naval Hydrographic Institute
Naval War School (Peru)
“Navel, golden”
“Navel of the islands”
New York
New Zealand
Nieto, Manuel
Nordmark
Northwest Indians
Norway
Norwegian ambassador; Embassy
Norwegian consul general in Ecuador in Peru
Norwegian military attaché in Washington; assistant
Norwegian Sailors’ Home
Notodden
O
Octopus
Oslo
Ossining
Ouia Valley
Oviedo
P
Pae-pae
Palenque, Rio
Palms, see coconut
Panama
Pani
Papa
Papeete
Papeno Valley
Parrots; Kon-Tiki parrot
Penicillin
Pentagon building
Peru
Peruvian air minister; Foreign Ministry; minister of marine; naval attaché in Washington; President
Petrels
Phyto-plankton
Pilot fish
Pitcairn Island
Pizarro
Plankton
Pleiades
Pole Star
Polynesia, Polynesians
“Polynesia and America: A Study of Prehistoric Relations”
Polynesian Society
Porpoises,
Potatoes
President of Peru
Primus stove
Puka Puka
Pura
Pyramids
Q
Quartermaster general’s laboratory
Quevedo
Quito
R
Ra
Raaby, Torsteinwar experiences agrees to join expedition; arrives in New York; sent by air to Lima; experiments with radio aerials; fish in sleeping bag; pursues sea turtle; radio under difficulties; restricted to special provisions by way of experiment; adventures with dolphins establishes radio contacts; sleeping bag goes overboard; sends out radio messages just before stranding; dances the hula; receives Polynesian name
Radio
Radio Amateur League of America
Rainbow belt
Rangi