Kon-Tiki

  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