We, the Navigators

We, the Navigators, The Ancient Art of Landfinding in the Pacific is a 1972 book by the British-born New Zealand doctor David Lewis, which explains the principles of Micronesian and Polynesian navigation through his experience of placing his boat under control of several traditional navigators on long ocean voyages.

David Lewis, after circumnavigating the world in a catamaran, decided to test his understanding of Polynesian navigation techniques by sailing the 2200 miles from Tahiti to New Zealand without any modern instruments (except the smallest of charts and a sky map). After arriving with a landfall only 26 miles in error, he learned that there were contemporary sailors in the Santa Cruz and Caroline Islands who still sailed large distances by the traditional methods and obtained support from the Australian National University to visit and sail with them. He did this in a 39-foot gaff ketch, Isbjorn, which he placed under the direction of the navigators Tevake and Hipour. These navigators spoke very little English, were illiterate and did not understand maps but were able to take him eventually on a 450-mile trip from Puluwat to Saipan and to return and teach him many of their techniques.

The book is largely based on these voyages, but there are extensive references to the literature.

"Captain Cook in 1775 was uniquely fortunate in encountering Tupaia, a dispossessed high chief and navigator-priest of Raiatea who was the only highly qualified Polynesian navigator who was ever interviewed at length by Europeans." But generally the very idea that people without instruments, charts or writing, could have developed an elaborate and effective art (or "pre-science") of navigation was so utterly foreign as not even to enter the minds of most Europeans. Since then there have been the traditionalists such as Percy Smith who have uncritically accepted the migration legends of the Polynesians as literal history and those, such as Thor Heyerdahl, who dismissed these and emphasised drifting and one-way voyages.

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