Exploration
This guy drifted 6,700km on a homemade raft just to prove a point
What's the furthest you've gone to prove you were right? Norwegian explorer Thor Heyderdahl went a very long way indeed.
The year is 1947. Five Norwegian guys, a Swede and a parrot named Lorita have decided to climb aboard a homemade wooden raft and begin a 6,700km journey from Peru to Polynesia.
The idea is to use only the wind and the current to guide this makeshift vessel all the way across the South Pacific in a bid to recreate what he thought to be an ancient journey. To be sure, it’s a crazy idea. But the reality is probably even crazier than it sounds.
It all started when Thor Heyerdahl, a Norwegian ethnographer, developed a theory that no one else would take seriously: he reckoned that in ancient times, South Americans had drifted across the Pacific in wooden rafts – guided only by the wind and the tides – and subsequently populated Polynesia. He claimed, controversially, that the giant statues on Easter Island were similar to those found at Bolivia’s Lake Titicaca. The scientific community scoffed, maintaining that Polynesians had initially come from Asia, but Heyerdahl would not be deterred.
The Easter Island statues kick-started Heyerdahl's theories
© Thomas Griggs
Heyerdahl set out to gather a crew of men to help him prove everyone wrong. He wrote to a few friends: “I guarantee nothing but a free trip to Peru and the South Sea islands and back, but you will find good use for your technical abilities on the voyage. Reply at once.”
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It was a fairly modest offer, but the men would be doing something that had never been done before – a fact that appealed to a few brave souls. One would-be crew member, Torstein Raaby, simply replied: “Coming.”
The mission was straightforward: to build a traditional raft and sail it across the South Pacific. If they succeeded, people would at least have to admit that Heyderdahl’s theory was possible.
Balsa wood, hemp, bamboo and banana leaves
Heyerdahl was determined to build his raft only using the materials that were available to Peruvians in the pre-Columbian era (before 1492). Design-wise, they went off illustrations of ancient Indigenous Peruvian ships, as recorded by the Spanish conquistadors. The materials available back then were balsa wood, hemp, bamboo and banana leaves. There were no nails, bolts or fibreglass – the crew literally lashed tree trunks together with hemp ropes and built a bamboo cabin with a thatched banana leaf roof.
The result was Kon-Tiki: a floating bamboo hut on balsawood logs. It had a large sail and a single cabin, which must have been tight for the crew of six men and their pet parrot.
A coloured black and white photograph of Kon-Tiki
© Wikimedia Commons
Surviving the ocean
When it came to supplies, Heyerdahl was slightly more relaxed about adhering to the practices of the Indigenous Peruvians. Hence the Kon-Tiki expedition was equipped with 1060 litres of water in both modern (for the day) and ancient containers, as well as ration packs supplied by the US Army.
They also had a radio for emergency contact, a hand-cranked generator to power it and a sextant for navigation. According to Heyerdahl, these items were not crucial to proving or disproving that such a trip would have been possible back in pre-Columbian times, rather, they were precautionary items to help ensure the crew’s survival.
All told, Heyderdahl and co. kept things fairly traditional. The supplies were limited to coconuts, sweet potatoes, root vegetables, and various fruits. They also had plenty of time for fishing and ate an abundance of tuna, bonito, flying fish and sharks along the way.
At one point in the journey, a huge whale shark circled the raft – it was so large that the crew could see it’s head from one side of the ship and it’s tail from the other. Eventually, one of the crew freaked out and tried to harpoon it. The shark simply broke the harpoon and swam away. (In the semi-fictionalised 2012 film ‘Kon-Tiki’, there was a whole shark saga with a man overboard and a brave rescue mission, but that was just a movie.)
Who needs steering?
One of the most absurd parts of the whole story is that Kon-Tiki was designed so that it was impossible to steer. This was because, according to Heyerdahl’s theory, South Americans had drifted on the currents and the winds that consistently blew from East to West across the Pacific during certain months of the year.
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It goes without saying that being unable to steer your boat obviously has its disadvantages. When the crew first sighted the Puka Puka atoll, after 97 days at sea, they were unable to land the boat and were forced to drift past it in slow motion.
Heyerdahl and crew at sea
© Kon-Tiki Museum
Four days later, Kon-Tiki crashed into a reef and the boat was beached in the uninhabited Raroia atoll. After travelling 6700 kilometres over the course of 101 days, they’d made landfall. But it was days before they were discovered by nearby islanders, who arrived via canoes.
The locals had found the raft’s wreckage washed up on their shores and came to investigate. The crew then got their first taste of glory, with a Polynesian welcome ceremony, replete with traditional dancers and a seafood feast. Against all odds, they’d made it.
So did Heyerdahl’s theory hold water?
After 101 days floating on the current in a balsawood raft, braving the elements and the ocean’s predators, you’d probably assume Heyerdahl’s theory was finally accepted. Actually, it was still rejected by the Norwegian scientific community.
And now, as geographer Doug Herman wrote in Smithsonian in 2014, “Today we have strong evidence that Polynesians actually reached the Americas, not vice-versa.” Though even he had to admit, “There is no doubt that the voyage of the Kon-Tiki was a great adventure: three months on the open sea on a raft, drifting at the mercy of the winds and currents.”
Heyerdahl's adventures began in the mountains of Norway
© Kon-Tiki Museum
This was merely a detail for Heyerdahl, who would go on to write a best-selling book and star in an Oscar-award-winning documentary about the expedition. Up until his death in 2002, Heyerdahl dismissed scientific criticisms, saying, “Both the wind and the people who continue to live close to nature still have much to tell us which we cannot hear within university walls.”
Heyerdahl may not have been a great scientist, but his adventure across the Pacific captured hearts and minds around the world. He was almost certainly wrong about South Americans crossing the pacific in balsa wood rafts (although in 2011, the University of Oslo’s Erik Thorsby did find clear evidence to support elements of Heyerdahl's hypothesis), but that actually makes the story all the more interesting: it means Thor and his crew were potentially the first people ever to have crossed the pacific in a traditional wooden raft.
