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knowledge were able to explore the far-flung islands of the Pacific methodically and deliberately, and that given vessels of adequate size and speed they could easily transport the people and goods necessary to populate these islands and maintain communications between them.
    By the time of her passage to Easter Island in 1999, the
Hokule’a
was the oldest of a fleet of at least six traditional deepwater craft that had been built in Hawaii, the Cook Islands, and New Zealand. Archaeological remains of ancient vessels in the Pacific are few and the people of Oceania had no written language, so our understanding of ancient boatbuilding practice depends on interpreting written descriptions and illustrations by European voyagers of the sixteenth century and later, in light of surviving practices. Vessels tended to be built of planks lashed together to achieve the desired hull shape after which frames or ribs were inserted to strengthen the hull, a process called shell-first construction. Single-hull vessels were used for fishing in Tonga, Tuamotu, and theSociety Islands, and in New Zealand to carry warriors into battle, but these were not stable enough for ocean passages. Shipwrights compensated for this either by addingoutriggers or by yoking two hulls with transverse beams on which they could erect a sheltered platform. Outriggers consist of two or more poles laid between the hull and a small piece of wood called a float on the outboard end, and they are found not only in Oceania but throughout Southeast Asia—where they were probably developed—as well as in the Indian Ocean.
    Double canoes were the largest and most important vessels used in the colonization of the Pacific. In addition to being more stable, the deck spanning the hulls created more space and protection from the elements for crew, passengers, and cargo. Captain Cook observed double canoes carrying between 50 and 120 people and measuring up to twenty-one meters long and nearly four meters across. In settling the Pacific, Polynesians likely sailed double canoes of between fifteen and twenty-seven meters in length andcapable of carrying the people, supplies, and material goods necessary for establishing sustainable communities on uninhabited islands after voyages lasting as long as six weeks. These included edible plants for crops (yams, taro, coconut, banana, and nut-bearing trees); domesticated dogs, pigs, and chickens; and tools andceramics.
    The chronology of Oceanian settlement shows that long-distance voyaging andmigration expanded and contracted in centuries-long cycles. WhenEuropeans began mapping the Pacific in the eighteenth century, the forces of expansion had been spent for some time, but Polynesians had not abandoned the sea or lost the ability to navigate long distances. During Cook’s first voyage,Joseph Banks recorded that the TahitianTupia could locate scores of remote islands and that journeys of twenty days were not uncommon. But communication between the Polynesian heartland ofHawaiki and the extremes of Easter Island, Hawaii, and New Zealand had stopped. At some point people would have taken to their boats again to strike out for far horizons, and in so doing they likely would have initiated a demonstrable and sustained interaction with the continents to their east and introduced the people of the Americas to their innovative forms of seafaring. As it happened, the people of theAmericas developed a variety of discrete maritime traditions in isolation from one another, although they never exploited the sea to the same degree that people in many other parts of the world did.
    Boats of the Friendly Islands [Tonga]
by John Webber, an artist who accompanied Captain James Cook’s third expedition to the Pacific (1776–80). In the foreground is a small sailing canoe with an outrigger and a platform for passengers. Farther off is a larger double canoe for long-distance passages. “There cannot be a doubt,” wrote a nineteenth-century observer,