Staff card
A staff map is a navigational tool that was used in the area of the Marshall Islands in Micronesia . Before the trip, stick maps served as a memory aid and orientation aid about the wave formations, wind and water currents to be found between the atolls . Staff cards were not used at sea.
A staff map is shown in the lower part of the seal of the Marshall Islands .
layout
A stick card consists of a latticework of coconut leaf ribs, which are connected with coconut strings. In the overview maps, small cowrie shells are tied to the rods that represent the atolls.
Types of staff cards
There were three types of staff cards:
- rebbelib : general maps that covered large parts of the island chains;
- meddo : Maps showing the location of certain islands and the peculiarities of the sea between them;
- mattang : abstract maps without reference to concrete islands that were used for training.
functionality
The staff maps were not used at sea, but only on land for the training of navigators and as a memory aid. They are not nautical charts in the “ western ” sense. They were not used to determine the current position, but were intended to show the navigator how to reach his destination.
They show with smaller and curved rods which swells around the islands, are deflected and reflected as bent from the islands, Kabbelungen , d. H. Areas of choppy sea caused by the meeting of different swells, and with longer sticks the direction of travel to the islands marked with the shells.
The staff map could only be fully interpreted by the person who had made it or had been instructed in it.
In the Marshall Islands, as in general in Oceania , navigation was reserved for a few, specially trained and qualified navigators who kept the knowledge they had learned and experienced from childhood like a great secret and only passed them on to their students. Trips to other atolls were therefore undertaken in groups of several ships, which were led by the island king, who was often a navigator himself or was assisted by a navigator.
While the navigation in the Carolines further to the west and the Polynesian navigation was determined to a considerable extent by the orally transmitted, extensive astronomical knowledge, the navigation between the atolls of the Marshall Islands was primarily based on the knowledge of the constant swells encountered there may be overlaid by the waves generated by local winds and storms, but are usually not completely covered. The navigators had at least ten expressions to describe the peculiarities of a swell. Their art was to recognize the respective swell or to feel it from the movements of their ships and to draw conclusions about the course to be taken. This course was not necessarily in a straight line between A and B, but was determined by the swell, e.g. B. of the need to always drive along the ridge of two intersecting swells in order to reach the goal directly. Even those who had strayed from the course and temporarily lost their orientation could usually get back on the right track thanks to this knowledge and observation of the local conditions.
history
European sailors were impressed early on by the nautical skills of the oceanic population. On his first South Seas voyage , James Cook was informed about the Polynesian islands by the Tahitian Tupaia and advised on the courses for his future voyage. However, for a long time no one tried to research the basics of this knowledge. The existence of staff cards was first reported by a local missionary in 1862, but without being able to explain their purpose. It was not until Corvette Captain Winkler, who visited the Marshall Islands with the SMS Bussard in 1896 and 1897, tried to find out the background to the staff maps and published the first, fundamental report on their content and the navigation on which they were based.
He first came across the strict rules of confidentiality. He was only able to get more information with the support of Captain Keßler, who had been active in the area for years, spoke the language, was friends with the local tribal leaders and even had a brotherly relationship with one of them. Since he was not allowed to refuse his brother, he revealed his knowledge. It was only because of this connection that Winkler was able to persuade navigators to provide further information.
Even then, Winkler warned that only a few people could provide information about this, as the Marshall Islanders made long journeys in boats of European design according to the compass and log and the nautical charts issued by the German Reich, but the old knowledge would no longer be taught and quickly fell into oblivion.
In the course of the 20th century, the trend continued. The local, handcrafted boats were displaced by " western " ships and hardly anyone wanted to take on the trouble of a long traditional nautical training. The knowledge on which the staff map is based has therefore largely been lost. Today, staff maps are practically only made for sale to tourists.
revival
At the end of the 1950s, as an anthropology student at the University of Hawai'i, Ben Finney wanted to refute the theory that was widespread at the time that Polynesia could not be populated with the boats used by the local population and their inadequate navigation methods. His activities led to the establishment of the Polynesian Voyaging Society in 1973 , which built the Hōkūleʻa , a replica of traditional Polynesian two-masted sailing catamarans .
The Hōkūleʻa drove from Hawaii to Tahiti in 1976 using only Polynesian navigation methods . This was only possible because Mau Piailug , a navigator from the island of Satawal in the Caroline Islands , was the only one of the six surviving navigators who was willing to provide his knowledge and skills for the trip, contrary to the traditional rules of secrecy, and to instruct other people. This included Nainoa Thompson , who navigated as his student on some of the other trips of the Hōkūleʻa and was appointed navigator in 2007 together with four other Hawaiians from Mau Piailug on Satawi. David Henry Lewis , a Rarotonga- born sailor, adventurer, medic, explorer of Polynesian nautical methods and author of the book We, the Navigators , first published in 1972, was also involved in the construction of the ship and on its first voyage, who familiarize Mau Piailug with the southern starry sky could. Since 1976, the Hōkūleʻa has carried out numerous extensive trips in Polynesia and the wider Pacific to the US west coast and Japan. In 2007 she also visited Satawal and Majuro in the Marshall Islands. Since 2014, the Hōkūleʻa has been on a long journey that will take you westwards around the world.
In the Marshall Islands, the remote Rongelap Atoll had been the last place where navigators were trained and appointed until 1954 when the American hydrogen bomb tests on neighboring Bikini Atoll put an end to it. Korent Joel, who later became a cargo ship captain, had been trained there as a boy, but could no longer take his exam. After the last navigator of the Marshall Islands died in 2003, Korent Joel was exceptionally allowed to pass on his knowledge to his younger cousin Alson Kelen and to train him. He had experienced the return of the Hōkūleʻa from New Zealand in 1986 as a student in Honolulu . Both dreamed of reviving sailing in the Marshall Islands in a similar way in order to be able to pass on the knowledge of wave navigation and asked Ben Finney for advice. Since he was about to retire, he suggested that his doctoral student Joseph Genz get in touch with Korent Joel.
After a long period of preparation, Genz was able to acquire the funds to scientifically document the voyage of a traditional sailing boat controlled only with wave navigation by a subsequent motor ship. Korent Joel could not make the trip because of a leg injury and therefore recommended Alson Kelen, who had meanwhile founded a small non-profit school in Majuro to teach young people from the Marshall Islands in traditional boat building and sailing. Finally, in 2015 Alson Kelen drove in the outrigger canoe Jitdam Kapeel built in his school from Majuro at night and in a stronger wind to the Aur- Atoll 70 nautical miles (≈ 130 km) away , followed by a motor ship with the anthropologist Genz, John Huth, a Harvard physicist specializing in electromagnetic waves and Gerbrant van Vledder, oceanographer at the Technical University of Delft , the Dutch center for wave science. After arriving safely on Aur, they were greeted with a large reception, at which the village elder emphasized that the children had never seen a sailing canoe and that the islanders wanted to learn how to build it again, as they would hardly be able to find the gasoline for one Pay to drive to Majuro. Alson Kelen also made the nightly return trip to Majuro without any problems and purposefully. The later evaluation of the data showed that he had not driven straight on either route, but rather followed the bends in the swell between the islands despite the wind and local waves.
literature
- Corvette Captain Winkler: About the nautical charts used in earlier times in the Marshal Islands, with some notes about the seafaring of the Marshal Islanders in general . In: Marine-Rundschau , Issues 7 to 12 (July to December 1898), pp. 1418–1439 (digital pp. 620–642) ( Memento in the Internet Archive )
- Augustin Krämer: Hawaii, Eastern Micronesia and Samoa; my second trip to the South Seas (1897–1899) to study the atolls and their inhabitants. Verlag von Strecker & Schröder, Stuttgart 1906, pp. 419–427 ( Memento in the Internet Archive )
- A. Schück: The staff cards of the Marshall Islands. Commission publisher by HO Persiehl, Hamburg 1902
- Ben Finney: Nautical Cartography and Traditional Navigation in Oceania. In: David Woodward, G. Malcolm Lewis: The History of Cartography; 2.3: Cartography in the Traditional African, American, Arctic, Australian, and Pacific Societies. 1998, pp. 443–492 ( digitized on press.uchicago.edu)
- David Lewis: We, the Navigators - The Ancient Art of Landfinding in the Pacific. 2nd edition, University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu 1994, ISBN 0-8248-1582-3 ( digitized extracts on Google Books)
- Kim Tingley: The Secrets of the Wave Pilots. Article from March 17, 2016 in The New York Times Magazine
Web links
- Micronesian stick charts on Jane's Oceania
- rebbelib baton map on the Library of Congress website
- meddo staff map over the area around Kwajalein (164 ° –170 ° E, 4 ° –12 ° N: ≈ 660 km × 880 km), on the website of the Library of Congress
- mattang staff map on the Library of Congress website
Individual evidence
- ↑ Korvettenkapitän Winkler's detailed article in the Marine-Rundschau of 1898 is still valid today as the basic description of the staff charts and the navigation technology on which they are based; thus it is also the basis for this article.
- ↑ The staff map shown in the Überseemuseum Bremen is presented and explained in Winkler's article (map V, rotated 90 ° to the left).
- ↑ For the different navigation techniques cf. Ben Finney: Nautical Cartography and Traditional Navigation in Oceania.
- ↑ Ben Finney, Professor Emeritus on the website of the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, Department of Anthropology
- ↑ Hōkūleʻa on the Polynesian Voyaging Society website .
- ↑ Hōkūleʻa, 2016 on the east coast of the USA
- ↑ a b Kim Tingley: The Secrets of the Wave Pilots. Article from March 17, 2016 in The New York Times Magazine
- ↑ Waan Aelon in Majel - Canoes of The Marshall Islands