Atlantic Creole
Black Folk Don’t Sail
Invisible Sailors Invisible Ships
Invisible Histories
As with all of my postings I want you to critically look at what I write and bring out points that you don’t understand, can add to or just want out. That critiquing can start a discussion or many discussions.
Invisible Histories
I From The River To The Delta
ll From The Delta To The Sea
lll From the Sea To The World
IV Hand, Reef And Steer
I am going to start this off with my concept of a beginning:
I From The River To The Delta
Since we all know and it is even accepted internationally that the first human presence on this planet is found in the continent of what has been named Africa. It is always accepted that a migration out of Africa is how the world was populated. With those knowns we can go back to the bond with water that the first humans maintained. It makes sense that once humans realised that they needed water to survive and even to have substances to eat that they would try to be as close to water as possible. We are almost the same percentage of moisture as our planet is making a possible invisible umbilical bond as well as a practical one. That being said I came up with a story based on hypothesise but kind of comfortable.
When the first human saw branches, logs and other debris floating along the tops of rivers they might have thought that they could do the same and after many drownings I am sure they figured that they needed assistance from some of that debris and maybe jumped on the side of a log to move effortlessly along with the current downstream. Of course after a lot of scrapes and bruises a concept was developed to figure out a way to strap some logs together to make a raft, then when a tree was struck by lightning and fire burned out part of the trunk fire proved a way to scrape out the inners of a trunk and sit on or in the log and a canoa was invented. Not much has changed since then as far as the concept of multihulls and monohulls.
Why use this method of transportation? Walking will get you there but maybe when the concept of food provider is taken into account the log might get the provider further than the competitor on foot. It also opens the variety of food when fish is added to the diet. The idea of the return voyage might also create the wanderlust for the group to move along with the raft or log in just one direction. Then, tidal effect on the more delta areas could be used to form a way back by just waiting for the tide to change course so villages could become stationary. The point being that movement by water, not looked at much in our recounting of pre-historic humankind, is a factor that needs consideration in the development of my little tale here.
Living in delta regions gave the ancestors a touch of land while living next to the water, an initiation into the brackish aspects of salt water and a slower living schedule due to the nearness of a range of foodstuffs. This possible time consideration could have allowed for better development of vessels. Carving out the canoas and maybe inventing planks to raise the sides to go out further in the delta toward the sea. Maybe stabilising the canoa with other branches and developing better designs for paddles to move the canoas with no wind over a wider range to other sides of the delta. Planking up or out-rigging canoas might have defined differences in tribal concepts of what families preferred in work and diet.
ll From The Delta To The Sea
So, humankind arrived at the Delta, where the river meets the sea. There is that kernel, that we now know as adventure, sprouting after making the passages along the river and finding paradise next to an expanse of this body of water. They have conquered the fears of the rushing water and now the water is almost still most of the time but still has the allure of travel to something better over there on the other side.
The dangers of the river and its rocks are not as extreme looking out on the delta shoreline but walking is still much more laborious than floating especially when you just go along a coastline and can go ashore whenever you wish. Paddles are developed and maybe the canoas eventually get deep enough to carry hoped for cargo and more passengers who can paddle faster and reach distances further from the river mouth settlement. Paddling does take some stamina and maybe the concept of a sail is brought to light. Maybe by a child playing with leaves stuck in a stick and observed by somebody who recognises that the breeze actually pushes the stick along sometimes at a good pace.
A sail is woven using palm fronds or leaves and branches and held up on a canoa eventually with a paddle or two guiding by leaving it in the water along the side and later moving it back to the stern. But the breeze blows into the sail and turns the canoa over. A raft solves that problem and an outrigger also solves it. But how to hold up the branch sails is conquered first by tying two sticks on either side of the raft or the outrigger and tied in an A-frame . This takes a long time to develop and many trials and errors. The raft and the outrigger both are burdened by their lashings and the needs for flexibility and stationing the masts in the right spots so the sail has the power to push the vessel but not to fall apart with the twisting of the winds combined with the workings of the currents.
The canoas build a thwart, a plank above and across the hull. The thwarts supply sitting positions and with a hole cut into the forward one creates a station for one mast in place of the two. There is less rigging with one mast with only a need for one or two lines (shrouds) positioned on the sides to hold it in place. The sail grows and can be elongated upward when attached to another pole with that developing into a sail rig that is secured at the bow and eventually called a lateen rig. The boat gains the name Dhow, which in Swahili means Boat.
Geographic conditions might need the originating designs to call for shoal, rock or reef considerations in the depth, material and for manoeuvrability. The formation of the sails becomes an important factor and with that the materials needed for those designs and that reaches a jump in the level of sophistication where learning steps become traditional and taught. Monohulls develop canoa bottoms that hold a growing number of planks above. As the canoas grow longer with the addition of and dependence on more planks the canoa becomes a keelson to hold ribs or frames that tie upon which the planks can be secured by bark twisted into rope and eventually by wooden plugs, (trunels or tree-nails).
Again, this all took time and adaptions not unlike what sailors philosophise about today. The problem that sailors today also have in kind is when you have a better boat you use it for more distant shores. I am sure when our ancient ancestors found themselves on the other side of the delta or bay before they thought they should have been there they started thinking the delta or bay was too small and looked out at the forbidden yet compelling horizon. Now, it wasn’t what is over there on the other side, now, it was what is out there?
