ABSTRACT
Polynesians were the first sailors in the Pacific. In his beautiful book Voyage: The Discovery of Hawaii, artist-historian Herb Kawainui Kane presents the probable chronology of the great Polynesian migration. At sea, the masters of Polynesian canoe navigation operated with dead reckoning by alignment with visible landmarks. Richard Henry Dana, a New England university student, after shipping out in the hides trade to Mexican California in the 1830s, contributed an important record of the terrible conditions that could be suffered by seamen under the American flag, in his classic book Two Years Before the Mast. In hides trade, on the whaling ships, and in the trade with China, the lot of American seaman was often unenviable. Wages were low, food was bad, and quarters were inadequate. In addition to their legal servitude and brutality of bucko officers, the seamen had to contend with “land sharks,” the “crimps” and boarding masters, parasites feeding on “blood money,” and experts in shanghaiing.
