15 Boat-Building and Seamanship in Classic Philippine Society.

by Wiliam Henry Scott

Fig. 1 Artist's reconstruction of classic Philippine caracoa, by Raoul Castro,

PLANK-BUILT BOATS IN of barrio Libertad, which had been The author is an American specialist THE PHILIPPINES1 discovered by unauthorized "pot- on Philippine history and culture. Dr. hunters" looking for marketable Scott now teaches at a college in in October 1976, Butuan City Chinese trade porcelain. The find Sagada Mountain Province The article was promptly announced in the is reprinted from Philippine Studies, Engineer Proceso S. Gonzales ex- Vol 30, 1982. cavated four planks of an ancient public press, using Antonio Pigafet- Philippine boat in sitio Ambangan ta's early sixteenth-century Italian 16 spelling, balanghai for barangay, presumably because that author mentions one that belonged to the Rajah of Butuan's brother. Dr. Jesus Peralta, Curator of the Anthropology Division of the Na- tional Museum, then took charge of salvage archaeology at the site, and ...the Butuan discoveries Research Assistant Leonard Alegre subsequently removed the planks for (are) one of the most chemical treatment and preservation. Just one year later, nine planks from another vessel of the same significant events in type were discovered a kilometer to the southeast of the first find, and were systematically salvaged and Philippine archaeology... (and) removed to Manila by National Museum researcher Cecilio Salcedo. There they have been treated by a marine archaeology as well. preservative process known as PEG — i.e., polythyline glycol — and will eventually be reassembled for public display.

The location of the two finds appears to be a former shoreline — even a harbor waterfront — of Tokyo from wood samples, thick, and pegged to the keel every subject to the strong currents of make the Butuan discoveries one of twelve cm. by hardwood pins or one of the mouths of the Butuan the most significant events in Phi- dowels nineteen cm. long, driven River which evidently washed away lippine archaeology. Moreover, an into holes in the edge of each board. all the disintegrating parts of the even earlier date for the first find — The pegs fastening the other boards vessels except the hull planks, it lay more than a meter below a together are shorter — twelve cm. — which presumably survived because layer of midden materials contain- and those which have come loose they collapsed flat on to the clay ing Sung porcelain — makes the dis- are 1.5 cm. in diameter and pointed bottom and so presented no resis- covery an important event in marine at one end. The keel itself is hardly tance to the current. Other than archaeology as well. Happily, too, worthy of that designation — it these planks, nothing was recovered comparison with other Southeast is simply a plank one to two cm. except a short piece of one rib and Asian vessels built in this tradition thicker than the other planks, three small pieces of what was makes it possible to describe the though forty-five cm. wide amid- probably a mast. It is therefore im- sort of boat these Philippine ships and tapering to a point at possible to reconstruct whatever specimens must have been and both ends, thinning slightly to interior fittings, thwarts, or super- moreover, by recourse to Spanish about 2.25 cm. The most distinc- structure the vessels may have had, records, to describe their role and tive feature of the planks is a or even to determine whether they significance for Philippine social life series of flat, rectangular protru- had outriggers or not. On the other and progress. sions or lugs carved out of the hand, the configuration of the surface of the wood on the upper planks themselves is recognizable as The planks of the older vessel side of each plank — that is, the a distinctive style of marine architec- run the full length of the hull in inside of the boat. They are seven- ture which once extended from one continuous piece — almost ty-eight cm. apart, exactly opposite Scandinavia to the South Pacific, fifteen meters — and thus consti- one another on each strake, average from the third century B.C. until tute what nautical jargon calls 30.7 cm. long, 16.5 cm. wide, and the present time in a few remote strakes. Those of the second boat 2.5 cm. thicker than the planks corners of the South Seas. These are made of two sections of doongon themselves, and have four holes facts, taken together with a Carbon- wood (Heretiera litorales) joined by along their edges through which 14 date of the thirteenth and Z-shaped scarfs, and those next to cords or lashings can be passed. The fourteenth centuries for the second the keel — i.e., the garboard strakes— purpose of both the lugs and the find, determined by the University are twenty cm. wide, three cm. holes is made clear by the fact that 17

a fragment of transverse ribbing was tambukos carved on each plank. found securely bound to the lugs of Finally, a combination of such the several planks it crossed by thwarts and ribs lashed together, Historically, cordage of cabo negro palm fibers. and even tightened by tourniquet These lugs are called tambuko in action in the lashings themselves, there are two Visayan and Maguindanao, as well produces a sturdy vessel whose hull as in many of the languages spoken and other structural parts are held methods by which in the maritime cultures to the south firm under prestressed tension. This the planks in plank- of the Philippines. Their presence is is the sort of hull the Butuan boats the earmark of this older ship-build- must have had. built boats are ing technique. Of course, since this technique fastened together- In the more familiar modern ship- provides no solid ribs to fasten the building technique, developed in planks to, they cannot be steamed, sewing and both China and Europe as long ago bent to shape, and held in place by edge-pegging. as the Middle Ages but still in use, a nails. Instead, they must be carved rigid framework of keel and ribs is to shape in advance, no mean feat of carpentry in a boat the size of in modern times in remote Pacific first constructed, not unlike the islands. Sewing boats was a Luzon spine and ribs of a whale or carabao the Butuan examples. It is because of the essential nautre of this feature technique noted in the San Buena- in appearance and function, and the ventura Tagalog-Spanish dictionary wooden planking of the hull is then that boats constructed by this technique are called "plank-built of 1613, which continued in use nailed to it with metal spikes or into the present century. Baranga- wooden trenails. The older tech- boats." On the testimony of Spanish records, Philippine plank- yans or cascos with a capacity of nique was to build the hull like a two or three thousand cavans of shell first, plank by plank carved to built boats usually had strakes hewn of one piece from stem to stern, rice for loading and unloading fit, and to fasten the ribs in after- ocean-going steamers were being wards. This technique is probably a even in twentyfive-meter warships manned by crews of over 200. Each constructed in Cagayan by this natural development of the one-log method in the 1920s. The timbers dugout canoe by adding one board of these planks was literally hand- carved out of half a tree-trunk with were cut in the Sierra Madres and to each side to obtain higher floated downstream to Aparri where freeboard. The prototype seems t o an adze. Saws, had they been available, would have been of little they were reduced to baords, and have survived in Taiwan to be des- then carpenters working in teams cribed in the eighteenth century by use for such shaping, especially considering the projecting tambukos of two, one inside the hull and one Huang Shu-ching in the following outside, drilled the holes, laced terms: along one surface. Although these adzes were made of metal during them with barrid rattan, and A mangka is a single tree-trunk holloweo the Spanish period, it is worth caulked them at the rate of P 15 out, with wooden planks fastened on both sides per hole. During the preceding with rattan; since they have no putty for caulk- noting that the same results could ing and water easily enters, the barbarians keep decade, the turtle-eating, seafaring 2 have been attained with neolithic bailing with a ladle. tools. Indeed, there is an elegant Dumagats of Ambos Camarines By incrasing the number of such nephritejade chisel in the National were constructing nine-meter beni- additional planks, a fully developed Museum which could perform such tans by sewing overlapping strakes boat or ship is produced. But as work. together on a keel thirty cm. thick, the sides of the canoe, or banca, are plugging up all the openings after- thinned, some transverse strengthen- Historically, thereare two methods wards with coconut coir and pili ing is required, and this can be by which the planks in plank-built resin. On the rare occasions when provided by running strut-like boats are fastened together — sew- they lived ashore, they simply took thwarth across the vessel, securing ing and edgepegging. Sewing — or, their boats apart and stored them them to the sides without nails by better said, lacing — the boards under the house, ready to reassemble means of tambukos and lashing. together is done by drilling a whenever they had reason to take Similarly, as the number of strakes matching row of holes through the to the sea again. is increased, not only is such tran- two boards near their adjoining Stone tools are probably inade- sverse reinforcement necessary, but edges, and running rattan strips quate for drilling deep holes in the the planks themselves must be firmly through them in the manner of thin edges of boards, and it is attached to one another. For this lacing up a shoe or basketball. This therefore not surprising that edge- purpose, a flexible rib can be is the older technique and it can be pegging does not appear in those pressed down across all of them and performed with even a simple stone distant Pacific islands whose inhabi- lashed securely to the matching or bone drill, as was still being done tants presumably migrated there 18 without metal. Edge pegs do not rudders, and carrying one or more 1598, and Mindanao missionary provide much strength for binding tripod masts mounting a square sail Francisco Combe's, S.J., in 1667, strakes together — for that, tambu- of matting on yards both above and while Manila Auditor Antonio de ko lashing is necessary — though below, with double outriggers on Morga's famous 1609 Sucesos seventeenth-century Spanish accounts which multiple banks of paddlers includes a shorter but perceptive indicate that Philippine edge pegs could provide speed for battle description. But it was Combes's were secured within the planks by conditions, and a raised platform brother of the cloth, Francisco having hardwood nails run through amidships for a warrior contigent Alcina, who recorded the most them, planks and all, after they for ship-to-ship contact. Their tripod valuable description of all in his were in place. But pegs prevent the masts and characteristic S-shaped unpublished 1668 Historia de las planks from sliding lengthwise and outtrigger supports show up in the Islas e Indios de las Bisayas — thus resist the shearing forces exerted ninth-century stone carvings of three capters in which the con- on a vessel as it twists in heavy seas, Borobudur, and their other features struction of the plank-built warship and are therefore sometimes found appear in Chinese, Portuguese, Italian, is set down step by step by a man in ships built on rigid frames in the Dutch, Spanish and English accounts who had actually built some. modern manner. Edge-pegged plank- over a period of half a millenium. built boats are still being constructed To the casual observer familiar in the Batanes Islands with solid Wang Ta - yuan a medieval Chinese with the great Chinese war junks of futtocks and ribs inserted after- author, recognized the essential the Ming Dynasty or the Spanish wards with nails or trenails instead features of the plank- built boat — galleons towering over the native of tambukos, and a Vietnamese i.e., light, flexible and nailless — in caracoas, the plank-built man-o-war specimen with a completely nailess Madura in the early fourteenth looks like a primitive and flimsy hull of handhewn planks arrived in century. Writing at a time when craft indeed. Its planking seems Lubang Island in July of 1981 with the second Butuan boat might still skin thin and its bamboo tripods a thirty-five refugees aboard. But have been afloat, he says: sorry substitute for those oaken tambukos survived the introduction masts which are almost symbols of saws and nails right into this of strength and security in western century: an old boat-builder in They make boats of wooden boards and literature. Their low freeboard and barrio Katuli of Cotabato City fasten them with split rattan, and cotton wide-spreading outriggers crowded recalls kinalawong bancas built in wadding to plug up the seams. The hull is very flexible, and rides up and down on the waves, with seamen outside the hull make this manner with a five-piece hull — and they row them with oars made of wood, them hardly recognizable as ships that is, a dugout canoe base with toa None of them have ever been known to at all. A careful observer like. two boards pegged to each side, break up.3 Pigafetta realized that their hulls with thwarts called tang or balawog were "very well made of boards lashed to them. And the force of with "wooden pegs [though] above tradition is such that tambukos still Pigafetta noted the wooden this they are nothing but very large 5 show up anachronistically in hand- dowels and bamboo outriggers in bamboos," but Ch'uan-chow, Su- hewn bancas in Butuan where they 1521, and Urdaneta gives the perintendent of Trade Chao Jukua, serve no functional purpose what- dimensions of the outriggers five thought they were simply bamboo ever, not even having holes in them. years later: they are six meters rafts. Their paddles with blades shorter than the hull, their supports like dinner plates or elephant ears are three and a half meters long, show up in Chang Hsieh's 1613 THE PLANK-BUILT MAN-O-WAR and the inner-most row of paddlers sailing directions as being "shaped sit about a half meter outside the like a gourd cut in half and left By the time of the European 6 arrival in Southeast Asia in the six- hull. An Italian pilot with Villalo- hollow as waterbailers." Caracoa teenth century, the plank-built boat bos in 1543 reported a ship with seamanship was also inexplicable; had been developed into a highly Negro oarsmen in the Visayas, the sailors were often in the water refined man-o-war, nicely adjusted and the anonymous account of the outside the boat. To bail out a to the tools, techniques, and ma- 1565 Legazpi expedition says of a swamped vessel, for example, they terials available, and local political Bornean three-master taken in went over the side to rock it and and commercial needs. They were Bohol, "It was a ship for sailing slosh out the water with paddles; called korakora in Indonesia, but anyplace they wanted."4 Longer and when emergency speed was caracoas by the Spaniards in the and more detailed accounts were needed, the paddiers on the outrigger Philippines.They were sleek, double- given, in almost identical terms, floats were literally in the water. ended warships of low freeboard by Portuguese Governor Antonio Chang confuses these two actions in and light draft with a keel in one Galvano of the Moluccas in 1544, the following terms; "On occasion, continuous curve, steered by quarter Dutch Admiral Jacob van Neck in the men with these bailers jump 19 into the water to rock the boat and entailing a high risk of banging on strong northeasterly brisas. Outrig- the speed is doubled."7 And who coral reefs, grounding on rocky ger beams also provide support for could imagine that a warship could coasts, or beaching on sandy as many as four banks of paddlers be launched by the simple manoeuver shores. The force of direct under- for high speed in battle, and the of picking it up and running into water blows that would stave in whole outrigger structure provides the surf with it? This outlandish the hull of a rigid vessels, or at the handles by which the crew picks detail reached the remote mainland least loosen its nails, is instantly up a caracoa for beaching and study of scholarly Superintendent redistributed to other parts of the launching. (A hundred men can Chao to be expressed in his 1225 prestressed plank-built hull, and easily carry a five-ton vessel if they comment on Visayan mariners as rattan lashing that comes loose can can get ahold of it.) Speed in launch- follows: easily be tightened again or replaced. ing was an essential feature of self Nails entail a special disavantage of defense for coastal villages exposed They do not travel in boats or use oar, but their own: they loosen as they rust to raiding attacks, for boats were only take bamboo rafts for their trips; they can fold them up like door-screens, so when hard- and induce rot into the surrounding regularly beached high and dry at pressed they all pick them up and escape by wood in the process. Quarter night. Encumbering and destructive swimming off with them. rudders are actually large steering marine weeds accumulate on an ex- But the comparisons are gratui- oars on one or both quarters that posed hull in tropical waters in one tous. The caracoa was not designed can be raised on a moment's notice or two weeks' time, and shipworms — to cross high seas in any weather to avoid underwater obstructions, according to Hernando de Los Rios before any winds, out of sight of and outriggers effectively act as Coronel in 1619— could eat up the land and provisions for months at a fenders against contacts at water hull of a galley anchored in the Pasig time, carrying heavy cargos financed level. Nor is the presence of the River in just twelve months. by international banking houses, tripod mast on the plank-built hull The fact that the caracoa was and even heavier artillery for slugg- mere coincidence. The pliant caracoa double-ended made it extremely ing it out with competitors of their hull precludes the stepping of a tall manoeuverable in battle: its paddlers kind. Rather, they were intended mast into a rigid keel on which it could back it down as rapidly as to carry warriors at high speeds would exert the strain of great drive it forward simply by turning before seasonal winds through leverage: instead, the more agile around in their places and shifting dangerous currents on interisland tripod can safely shift its burden the helm to the other end. Paddles raids and high-profit ventures with the movements within the hull have the advantage of giving direct mounted by harbor princelings with itself. control of the depth, length, and limited capital. For this purpose Outriggers serve a half dozen frequency of stroke —as Fr. Combes they were superbly fitted. If a fair distinct functions in sailing cara- said, "Their paddling is precise comparison is desired, it may be coas. Their most obvious purpose because they strike directly with found in the Viking ships of Scan- is to prevent rolling. They run the paddles right in their hands 9 dinavia. A third-century example just above the surface on a well- without being fastened to anything." excavated in Nydam, Schleswig- trimmed ship — "kissing the water," ,t is the use of paddles, of course, Holstein, has a double-ended hutl as Morga says — and are slanted up- which requires such low freeboard. like the Butuan finds, with one- wards at the ends to lessen water Oars permit greater length and piece strakes lashed to flexible ribs resistance. (The seventeenth-century leverage, and can generally be worked by cleat-lugs. But by the time of Mindanao equivalent of keel-hauling longer than paddles without tiring, the later Butuan boat, the Viking was to tie the culprit to one of the though Fr. Alcina testifies that ship had developed along its own outrigger floats.) They add the Visayans born and raised to the task line of specialization into a heavy, necessary bouyancy to keep a can be relied on to paddle from rigid-ribbed, deepsea vessel capable swamped vessel afloat, and missiona- sunrise to sunset. of withstanding the buffeting of ry accounts contain grateful tales The caracoa's shallow draft makes some of the roughest waters in the of friars being brought safely to it less responsive than deeper vessels world — those of the North Atlantic port by Filipino crews working in to the vicious currents of the narrow between Europe and America. In water up to their necks. Outriggers channels and interisland passages of Southeast Asia, on the other hand, receive the first force of heavy seas the Philippine archipelago whcih specialization ran to speed and on the beam and, if worse comes were the constant bane, and frequent manoeuverability in shallow coastal to worst, come apart first and so undoing, of Spanish galleons. But it waters. give a vessel time to seek shelter is a distinct disadvantage for sailing The flexible hull, curved keel, before breaking up. Thus an anti- in any wind other than one dead shallow draft, quarter rudders, and Moro task force dropped anchor of astern — for which reason South- protective outriggers give the cara- Panay in 1618 when its port out- east Asian trade-raiding was strictly coa life-saving advantages in waters riggers began to be strained by seasonal. With no keel, center-or 20 lee-boards, or large, deep center romba — which Is what the Filipinos call get the chance. As Fr. Combés ac- rudder, and very little hull beneath racataado in Spain, which, for those who do not know it. Is to race — that could keep up curately said, "The care and tech- the water, the caracoa was easily with me, and oftentimes whan I was sailing nique with which they build them blown sideways on a smooth sea near the edge of the sea or some river, I noticed makes their ships sail like birds, and impeded by a choppy one. When that no man could keep up with me no matter how long ha ran along the beach following me. 10 while ours are like lead in com- running before the wind, its speed parison."11 was proverbial — probably twelve European explorers had the good to fifteen knots to a galleon's five sense to use native vessels from the European explorers or six — and a factor in the Su|u very beginning of their invasion of Sultanate's survival as an indepen- Southeast Asia. The ship Magellan's had the good sense dent maritime principality until the friend Francisco Serrano ran aground advent of steam. But with a wind in 1511 had been purchased in to use native vessels on the beam, the caracoa was already Banda, and when Governor Gonzalo from the beginning close-hauled, and it performed Pereira sent some Portuguese of- poorly in rough water in even a ficers to threaten Legazpi in Cebu of their invasion of quartering wind, and could hardly in 1567, they made the trip from tack under any conditions. Thus Ternate in two caracoas. So, too, Southeast Asia. when Commander Morga sailed out when Spanish Governor Acuna at- of Mariveles Bay in October 1600 tacked the Dutch in that island forty in a fresh northwester with choppy years later, they escaped with seas and headed due south to inter- their families in four joangas, a CONSTRUCTION OF THE cept Dutch Admiral Oliver van sort of king-sized caracoa. Legazpi PLANK-BUILT BOAT Noordt off the Batangas coast, himself used Filipino-built and he had to leave his two caracoas Filipino-manned vessels for explor- Chapters 8-10 of Book 3 of Part behind to cross over to Cavité ing the Visayas, and sent Martin de I of Francisco Alcina's unpublished inside Corregidor Island. Goiti to Luzon with fifteen of them Historia de las islas e Indios de las Thissame shallow draft, however, in 1570. Smaller craft called biroco Bisayas are a detailed description was an essential feature of the fine formed part of the Spanish fleet of Visayan ship-building techniques lines of a hull of such hydrodynamic sent to Borneo in 1579, and more in the first half of the seventeenth excellence the caracoa actually of them were stationed below Mani- century. Fr. Alcina was eminently planed with a following wind —that la during a Japanese threat in 1592. qualified to write such a description. is, lifted up in the water. The com- Morga regularly used caracoas as dis- He was a master ship-wright of the mon Philippine barangay shared patch boat and tenders, and by first class himself when he arrived this design, and its performance was 1609 they were in such common in the Philippines in 1632, and by praised in such a pleasant and in- use the Spanish King was moved to the time he wrote his four-volume formative paean by Fr. Alcina that order some improvement in their Historia in 1668, he had built se- it is worth quoting at length: design to protect their overworked veral Philippine vessels himself and indio crews from inclement weather. Let us say something about the speed of traveled thousands of kilometers these ancient boats of the Visayans, which was In the seventeenth century, whole along the coasts of Leyte and Sa- certainly great in a baranggay of one encomen- fleets of them were being built to mar and other Visayan Islands. He dero of these islands called Pedro Mendez, fight fire with fire as Moro Filipi- which — though I did not see it, I heard about was a keen observer of everything it from many who embarked on it many times — nos contested Spanish control of he saw from flora and fauna to was so fast that nobody in it could keep his the Visayas. All the major naval natural phenomena and human footing when they were rowing; even though.it had no more than two banks of paddlers, one engagements joined during Sultan behavior. He spoke the people's on each side, it was of low freeboard and long, Kudarat's long lifetime were fought language, learned their sea chanteys so they struck the water well with their paddles. by opposed fleets of plank-built and folklore, and more than once It used to travel by paddling between sunrise and sunset from the town of Paranas —. where men-o-war with a thousand-year pe- saved galleons from grounding in many of these barangays are made, and the digree. And the six boats Captain San Bernardino Straits by the ex- same Filipino expert who made them made me Francisco de Atienza carried up to pertise he had acquired. And he a little one — to the City of Cebu, where the said Pedro Mendez had his house, this being Marawi in pieces in 1639 and admired Filipino ship-building skills a distance of more than forty leagues between reassembled on Lake Lanao were warmly and entrusted his life to leaving the one town as the sun was rising and genuine Philippine pre-fabs, too. their seamanship gladly. His des- reaching the other before it set, which seems unbelievable since they were traveling at more Hernando de los Rios Conronel cription of their methods of con- than four leagues an hour, but the number of once remarked that a caracoa was a structing plank-built boats is as withnesses leaves no room for doubt And I experienced practically the same thing in this boat that could be sunk with one follows. little barangay which was made in the same oar of a galley. As a matter of strict The master shipwright is called town, for I never mat another boat and made fact, Spanish galleys did not often a panday, a title he shares with 21

Fig Z Construction details of plank -built other craftsmen like iron-workers the necessary tambukos projecting edge-pegs hull. and goldsmiths. He goes to the for seating thwarts or ribs called forest with his ax, a straight adze agars with rattan. A good panday called a da/lag, a curved one called a can make such a hull nine or ten bintong, and a spoon-bit called a meters long and a meter and a Planks being assembled with edge pegs. lokob about twenty cm. long with half wide working by himself in a wooden handle across it, and just eight or ten days. selects his tree. Lawaan is preferred Such a boat carved out of a because it is a strong hardwood single piece of wood is called a which grows large enough for a baroto — what the Tagalogs call a canoe 120 cm. wide to be hewn banca, Fr. Alcina says — or a out of a single trunk. In the Philip- ba/asiyan. (Some are small enough pines, tropical trees generally have a for one man to lift.) Usually a punky center — the Visayans called baroto or banca has one board it bokag — caused by a fungous added to each side — indeed, this infection which enters through the may be the basic meaning of root system and eventually rots and bangka, for Taiwanese boats of this splits the trunk. The center must build observed by Fukienese coast therefore be rejected, though the guard officer Chu Wen-ping in two halfs will be solid timber if 1662 were called mangkas or the tree is carefully selected the vangkas. Since the boards them- outer four or five centimeters are selves are called timbaw, the baroto also rejected as being aramay — is now technically tinimbaw. To in- soft, spongey, or fibrous — and crease freeboard, from twenty to liable to grubs and wood-lice. forty cm. of opak or dagpak (Fr. Alcina accepts the Filipino bark may be added to the gunwales Planks bound together by rattan building belief that if a tree is cut during and secured with thin stips and between lugs (tambuko) the dark of the moon — say, after nails of rattan, or plaited palm the 22nd of the month - the leaves may be added as washboards aramay will crumble to dust in called dolopi. But if the sides three days, but that if the tree is themselves are raised high enough cut in the moonlight, even the for cargo-carrying purposes to re- worst-infested aramay will not quire oars instead of paddles, infect the rest of the trunk.) the boat is called abirok or biroco. Since the tree is too large to be In Fr. Alcina's day, these birocos moved conveniently on the ground, were being replaced by champans it is felled in just the position of Chinese design, except for short the panday wants. Then he marks trips in local waters. It is impracti- out straight guidelines along it cal, however, to build larger vessels with a cord called a kutur, and on dugout canoe bases, so those sets to work. above ten meters or so are con- The entire outer form of the structed on squared keels as real Flexible rib lashed in place across all edge-pegged, plank-built boats. This planks. hull is adzed to shape before hol- lowing out the inside — sharp at the is the size and style which was bottom like a keel, pointed at both known by the famous name of ends, and V-shaped amidships with barangay or balangay, although the sides no thicker than a board. Tagalog version was sewed or laced, (The adze is evidently sometimes not edge-pegged. Largest of all are used like a chisel, for Fr Alcina the full-fledged warships called ca- says it is hammered with a mallet racoas, among which the joanga called a pakang.) to check the appears as an oversized model for progress of the thinning process as special duty, the term itself probably he works, the panday keeps boring deriving from the huge, triple- holes through the sides with the planked Malay jong. A joanga that lokob, all of which will be plugged retired up the Pasig River with a up water-tight later. Then the crew of more than 300 in the interior is hollowed out, leaving face of Goiti's attack in 1570 was 22 probably a royal flagship providing struction because it is their flare original adzing may have left in maximum security for the person and curvature which will deter- the upper edge of the lower board. of rajah Solayman or Rajah Acheh mine the final contour of the hull The wood below this line can now Matanda. and the consequent speed of the be removed to leave a chink be- vessel. For this reason, they are tween the two planks of constant It is to be noted that the flat- distinguished by special terms: the thickness from one end to the or round-bottomed Butuan boats, garboard strake is called dokot and other. This chink is then stuffed lacking either a real keel or a the next one lonor. The curvature with pugahan- or idiok-palm fibers canoe base, do not fit any of these itself is called lubag and the skill called barok, as fine as goat's hair, categories, though they are within to produce it is the hallmark of and the planks are ready for os-os the barangay size range. In addi- the master panday. Additional tightening. tion, they display another unique planks are then added with mangle, Os-os means to prevent some- feature — the center plank which bane (the trunk of the anahawis thing from sliding up or down by serves as a keel has two or three plam) or brazilwood dowels every pulling against it with cords: the thin tambukos parallel to one twenty cm. to a total of six or more belt a weaver uses with the back- another instead of the broad ones boards on a side, depending on the strap loom to keep tension on the appearing on the adjoining planks, size of the boat. (Three to five warp threads is called an os-osan. though of the same length and appear to be normal for a baran- In boat-building, the term means thickness. This special feature has gay.) The tambukos have already to run stout rattan lines under the not been encountered elsewhere — been carved out, of course — twen- hull, fastening them securely at invessels with true keels, that is — t y cm. long and six to seven cm. both ends to logs laid across the and may therefore be intended to thick on top but flush with the gunwales. Wedges are then driven facilitate additional lashings at the surface of the plank below, and a into the ends of each log, splitting critical point where the ribs cross the meter to a meter and a half apart. them enough to increase their di- keelplank. (They are therefore thicker, shorter, mension and so draw the rattan Construction of the caracoa be- and farther apart than the Butuan lines tight. While the planks are gins with a keel of hard, red bara- specimens.) under this tension, their "eyelids yong or tugas wood. Since this are closed" (napirnga) by pamota. may be more than twenty-five Now the shell is left to season This is done by driving holes through meters long and has a gentle curve for a month or two, carefully the pegs in each plank, locating in profile — both Combes and elevated to avoid infestation by them by marks inscribed on the English privateer William Dampier termites. When it is sufficiently planks beforehand, by the use of call Philippine warships "half-moon dried out, the planks are removed a little tool like a nail punch with shaped" — its product demands one by one and all the broken pegs square cross section. The nails considerable skill and manpower. — 'which are many" — removed themselves are square pins four cm. It is small wonder that Filipino and replaced. Then it is reassembled long of ipil, a strong wood which- shipwrights could handily lay out in three distinct stages called produces a resin in salt water which and construct and thirty-meter mast sugi (' matching"), os-os ("tigh- remains so- sticky the pegs may ten meters in circumference for a tening"), and pamota ("closing"). break off but the pins themselves Manila galleon with no more Sugi is accomplished with a little never loosen. Then the os-os equip- Spanish assistance than a few wooden tool that acts like a scribe: ment is removed and the planks soldiers to keep them working with- it has a sharp iron point two to are left so tight you can hardly see out pay. The keel is extended at three mm. above a projecting the joints between them, Fr. Alcina both ends about a meter by stems tongue or lip, and is small enough says, and the whole hull is as of the same wood mortised into it, to fit in the palm of the hand. After strong as if carved from a single which continue its graceful lines the planks have been put together block of wood. into serpent-like projections at both again but not hammered tight, a Now, the shell having been prow and stern which are gaily carpenter with a strong grip places finished, the hull itself is completed decorated for full-dress occasions. the little lip on the upper edge of by the insertion of ribs and thwarts. Because of this curve, as much as a a board with the point biting into The thwarts are smoothed branches fifth of the total length of the the side of the board above. Then of wood chosen for its strength, vessel may be but of the water. he runs it from stem to stern both toughness, and light weight, with inside and out, applying enough one or two holes at each end. Next comes the carving of the pressure to incise a sharp line along By means of these holes they are first two boards to be fitted to the upper board near its lower lashed across the boat between the keel on either side, the most edge. This mark naturally repro- matching pairs of tambukos in crucial stage in the entire con- duces whatever irregularities the corresponding strakes, seated on 23

Fig 3. Superstructure of a Visayan caracoa. the tambukosthemselves. Fr. Alcina a more rigid vessel of these propor- ment that Filipino mariners are says they look like the rungs tions could hardly endure, But willing to sail with only one plank of a ladder running from stem to since these thwarts are only a meter above the water, or even "three stern — as the tambu kos themselves or so apart down the whole length fingers" in the case of small boats, look like a little flight of steps up of the boat, and occur between or with bark or palmleaf wash- the inside of the hull from keel to each set of strakes from keel to boards half submerged. Yet the gunwale. On the uppermost of gunwale, the hold has little space caracoa carries a considerable load these thwarts the paddlers sit, and for cargo. This configuration calls of superstructure. The one taken in to all of them the longitudinal attention to the fact that the Bohol in 1565 "had three decks, and upright elements of the super- caracoa is a man-o-war, not a although there was little space 12 structure are lashed. The ribs merchantman. between one deck and another," also have holes in both ends, by The caracoa hull is shallow and some observed in the Visayas which they are lashed to the enough in contour to draw very in 1543 were "well wrought and uppermost tambukos opposite one little water and to assure low nicely adorned, and the lords were another after they have been enough freeboard for four-foot seated above and down below some forced down in an arc and lashed paddles to reach the waves. This negroes with kinky hair, according 13 to each plank they cross by braided shallow -draft not only gives the to their stations." rattan bindings — or palm fibers, caracoa a vital advantage over the The superstructure begins with in the case of the Butuan boat — Spanish galley, but in the seven- the outrigger supports. Four or which pass though the tambuko teenth century guaranteed the more crossbeams called batangan, holes and over the ribs. The caracoa Maguindanaoans almost complete square or round in cross section hull generally has a very narrow freedom of action in the labyrin- and extending at least a meter beam-to-length ratio of one to thine estuaries of the Pulangi beyond each gunwale, are lashed to eight, or even one to ten, and this River delta during their defense of thwarths. Fastened to both ends of interior bracing enables it to resist that territory against foreign inva- each of these with large square shearing and twisting forces which sion. All European observers com- pegs and rattan bindings are one or 24

two outrigger supports of mangle cane-decked platforms or catwalks along the side, or decoratively wood called tadik — parallel to each running the length of the vessel carved railings. Such railings, covered other with the batangan in be- called burulan. The middle one with canvas guards, saved Spanish tween, if there are two. These serves as an actual deck for the soldiers from poisoned arrows in tadiks are shaped like a letter-S sailors handling the rigging and 1570 when Juan de Salcedo was lying on its side, with the middle the persons and cargo of important attacking a Batangas&ofa in Balayan of the S crossing the end of the passengers like the master himself, from the deck of a Panay caracoa. batangan, the inner arm rising or a rajah with his entourage of A tripod mast is technically above it and fastened to it nearer ladies — seated on a still higher not a mast at all but what nautical the hull, the outer arm curving platform — and is just enough terminology — and Dr. Morga — downward to hold the outrigger narrower than the full beam of the call shares — two poles fastened floats at water level. The floats vessel to leave room for the paddlers. together like an inverted letter-V themselves — kates — are two, The other two burulans are narrower for use as a derrick. In caracoas three, or four thick bamboos (though still wide enough to sleep they are made either of wood or extending to within two or three on),far enough outboard to overhang bamboo, and their legs stand on meters of both prow and stern the hull, and high enough to clear the darambas pivoted on a pin at least two meters away from the the heads of the paddlers when which permits them to be lowered hull, slightly raised forward to they stand up to enter, leave, or to decrease wind resistance in reduce water resistance. The batan- handle cargo. Because of this con- adverse weather. The third leg gans carry one or two darambas, figuration, the two outboard buru- stands on the centerline, forward. bamboo or split-bamboo seats run- lans are called pagguray - "eye- (What is probably the foot of ning fore-and-aft for additional brows." All three burulans serve such a mast recovered at Butuan is banks of paddlers — or actual as fighting platforms for the ship's fifteen cm. in diameter and has a oarsmen if an inner daramba is marines, but especially the two 2.5 hole running through it.) The too high for the use of paddles. paggurays, and all have planks caracoa carries two, or sometimes, Inboard, the batangans carry three standing on edge like strakes three, such tripods, each mounting 25

one huge rectangular sail wider with long slender blade was coming SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY than high, kept taut between two into use in the seventeenth cen- FILIPINO SEAMANSHIP bamboo yardarms, a shape Fr. tury and was called a gayong. So, Alcina considers an advantage in too, the center rudder beneath a sailing close to the wind. Run- raised stern was replacing the one- It need hardly be said that the ning rigging is simple — a block and or two quarter-rudder steering oars — two or three thousand Spaniards tackle (bognoson) for raising and or four in joangas — as early as who occupied the Philippines at lowering the sail, and braces of Morga's time, and the western-type any one time could not have done rattan rope at the ends of the ram was being constructed on so without the Filipino manpower yards. The sail itself is made of Philippine bows before 1600. and skill to build their galleons, matting woven of gaong, buri, The caracoa carries four to six teach their pilots how to get them or nipa fibers, or the burlap-like banks of paddlers of twelve to in and out of Philippine waters, growth called gonot which forms twenty men each, and can add two and then sail them across the frigid between the fronds of certain more by manning the bamboo upper latitudes of the Pacific. palms. Filipinos seem not t o have outrigger floats for emergency Early seventeenth-century attempts used cloth for their sails, although manoeuvers like outdistancing pur- to construct ordinary Spanish ves- the Manila galleons were regularly suers. Galvano reports royal joangas sels produced some noteworthy propelled across the Pacific on in the Moluccas with 200 oarsmen disasters. Seven galleons built in llocano canvas woven on back- to a side in addition to 100 men-at- 1610 to keep colonial competitors strap looms. Such matting is also arms, and four joangas which away from Philippine shores, so used for an awning called a kayang attacked Fort Gazang, Marinduque, huge that the mast for one of them which covers the whole working as late as 1754 were reported — cost the labor of 6,000 Filipinos space of the vessel and elicits ad- somewhat hysterically, perhaps — for four months, were lost at sea miring praise from European obser- to be carrying 500 Moros each. without ever seeing action. Medi- vers: sun and rain, Fr. Alcina But such large crews must have terranean-style galleys could not aphorizes, "are the two great reached or exceeded the optimum 14 keep up with Filipino men-o-war enemies of sailors." point between manpower and dead or follow them into shoal waters, weight, for the ordinary Philippine and their oars were too heavy for Paddles are called bugsey and are man-o-war rarely carried more than underfed Filipino slaves on con- about a meter or 120 cm. long, a hundred. A Bohol Chieftain was victs to handle: two of them with a leaf-shaped blade twenty buried in the early 1560s with dropped dead in 1606 after six by forty cm. — sometimes used seventy slaves as crewmen for his hours of rowing. Once the Dutch as a chopping board for preparing voyage into the afterlife, Procura- threat was removed, however, the meals — and a cross-bar handle at tor Rios Coronel thought eighty to Spanish settled down to building the top. Sailors take pride in the a hundred was normal in 1619, heavy galleons to transship Chinese manufacture of their own paddles, and Italian Jesuit Marcelo Mastrilli goods over the Manila-Acapulco and carve out pony-sized ones for traveled in a caracoa with ninety run, and light caracoas to fight their sons as soon as they are old oars in 1637. The Spaniards used independent Filipinos in the South- enough to hold one. Good paddling still smaller ones in their Moro ern part of the archipelago. requires athletic coordination and, Wars: a fleet of thirty to forty All these ships were built by raw long practice, and the outcome of outfitted in Cebu and Oton. in 1627 Filipinos manpower, but also by a naval engagements can be decided carried only, 1,600 Filipinos and certain amount of skilled labor on by the discipline of precise timing 200 Spaniards. The fighting elite the part of Filipino coopers, to the rhythm of sea chanteys or who manned the burulan decks in caulkers, smiths, and master carpen- the beat of a brass gong. Longer these warships counted less than ters. The Manila government was paddles called gaors for use in a quarter of the ship's total com- rarely, if ever, solvent enough to birocos or from the "upper deck" plement. But hte whole crew, meet royally approved pay scales, of caracoas are actually oars, with oarsmen" and all, were fighters in but at least the scales themselves thole-pins in the gunwales slanted shore raids and were promoted reflect official assessment of such toward the stern, a feature Fr. from outboard to inboard in skills. In 1619, for example, a day Alcina considers an improvement recognition of their valor in action.. when the minimum wage for forced over the European model which And they enjoyed the prestige of labor was set at P.03 a day plus permits a careless oar to slip off. knights or samurai in prehispanic rations — and a first-class slave The blade of a gaor is shaped like a Philippine society. They were called cost P80 — a Filipino shipwright large dinner plate and fashioned timawa — a term which quick- who could lay out a mast or yardarm from a separate piece of wood. ly degenerated under Spanish was supposed to receive P3 to P4 a In addition, the foreign-style oar domination into "commoner." month and a double ration of rice. 26

atmosphere, the hue, thickness, and Taiwan in sight of mountain configuration of clouds, the direct- peaks almost the whole way, and Filipino mariners did ions-, force and steadiness of winds, when Visayan caracoas raided the not practice celestial and the colors of the sun and moon— Fukien coast at the end of the Fr. Alcina says — they could predict twelfth century, that is just where navigation... Their typhoons three" or four days in the Chinese thought they came observations... were advance, and, less accurately, the from. amount of moisture to be ex- But the nautical skill which for meteorological pected a whole season in advance. made the Filipino seaman absolute- They knew the Chinese mariner's ly indispensable to galleon shipping purposes: by the compass —they called it padaloman, was his knowledge of the power- appearance of the literally, "place for the needle" — ful and capricious currents of but used it mainly at night-time. Philippine seas. A current flows atmosphere; the For the most part, they navigated down the east coast of Mindanao, by piloting — that is, by proceeding for example, at about the speed of hue, thickness and from one landfall to another, fol- a Spanish galleon, and in the configuration of lowing island chains wherever they sixteenth century effectively doomed wished to go. Even when islands all survivors of the Loaysa, Saavedra clouds; the direction, cannot actually be seen, their and Villalobos expeditions to Portu- presence is betrayed by ocean guese or Filipino captivity because force and steadiness currents, floating objects, the move- they could get no wind to oppose it. ment of birds or fish, and especial- Ships could be spun around 180° in of winds; and the ly cloud formations on the horizon the terrifying whirlpools off the colors of the sun and the kind of lightning they dis- northwest corner of Samar, and play. Magellan's survivors took the unwary boats were literally held and the moon.... Victoria from Cebu to what is captive for days at a time before now Indonesia by sailing from one being broken up on coral reefs. And in 1636 when the price of rice island to another, and in Timor Worst of all were the San Bernardino was fluctuating between P.50 and 1 they found a Luzon ship which Straits between Luzon and Samar — per cavan and a Filipino seaman's had no doubt got there by the same rushing torrents of water through wages were P4 a month and fifteen method. Similarly, Luzon traders which the colony's mercantile life- gantas of rice, a Filipino master carried their gold, wax, and honey line passed as if between the blades blacksmith in the Cavite shipyards to Malacca by passing down the of coral knives. No Spanish captain was listed at P8.50 and fifty gantas north coast of Borneo — where, could hope to get a returning of rice. Only Visayan pandays were as a matter of fact, they were galleon through, that channel after taken on at this rate with no pre- most probably business partners of the vendavales started blowing vious experience in government the Sultan of Brunei to begin with. from the southwest without a yards, however, and Fr. Alcina has Even the mainland coast of China dozen Filipino boats as tugs and a preserved the names of two of them— can be reached by following the good Samareno pilot at his elbow. Figuman and Francisco' Polacay of Babuyanes and Batanes Islands to Such pilots were sometimes Palapag. Another testimony to the rewarded with princely sums like value of the Filipino carpenter P100 or P200, contributed on the was the number carried in Spanish ...the nautical skill spot by greateful passengers — P50 fleets: of the 700 Filipinos lost in which made Filipino from a general, slightly less from the Singapore expedition of 1616, an admiral or commander, and P6 200 were carpenters. Nor was their seaman absolutely or pf*8 each from investors with presence in shipyards ignored by cargo aboard. But, alas, colo- Moros destroying Spanish galleons indispensable to nial abuse eventually made it on the ways — 400 were carried off difficult to obtain such expert in one raid alone in 1617. galleon shipping services. An arrogant Piloto Mayor Filipino mariners did not practice was his knowledge who ran the San Francisco Javier celestial navigation, though Visayans aground at Borongan in 1655, for distinguished the major constella- of the powerful and example, rewarded a Filipino pilot tions to set their agricultural ca- capricious currents who saved the galleon Concepción lendars. Their observations of the for him thirteen years later with heavens were for meteorological of Philippine seas. nothing more than a blow with a purposes: by the appearance of the cane. It is perhaps not surprising 27 that public opinion in the Philip- them to four or five per vessel, English may serve as a reminder pines attributed the loss of the San and strung up offenders from water- that the Filipino people were a Francisco Javier to God's judgment front gibbets as a warning to their maritime people connected, not on the cruelties connected with fellows. separated, by interisland channels building it — and pleasant to Filipino seamanship and the im- and seas. Filipinos and their culture record that the only silver recovered portance of seafaring in seven- passed throughout the archipelago from it went directly into the teenth-century Visayan life is nicely by sakay, -and the connecting pockets of Filipino salvagers. illustrated by a contemporary dic- links are called bungalos, channels Filipino seamanship was appre- tionary like Mentrida's 1637 Boca- between islands. Indications in the ciated by the colonial regime from bulario. It is significant at the water of safe channels are sibir, the days when Morga used to send outset that boats seem to dominate and the dark waters which indicate his caracoas out with only one the author's consciousness even the presence of shoals are halum. Spaniard aboard. Laws of. naviga- when he is not defining nautical Ordinarily, the Filipino sailor stays tion and commerce promulgated in terms. Hugut, for example, he within sight of land if possible, 1620 took it for granted that any defines as "something taut, like though there is a special terms for Filipino born along the seacoast the rigging of a ship," and kilikol a small boat putting out to sea — was qualified to ship out as a com- as "to fasten one thing to another, lu-aw. Hamgir is to follow the mon seaman on government vessels, like a boat towed astern," and he coast, and oway is to track a vessel and the sailors of Malate were gives andoloy as "fast, like a ship" — that is, pull it along the shore renowned for carrying Manila mer- despite the fact that there is a or riverbank by a rope. To steer chants to Cavite in any weather special adjective for the swiftness directly toward some point like a without ever having lost a passenger of ships — makilas. Not surprisingly, tree or peak, or a star, is tuhur, and or his goods. Galleons sailed in some nutical terms are extended to to proceed from one point to another those days with an equal number more general meanings, while others without tacking or changing course of Filipino and European deck- provide the bases for colorful is tagal. hands — about seventy each, count- metaphorical ¡mages. Sangkap, for Paddling — or rowing — is the ing the Spanish guners — but by instance, is to equip a ship with its basic method of sakay and has a the 1720s Filipinos outnumbered full crew, while kasangkapan is by well-developed vocabulary. To row the others two to one. By the extension, "everything needed for backwards without turning around middle of the eighteenth century something", and dapak, the sheath- in your seat is sibug, and to row at they had won such a reputation ing of a ship's hull, also means forced speed is sagaysay. The abroad that there was hardly a To steal in the presence of the sound of such fast rowing or Spanish ship in European waters owner" — perhaps like English, paddling is hagulut, but striking which did not have some on board. "to fleece." Conversely, a common the side of the boat is hakdol A memorial written in 1765 by word may also be given a special or dakoldakol, and to splash Francisco Leandro de Viana says nautical meaning: ulat "scar," can water in the process is bungkalis. three is no people in the whole mean either to raise a scar or to Lamba or lumba is an actual race world more dexterous on ship- raise a sail. However, as Visayan life between boats. Paddle-power is board, or quicker to learn nautical styles changed over the centuries, also used to assist a vessel under terms or skills, a judgment echoed so did the Visayan vocabulary. The sail. This is called dalabay in by another Spanish author sixty modern word lawig includes general, but if it is done primarily years later: a Filipino will lern as tethering and pasturing cattle, and to keep wind in the sails when much seamanship with a few days' sailing and travel in general, but close-hauled, then it is called practice as a European does in used to be defined: sogot. To sail at top speed lightly twenty years. Viana also says of Lawig: for a caracoa to drop loaded — for scouting, for example, the Acapulco run, "There is hardly anchor, even if not in port, and it or to deliver messages — is langpas, an indio who does not under- refers to the ship, or the people and a special boat for this purpose stand the mariner's compass, and on it; lawigon: the anchor cable; is lampitaw, such as a Spanish therefore on this trade-route there lalawigan; to let out the cable a attack force sends out in advance. are some very skillful and dexterous Only two winds are distinguished 15 bit; lawigan is the anchorage, helsmen." By the nineteenth which is usually a port but not in relation to a vessel underway century, Filipinos were migrating in necessarily. — tampiyok, a head wind, and such numbers to sell their skills Sakayan is the basic term for tolot or solosor, a following wind outside the Philippines that other boat or ship, and its root is sakay, ("as is necessary," the Bocabulario colonial regimes placed restrictions to travel by water, whether by comments). In the case of tampi- on employing them. In 1827, for paddling, rowing, or sailing. The yok, the ship lowers its mast with example, the British in India limited absence of any such word in sail furled around it (hagukun) 28 and removes its awning to reduce or outside the shoals, hampil is to the sea, in short, for purposes wind resistance. (Awnings are carried to anchor inshore with the bow of trade. But raiding was also an away often enough for the process touching the beach, and bulibuli endemic part of their interisland to have its own term — (kakas or mulibu/i is to moor by a stern contacts. The Bacabulario defines or katkat.) Then it proceeds line. Hangiya or sangiya isto beach bangga as "for two or more vessels against the wind —• somlol or a boat, or to beach it enough so to attack or assault each other in sompong — by manpower. To that it looks like a crocodile with battle, either bacause their crews strike sails suddenly, however, its head on the snad and its tail in intend to fight, or by chance," because of high wind, to anchor, the water. Sakay is to embark and and abay as "ships in convoy, or or for tactical purposes, is landak. kawas or hawas to disembark or any enterprise for which people For a vessel to be delayed by unload cargo, and cargo itself is promise to stick together unto adverse winds is bungbung, and to lolan, though cargo stowed on the death." Moreover, as befits a real be carried adrift or off course by 'upper deck" bun/Ian for special maritime culture, Philippine ships eigher wind or current is pilpil, handling is orong or tampapaw. and boats partake of the sacred. or samapay if actually driven To shift or remove cargo to find The common baroto without out- ashore. something or get water out of the riggers is used for a form of divina- The effects of the sea on Philip- hold is bungkal, but to do so for tion called kibang: the occupants pine shipping have a rich vocabula- the purpose of trimming the ship sit perfectly still amidships and the ry of their own. Of the four basic to an even keel is kankan. As the diwata (spirit) answers their ques- motions of a ship at sea — yawing, boat is loaded it naturally sinks tions by rocking the boat. And the pitching, rising and falling, and deeper in the water — lobo — and great war caracoas which the Chinese rolling — the first three are distin- if it is down by the bow, it is said made the name Visaya a terror guished as waling, powat or limpo- sukmur. But added buoyancy may to all the islanders of the Eastern wat, and luyan, but rolling is be given it by lashing bamboos Sea, were dedicated with human restricted to kiyakiya, "the rolling along the hull — kilikili. If the sacrifices: damilit is to lie on the of a boat without outrigers." For vessel is small, the captain himself ground prostrate, and mamamilit waves to pound a vessel is amuk, — toway or tomoway — will be in is to launch a ship over a slave in and to drop one on shore, shoals, or charge of. all cargo, but if it is that posture. reefs is buntar. Dapiya, dalapiya or large enough, it will have a tugub tapowak is the general term for des- — supercargo or pursur. Joint THE ROLE OF BOATS truction of all kinds - breaking up ownership is tapi. A busy port IN PHILIPPINE SOCIETY in heavy seas, beaching, striking will have boats under repair, too. reefs or rocks — while sanglar is Tokor is to put a ship in drydock Boats supplied almost all the grounding or failing in less drama- — that is, shore it up with blocks Filipino's personal transportation tic ways. Tokbol is to strike sub- under the keel. Lombo is to remove needs from carrying basura out to merged obstructions while under- and replace some of the planks, fertilize his crops to attending way, sigaksak to run aground on balarbar is a more extensive refitting weddings or wakes. The farmers of a sandbar or reef and be stranded by replacing the planks on both Bantayan Island went to farm their or broken up, and bungkag is to be sides, and ungkag is to strip it right fields in Cebu, and the miners destroyed in a flood. In distress, down to the keel, rebuilding it of Camarines to work the gold dagdag is to jettison cargo, hinubig with the old or new planks, or deposits of Masbate, by boat. is to work pumps or bail, and constructing a smaller vessel on the But mainly, Philippine boats were laka is for tambukos to be broken same keel, or even scuttling it. A used for four purposes — fishing, off or stems to be loosened from boat so old it actually becomes a trade, warfare, and a combina- the keel. Tikyaob is to capsize, useless derelict is an apal. tion of the last two which the polang is to be lost at sea with all The maritime vocabulary also Spaniards called piracy but which hands without a trace, but sangbat permits an insight into ancient might more meaningfully be called — happily — is to go to a distressed Philippine culture deeper than the trade-raiding. Fishing has always vessel's aid or pick up survivors mere details of nutical archi- provided the major source of protein or exhausted swimmers. tecture and boat handling techni- for ' coast-dwelling Filipinos, but Another set of terms enables us ques. Sakay is to embark and travel local waters are too rich in this to picture the waterfront of a port by water, but the motivation for food to offer much incentive for like Butuan — so busy, perhaps, such embarcation and travel is the development of large and com- that men pass from one boat to revealed by another form of the plex vessels. A barangay with only another across the outriggers — same word, hinakay — to pay two or three planks on a side will tapon. The anchorage itself is the freightage, rent a boat, or take satisfy most meeds, or even a baro- lawigan. Awil is to anchore offshore passage in one. Filipinos took to with nothing more than woven 29 sawali sides coated with beeswax or middle of the century, Luzones which the Chinese called Mao- almaciga sap. It was trade that were no longer sailing direct to li-wu, whose ruler sent a Muslim supported the Filipino boat-builder, China if ever they had done so. emissary to China in 1405. And by whether hewing out one-man canoes Instead, they were dominating or the sixteenth, Chinese merchants for carrying a bunch of bananas monopolizing the resale of Chinese were delivering their wares direct to the next barrio, or constructing goods within the archipelago which to Manila By under contract to sea-going cruisers for handling such had been carried to Luzon in Rajah Lakan Dula of Tondo whence luxury cargo as gold, slaves, and Fukienese junks. One of them told they were retailed for local con- Chinese porcelains. A consideration Legazpi that: sumption in native outriggers. of this trade, together with its since what they carry are goods from China, they call boats from Borneo and Luzon Chinese The picture of Philippine domes- related activities of warfare and junks In these islands, and even they themselves tic trade, however, is rather clearer raiding, suggests that it inspired are called Chinese among these islands, but in — every community traded with fact Chinese junks do not reach there [Butuan] the refinement of the plank-built because they are very big ships not fit for other communities, and most of caracoa, justified the capital in- sailing between these islands.16 them did it by boat. The inter- vestment of building and main- Thus it does not appear that the barrio feuding which appears as taining one, and made possible China-Philippine trade was con- endemic in Spanish accounts might whatever political vassalage existed ducted in Philippine bottoms. That suggest at first reading that such between Filipinos in different is- plank-built boats were able to barrios were perforce isolated from lands. do so is clear, but that they were one another and therefore self- In the early sixteenth century, regularly used for this purpose is sufficient. But the same accounts Manila — or, more accurately, not. We know that Visayan cara- specifically name the betrayal or Luzon — was the only point in the coas were on the Fukien coast amicable intercourse as the major archipelago regularly sending Filipi- in the twelfth century. Governor cause for war —"If a Filipino goes no traders to foreign ports. New Wang Ta-yu of Ch'uan-chow was to a town and they kill him there converts to Islam, these "Luzones" eye-witness to a raid by three without cause," as Loarca says, carried gold, wax, honey and chiefs with several hundred fol- "or if they friends and they offend foodstuffs to their partners or lowers sometime between 1174 or maltreat them there and commit kinsmen in Borneo, picked up and 1189; he said "the Visayan treachery against them under cover 18 camphor, and proceeded to Malacca complexion is as dark as lacquer, of firendship." If there were for Indian textiles, hardware and so their tattoos can hardly be any Filipino communities which jewelry. They traded as far south as seen."17 Two centuries earlier, in suppliedall theirown food, clothing, Timor, and were the easternmost 982, Mindoro merchants appeared tools and weapons, Spanish accounts agents of a larger network which on the Canton coast with mer- do not describe them. Rather, the included the colony of 500 of their chandise for sale, but the Chinese total impression is one of continual countrymen at Minijam, 250 kilo- report of the contact is too brief to movements of rice, camotes, bananas, meters up the west coast of Malay- reveal whether they arrived in their coconjts, wine, fish, game, salt and sia from Malacca, and such notables own ships or not. At any event, in cloth between coastal barrios — to as the Tumenggong of Malacca, the thirteenth and fourteenth cen- say nothing of iron, gold, jewelry, Arejimute Raja, who regularly sent turies, Ma-i on the southern coast porcelain, and slaves. That is no vessels to Siam, Sunda and China, of Mindoro opposite Hin Island was doubt why the Suluan Filipinos' or Curede Raja who dispatched his an entreport for foreign merchant- first reaction to Magellan's appear- annual jong to China laden with men, and from there these imports ance on Homonhon was to go pepper. It is not insignificant that were redistributed by domestic home and get two boatloads of Tome Pires, describing the great shipping. The cotton cloth from coconuts and bananas to sell him. Chinese metropolis of Canton before Ma-i which was noted on the west When the Spaniards reached the the Portuguese rached that port, coast of the Malay Peninsula in the Philippines, the main long-range ends with the note, "So the Luzones 1349 Tao I Chih Li/eh was there- trade item was rice. Cebu was a say who have been there." An fore probably delivered by non- redistribution center for the Visa- Italian pilot of the Villalobos Filipino traders, no doubg of the yas, drawing supplies from as expedition has left a tantalizing same sort as those who flooded the far away as the east coats of Minda- hint of possible direct trade with Philippines with so much Sung, nao, and Panay, which was second the Chinese mainland — an oared Yuan, Ming and Sawankhalok por- only to Manila in output. Rajah vessel encountered in Visayan waters celain that hundreds of thou- Katuna of Bohol received a boat- in 1543 that boasted of making the sands of pieces have survived. load of rice from a Leyte vessal in China run in five or six days, but, By the fifteenth century, Ma-i Cabalian during Legazpi's visit in alas, with no mention of its port of had been eclipsed by another April 1565, and that Adelantado origin. Whatever the case, by the trading port in northern Mindoro himself only survived a two-year 30

attempt by Cebuanos to starve him most impressive demonstration of log dictionary of 1613. There, out because of Moro deliveries from Filipino merchandising was the tapa shows up as capital or com- Manila at inflated prices. (It may be delivery of imported trade porce- pany (e.g., Mag kano ang iniyong worth noting that both these lains to every Filipino language pinagtapa? —[How much have each Surigao-Cebu and Leyte-Bohol rice group from Bontoc to Bohol, of you put in the company?] lines could be controlled from a from Manila to Marawi — war- Momolong salapi ang aming pinag- little island called Limasawa where making, slave-raiding or head-taking tapa — [We are each putting in ten the Rajah of Butuan and his brother as they may have been. This is a tostones as capital] ). Angka means Kolambu used to go "hunting.") distribution achieved by no other to corner the market, and a dozen The Manila Bay area was supplied product until American colonial terms for the usury to finance such from four Pampanga towns with power made twentieth-century mar- ventures start with laba, 20 percent controlled irrigation — Betis, Lubao, keting techniques feasible. Rajah (pagihit if calculated monthly, Guagua and Mexico — except dur- Kolambu winded and dined Piga- ganda if annually), and range up to ing February and March when fetta out of Chinese porcelain, ibayiw, 100 percent, and dalawa- llocano shipping brought it from and when Magellan requested rice, lima, 150 percent. The underlying both the llocos and Cagayan. The presented him with unhusked palay ethic of this economy is probably Bikolanos even had a word for load- in Chinese porcelain. Such jars and to be found in the word bitang ing rice directly in to a ship's hold plates were priced in terms of which refers to the inexorable in bulk without anything under it human slaves, and included along' daily increase of the traditional — oray. But there was a* wide with gold in that heirloom wealth agricultural loan. Fr. San Buena- variety of specialized trade as well. called bahandi without which no ventura defines its basic meaning The breeding of goats, for exam- Filipino datu could demand respect as "a mortgage such that while it ple, caused Simara Island to be or exercise leadership. Nor were is unredeemed the debtor and the called Cabras Island, just as the the Spaniards slow to assess the one who gave the money divide the sale of swine (babuy) and sugar- situation. When they sacked Saran- field every year." cane wine (basij branded the gani Island in 1543, they dug up Still another evidence of the Babuyan Islands and the Bashi some hastily buried porcelain and extent of caracoa-carried commerce Channel. Expert shipwrights sup- carried it off as prizes of war for was the news they also carried ported the economies of Cagayan the Viceroy of Mexico, but traded along Philippine coasts and from de Sulu and tiny Buracay off Panay, it off for food in Samar instead. island to island all the way to the while those of Catanduanes literally Another evidence of prehispanic Moluccas. When Loaysa's flagship, peddled their wares by loading Philippine commerce is the voca- the Santa Maria de la Victoria, smaller ones into larger. Cuyo bulary it produced, samples of anchored in Lianga Bay in 1526, Islanders wove cotton but did not which can be found in the early its crew ignored a local report of grow it, and kept the inhabitants of seventeenth-century Spanish lexi- Spaniards shipwrecked farther south, neighboring islands in mat-weaving cons. The Mentrida 1637 Visayan not realizing that they had been and salt-making subjugation. Far- Bocabulario, for example, provides preceded a few weeks by the mers on Batbatan Island raised such retailing divisions as dealing in Santa maria del Parral. A year wheat on the north coast of Panay, basic foodstuffs by sea (baligiya), later one of those Spaniards, then and Bohol potters marketed their rice and grain (dalawat), second- serving a local chieftain by the wares in Butuan, where prehispanic hand goods (lito), slaves (botong), name of Katunaw, was told about samples have been recovered from or notions for the ladies (biniyaga). the Victoria's visit by a native of archaeological sites. Specialized terms running from the Marianas Islands who had been The extent and value of this barter to big business can be selected impressed with ten others to work trade is indicated by the fact that from Marcos de Lisboa's 1618 the leaking Victoria's pumps and Cebu was the second largest settle- Vocabulario de la Lengua bicol — then escaped. Two other survivors ment in the Philippines despite e.g., balabag, to exchange goods; of the Parral would up in Maguin- not having access to the ricefields, bahay, to pay in gold or silver; danao, where they were notified in inland forests or goldmines en- balos, to pay in labor; bongto, 1528 by the Sultan of Brunei that joyed by the competing ports of to sell on commission; sangholi, to he had been informed of their Manila and Butuan. Cebuanos told go into pertnership; and hampil, a presence by the Portuguese Gover- Fr. Alcina that the prehispanic raid in which the junior partner nor of Malacca who was request- town had stretched along the supplies half the outfitting expenses ing their delivery to him, and that beach for eight kilometers, and he to the ship's owner and receives one- the Sultan would gladly provide believed them on the evidence third of the take. Really high transportation if they wished to go of an ¡cent graveyards and house- finance, however, is best displayed — and they did. Magellan's own posts exposed by erosion. But the in the San Buenaventura Taga- Victoria, leaving the Philippines 31 after his death, found somebody on was reprehensible in Philippine facts of life, and communities Palawan who could speak enough morality was not the act of plunder collected contributions to rescue Spanish to translate for them, and itself, but doing it to those who victims or render them charitable captured a Moro off the coast of had not done it to you. That is why aid afterwards. If a man invested Mindanao who had been in the one of them climbed up in a tree in a raid as a silent partner, he was house of his good friend, Francisco in Cainta soon after the Spanish obligated to put up half his active Serrano, in Ternate. And all four of seizure of Manila and shouted out partner's ransom money as soon as the post-Magellanic expeditions in the middle of the night, "What he was captured, and was himself were given word of the fate of did we ever do to you, or what did entitled to no return on his origi- the survivors of the Cebu Massacre our ancestors owe yours, that you nal investment. A datu's rank of 1 May 1521, two of whom should come to plunder us!"19 among his peers was indicated by survived as Filipino bihags (cap- Although mangayaw raiders took his ransom worth — or what would tives) for forty years. booty both ashore and afloat be called wergeld ("man-price") But the caracoa is basically a when they could, their real object if he were killed — and the capture warship, not a cargo carrier, and was slaves. Chattle slavery was of a high-priced individual was the Philippine languages distinguish common to civilized societies in the bonanza every raider dreamed of even more tactice of war than of sixteenth century all over the and planned for. Such men were commerce. These include terms of world and Spain was no exception: treated with respect and quickly raids, sneak attacks, camouflage friars carried slaves across two ransomed since anybody who could and ambush, bow-to-bow boarding, oceans as personal servants at His afford to do so could expect to razing coastal villages, and probing Majesty's expense. But in econo- be reimbursed at twice the sum he strikes to test enemy strength — mically diversified Europe, the had advanced. As a matter of fact, as well as such refinements of per- trade was licensed by national to underestimate a man's exchange sonal conduct as Bikol togkod, governments as separate monopo- value was a non-too-subtle affront "to await enemies without fear," lies. It is to call attention to this to his dignity — or what Mindanao Visayan patay, "to fight to the difference that the mixed merchan- Moros call maratabat. When Spa- death rather than surrender," or dising of caracoa commerce is here niards captured a dignitary in 1521 Tagalog puli, "to take a fallen com- referred to as "trade-raiding." Po- whom Pigafetta called " the Go- rade's place to avenge him." All tential customers for this trade in vernor of Palawan" and ransomed these variations fall under the the Philippines were legion because him off for rice and livestock, he general heading of ngayaw or the purchase of slaves was an generously added coconuts, bana- kayaw, a word which means "raid" ordinary area for investing surplus nas, sugarcane, and jars full of wine, and appears as mangayaw in all wealth — Bikol saleu means "To as it befit his station to do. the major languages of the Phi- buy slaves, dogs, houses, or boats." The importance of mangayaw lippines and, indeed, of insular Filipino communities supplied most trade-raids in Philippine society is southeast Asia from Mindanao to of their own slave labor locally indicated by the fact that they Malacca as well. This is the activity by usury and panel action, but were carried out by a separate Spanish accounts inaccurately call always preferred aliens for religious social class. These are called timawa, "piracy." Modern international law purposes — that is, sacrifice. (Loar- and in classic Visayan culture they defines piracy as robbery on the ca considered this a commendable are the sons or descencants of high seas, and although it is true attitude: "They always see that this datus by secondary wives, who that mangayaw raiders took weaker is a foreign slave, not a native," he neither work fields nor pay tribute vessels at sea, when they did so says, "for they really are not cruel but are obligated to man their they were not breaking any recog- at all")20 A foreign market was datu's boat, armed at their own nized law but rather performing a vided by the petty potentates of .expense, whenever he puts to sea. socially approved deed. Like the maritime principalities to the south, In return, they receive a share epic cattle raids of Ulysses or and after the seventeenth century, of the spoils, and have the right to Irish folk hero Cu Chulainn, manga- colonial plantations and households transfer their services to another yaw was the esteemed occupation expanded it. datu if they choose. But their of the able-bodied male who In the sixteenth century, how- captain — tomoway — is a datu and could afford it. Its heroes' feats ever, ransom appears to have been has both authority and respon- were the stuff of lyric and legend, a more regular source of profit sibility: there is a Bicol term, and Fr. Alcina cites a Samareno than outright sale: Visayan utao, bonglo, which means " fora captain ballad whose heroine is so coy she for example, means "to display to ransom his captured comrades." keeps sending suitors off on raids captives for exchange on the boat His timawa are rewarded at his to Mindanao and Jolo, then Ternate, without letting them go ashore." pleasure, just as their children and finally Grand China itself. What Capture and liberation were daily inherit at his pleasure, and all cap- 32 tives belong to him: a crewman timawas was usually an experienced must reimburse him if he kills The caracoa may... seafarer who shared such trade- one. These are professions which be seen as the key raiding sophistication as his master's were destined to disappear under command of Malay, the lingua- foreign occupation, of course: the to the political scene franca of southeast Asian trade. mangayaw skills which could defend Thus Magellan's Malay-speaking a Visayan community against Min- in the sixteenth— slave was immediately understood danao and Sulu attack could also century Philippines: in Limasawa by the oarsmen be turned against invasion from serving the brother of Rajah Awi of Leon and Castile. And as they those who had Butuan, one of the most cosmo- disappeared, the popular image of politan ports in the archipelago. one group of Filipinos as helpless them dominated The caracoa may therefore be victims of another was created by those who did not. seen as a key to the political scene Spanish disarmanent of all those in the sixteenth-century Philippines: who accepted their sovereignty. local exchange of foodstuffs, the those who had then dominated Timawas assigned to paddle on exploitation of special marketing those who did not. Coastal com- the outrigger darambas were held in patterns, and the distribution of im- munities that had none — or could lower status than those inside the ports like Chinese procelain throuh- not launch them fast enough if hull, and those manning the buru- out the archipelago. Slaves were they had — would, at the Jeast, have lan fighting deck were considered a taken in raids called mangayaw been potential victims for the slave real warrior elite. In Malay, these by trade-raiders whose exploits trade. This is, in fact, precisely the latter were called "men-of-the-6a/- were acclaimed in lyric and legend. condition later suffered by Filipinos leu [\.e.J)urulan]," and Antonio Trade-raiding formed the basis of under Spanish occupation: as some Galvano describes their full hierar- pacts between maritime leaders in of them told Rios Coronel, "Let us chy in the Moluccas as follows: which precedence was expressed in be free, and let us have arms, and And the King travels up on the bailan« terms of personal deference rather we shall be able to defend our- with his captains and mandarins, and their than political domination. Commu- selves as we did before the advent sons who are still youths down below paddling, óf the Spaniards."22 Yet not and others at the paddles on the cangalhas nities that did not have the means [darambas), and when they want to promote for such trade-raids achieved securi- every community could build or them, they elevate them to the bailéu and ty through alliances by blood, man a caracoa. The manpower, they do not paddle. This is the highest honor that is given. So long as they do not perform marriage or vassalage with those social organization, and mechanical any deed of valor, they may not carry a sword who did. The caracoa may there- skill to extract two dozen curved or receive such a promotion, which is like a fore be seen as the key to the planks twenty-five meters long knighthood; and when they move them inside the hull, it is already a greater dignity; after- political scene in the sixteenth- from hardwood giants in some wards, if they deserve it, thev elevate thrrn century Philippines: those who had interior forest, and then convert 2 to the bailéu and they oive uo their paddles. '* them dominated those who did not. them into a sophisticated sea- Filipino expertise in boat-build- In the Philippines, it appears that going vessel along the beach, could ing and seamanship was employed the lower ranks of this naval not have been available to all. by the Spanish colonial regime in hierarchy even included those com- Moreover, those burulan runways caracoa fleets to fight Moros and in moners the Spaniards indiscrimina- indicate that the caracoa were mercantile galleons to cross the tely called "slaves." Such a non- designed for more advanced naval Pacific. Filipino nautical skills are timawa crewman could theoretical- warfare than the simple running attested by Spanish accounts, and ly save enough from his share of down of the inhabitants of some the importance of the seafaring the spoils to buy his freedom and defenseless fishing village. The crew life in classic Philippine culture is then work his way up the military of a caracoa engaged in a naval duel demonstrated by the vocabularies ladder until, if he were man enough who could get 200 paddles in the contained in early seventeenth-cen- for it, he might even attaact a water simultaneously and carry out tury Spanish dictionaries of Philip- following of his own and become a captain's orders quickly could pine languages. A detailed descrip- a datu. The first conquistadores, expect to survive the battle, carry tion of Philippine boat-building however, accustomed as they were off enough booty to contract techniques is included in Francisco to galley slaves in their own navies, brides of their choice, and rear up Alcina's unpublished 1668 Historia did not recognize these Viking- another generation with skills like de las Islas e Indios de las Bisayas. like professionals: Bernardo de la their own. The only alternative to active participation in this seafaring, Boats were the only Philippine Torre in 1543 thought a Samar trade-raiding life style was alliance transportation, and all commer- chieftain by the name of Iberein by blood, marriage, or vassalage to cial and political contacts depended was rowed out to his flagship by those who practiced it. upon them. Trade included the slaves wearing gold collars. The real 33

To whatever extent the caracoa the King of Spain on the Koran, of the National Museum for sharing their produced this political scene or was and then loaded the rotting Trini- archaeological findings on two ancient boats excavated in Butuan and making the remains the product of it, it was obviously dad with so much spices her seams available for study; to Butuan City Engineer an integral part of it. At the time opened. Proceso S. Gonzales for photographs of the Spanish friars started describing site; to Mr. Pedro Picornell, Vice-President of PICORP, for his assistance with archaic Spanish Philippine society, there were coastal nautical terminology; to Or. Pierre-Yves Manguin communities that purchased their SUMMARY of the Ecole Française D'Extrême-Orient, Jakarta, for his constructive criticisms of the security with annual tribute to a finished manuscript; and to Dr. G A Horridge distant overlord who sent his of the Australian National University for caracoas to collect it. But those Planks from two ancient Phi- unstintingty sharing his vast knowledge of Southeast Asian boat-building and literature on with caracoas of their own are not lippine boats were discovered in the subject, as well as the outright gifts of portrayed in such roles of outright Butuan in 1976-77, excavated by books, articles, photographs, drawings, and subjugation. Rather, their chieftains the staff of the National Museum, pre-publication copies of his own papers. appear as being related to one ano- and dated to the fourteenth centu- 2. Huang Shu-ching, Fan Shu Liu K'ao ther in a kind of political pecking ry by radiocarbon-14 technology. (1736), quoted by Ling Shu-sheng, Ming- order characterized by deference The boats were edge-pegged and Tsu-Hsueh Yen-Chiu-Suo Cti'i-k'an (Bulletin of rather than domination. Thus Katu- plank-built — that is, their planks the Institute of Ethnology) (Academia Sínica, Taipei), Vol. 27 (1968), D. 3. na of Bohol had a rice-producing were hand-carved, fastened together supporter in Leyte but himself by pegs in adjoining edges, and 3. Wang Ta-vuan, Tao I Chih Lueh, chap. 45. deferred to another Bohol rajah lashed to ribs by means of wooden 4. Anon. Relación in Isacio R. Rodriguez. Historia de la Provincia agustiniana del Smo. called Si Gala, and both of them lugs carved out of the planks Nombre de Jesus de Filipinas, vol. 13 (Manila were outranked by a Boholano with themselves. This is a style of 1978). p. 463. the fine name of Pagbuwaya who boat-building which once extended 5. Antonio Pigafetta, Primo Viaggio intorno migrated to Dapitan in 1563, quick- from Scandinavia to the South al Mondo (MS 1522), text in Blair and Robert- ly established lordship over the Pacific from the third century son eds., The Philippine Islands, 1943-1898, 33: 224. Subanon there, and then joined the B.C. to the present time in a 6. Chang Hsieh, Tung Hsi Yang K 'ao, eh. 5. Spanish cause in 1565. Such peer few remote islands. 7. Ibib. relationships are still distinguished By the sixteenth century, a in Maranao as pegawid "support" 8. Chao Ju-fcua, Chu Fan Chih, Part I: highly refined plank-built warship P'i-she-ya. and pegawidan "supported." There had been developed in Southeast 9. Francisco Combes, Historia de Mindanao were also those who topped a suffi- Asia which was called a caracoa y Joio (Madrid 1667), 2nd ed. Pablo Pastells cient network of vassals, primus in the Philippines. It was a sleek, and W.E. Retana (Madrid 1897), pp. 70-71. inter pares, to become harbor double-ended vessel twenty to 10. Francisco Alcina, Historia de las Islas princelings collecting anchorage fees twenty-five meters long, with low e Indois de las Bisayas, MS 1668, cap. 10. in their own biliwicks. How much freeboard and light draft, quarter 11. Combes, Historia de Mindanao y Joio, an armed cruiser paid in such rudders and tripod masts with pp. 70-71. fees in any particular port of call square sails, a raised fighting 12. Anon. Relación, p. 463. depended upon the relative ranks deck amidships, and double outrig- 13. Antonio Galvano, Tratado dos desco- of the parties involved, and these brimentos antigos e modernos (1563), 3rd gers with accommodations for ed. (Oporto 1731), p. 278. ranks were established by the several banks of paddlers. In 14. Alcina, Historia delas Islas, cap. 9. protocol of exchanging gifts. That contrast to Spanish galleons or is what Saripada Humabon of 15. Francisco Lean dro de Viana, Memoria Chinese junks, the caracoa was (Madrid 1765), translated in Blair and Robert- Cebu was evidently trying to especially adapted for carrying son, 48, p. 301. establish after Magellan's Victoria, warriors at high speed before 16. Anon. Relación, p. 467. Trinidad and Concepción fired off seasonal winds through reef-filled 17. Lou Yao, Kung Kuei Chi. chap. 88. the heaviest guns ever heard in waters and dangerous currents. It 18. Miguel de Loarca, Tratado (MS 1582), Philippine waters, and dropped was used mainly for interisland text in Blair and Robertson, vol. 5, p. 140. anchor. When he was informed trade-raids by harbor princelings 19. Letter from Fray Martin de Rada dated that his visitors were not going to with limited capital. Calompit, 16 July 1577, in Nouveau Journal pay harbor fees because their Asiatique 8(1831): 377. overlord was so powerful, he 20. Loarca, Tratado, p. 134. simply asked whether gifts were FOOTNOTE 21. Antonio Galvano, text in Hubert Jacobs, expected by three captains or if A Treatise on the Moluccas (c. 1544), probably the preliminary version of Antonio Galvanos one would receive for all. And it 1. I wish to express my gratitude to the Social Science Research Council of New York lost Historia das Moluccas (Rome 1971), p. 41. is also what Rajah Sultan Mansur for a grant in 1977-78 which supported part of 22. Hernando de los Rios Coronel, Memorial of Tidore was doing eight months the research on which this paper is besad; to y Relación (Madrid 1621), translated in Blair later when he swore allegiance to Dr. Jesus Peralta, Mr. Cecilio Salcedo, and Mr. and Robertson, eds. The Philippine Islands, Onando Abinion of the Anthropology Division 19:218.