NATIONAL MARITIME MUSEUM Greenwich, London SEIO 9NF THE LASHED-LUG BOAT OF THE EASTERN ARCHIPELAGOES MARITIME MONOGRAPHS AND REPORTS No. 54- 1982 The lashed-lug boat of the eastern archipelagoes, the Alcina MS and the Lomblen whaling boats. by G. Adrian Horridge Maritime Monographs and Reports No. 54 - 1982 Published by the Trustees of the National Maritime Museum ISSN 0307-8590 ISBN 0 905555 61 9 © Crown copyright Printed in England by Rank Xerox Copy Bureaux Ltd. ~,~---- ----- --- -- ~1~ : -------- ----------r-C--- --- ~ JVO~- -- -- --------------------- __ ___ : ~~: ___ ---------------------- ---. __ ~ TAIWAN ( CHINA ....__ N ' IOTEl TOBAGO 20°- . ~ . ~ ) '-, 9 123 Manil~a'• ... [) MINOORci\).9 ~ SOUTH CHINA SEA ~ v Q'c:, r~:- ~ .~ :- r;;· V~ , SAMAR . ~ l ,,, E . P . P cit~u city - PACIFIC OCEAN - lo• PA VISAY~0_-J \ f> 0I·• SULU SEA MINDANAOI CELEBES SEA BORNEO (KALIMANTAN) ~ANGKA -• ~ ··0 JAVA SEA ARAFURA SEA 10•- INDIAN OCEAN - 10° AUSTRALIA I ~ no• 130° Figure 1 Map of the Eastern Archipelago with places mentioned. ii OJNTENTS List of Illustrations Foreword Acknowledgements Introduction The method of construction The Alcina manuscript The Manuscript "On the construction capacity and variety of native boats". "How they continue, up to the launch". "On boat types, sizes and handling". Other Early Accooots The Archaeological Evidence Boats in the Archipelago before 1500 AD Significance for the early colonists A note on galleys Two Valuable Models The Berlin kora kora The Breda prahu The Boat of Botel Tobago The Whaling Pledangs of Lamalerap The Lashed-lug Construction Technique The Contribution of James Hornell The Broad Perspective in Island Southeast Asia The consequences of the lashed-lug technique Conclusion NOTES REFERENCES iii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Figure Page 1. Map of the Eastern Archipelagos with places mentioned ii 2. Basic construction principle 3 3. Balotos and modern outriggers 5 4. Boatyard at Tans Beru 8 5. Shell of a hull with dowels for the next plank 10 6. The method of fitting planks edge to edge 11 7. Pulling the hull together with rotan · 13 a. Details of the prahu belang 15 9. Internal stucture of the pledang 16 10. Outrigger structures 19 11. A kora kora of the early 19th century 20 12. Model kora kora at Jakarta 23 13. Drawings of boats from the Alcina MS 28 14. Excavation at Butuan, Philippines 34 15. Kora kora of Sulu pirates 38 16. Kora kora model from Sangir 43 17. Model prahu from Tanimbar 44 18. Construction of the Botel Tobago boat 47 19. The village of Lamalerap 50 20. A pledang in its shelter 52 21. Detail inside a pledang 55 22. Plank patterns of the bows, 4 variants 60 iv FOREWORD There are few indigenous records about the boats used in the islands off South-East Asia before 'first contact' accounts by post-medieval European explorers; and excavation and the critical study of other evidence has only recently begun to reveal nautical information. A knowledge of precisely how boats were being built and used at about the time of this first contact, before any European influence, is thus of high priority in historical research. If this state can be established it will form a baseline from which other research may extend our knowledge back into the prehistoric period. In the early pages of this monograph, Professor Adrian Horridge of the Australian National University, Canberra provides us with an annotated translation of the sections on boat construction in a manuscript, Historia de las Islas e Indios de Bisayas, which was compiled in 1668 by Fr. Alcisco Alcina, a Jesuit priest serving in the Philippines. Internal evidence in the text suggests that at the time Fr. Alcina was writing, western influences on indigenous boatbuilding had not been great. From the 18th century, however, these influences became predominant and examples of traditional Philippines boats can now no longer be found. Fortunately, in the outlying islands of Indonesia, modern examples are still to be found of what is evidently an old tradition; one in which several details of construction correspond with those described by Fr. Alcina. An examination of these 20th century boats, with details of two 19th century boat models in Berlin and Breda, in the latter part of this Monograph, illuminate some of the obscure points in the Alcina manuscript, and enable Adrian Horridge to establish with reasonable certainty the methods of boatbuilding . used in 17th century Philippines. An earlier and wider use in the western Pacific of these "lashed-lug" techniques seems probable, as Horridge postulates. Professor Horridge also notes that the few known examples of prehistoric plank boats from northern and western Europe - the Ferriby boats (Wright, 1976); the Brigg 'raft' (McGrail, 1981); and the Hjtlrtspring boat (Greenhill, 1976, 81, 119, 121) - also had planking with lugs or cleats. However, any suggestion that this technique was diffused from a common source to N. W. Europe and S.E. Asia before the European Bronze Age would be highly speculative at this stage of research. v Adrian Herridge is uniquely qualified to write this Monograph, not only because of his academic and professional experience, but also from knowledge gained during recent fieldwork in the area. Further information on modern boats from this region may be found in Maritime Monographs 38, 39 and 40, and in Herridge's (1981) recent publication on the Indonesian indigenous sailing boats or prahus. Sean McGrail • Chief Archaeologist References: Greenhill, B., 1976, Archaeology of the Boat, A & C Black, London. Herridge, G.A., 1981, The Prahu, OUP, Kuala Lumpur. McGrail, S., 1981, The Brigg 'raft' and her prehistoric environment, BAR, Oxford. Wright, E.V., 1976, The North Feniby boats, NMM Monograph No 23, Greenwich. vi Acknowledgements The existence of the Alcina MS was drawn to' my attention by W.H. Scott of St Andrews Theological Seminary, Manila. To him I am greatly indebted for numerous details of the period and for his assistance with the translation. I am also grateful to Fr. Herman Mueller, S.V.D., Rector of the University of San Carlos, Cebu City, for later sending me a copy of the translation by Paul S. Lietz, Loyola University, made in 1962 as part of the Philippine Studies Program (since discontinued) of the University of Chicago. For the models, I am obliged to Mr. Nauta, Conservator, Rijksmuseum Volkenkunde Juatinius van Nassau, Breda, Netherlands and to Dr. Gerd Koch and Dr. Gerd Hoepfner, Museum f()r Volkerkunde, Dahlem, Berlin. For hospitality at Lamalerap I am grateful to Fr. Dupont, but above all I am obliged to many unnamed friends for their enthusiasm and for real assistance in difficult places along the way. The drawings were made by Chris Snoek and Irma Appleman. Numerous drafts have been typed by Tess Falconer. The penultimate draft was read by Drs. Brian Fagan, Ian Glover, Campbell MacKnight and James Urry; to these I am grateful for many fruitful discussions. If any of my errors remain, I would be grateful to learn about them from travellers and historians. vii Introduction To trace the history of boat construction in islands off Southeast Asia is a relatively easy task as far back as the middle of the nineteenth century. Before that, the records are scattered, they often lack sufficient detail, and what little there is refers to several different traditions that are not to be confused. The manuscript of Fr. Alcina is one major source of information that has been neglected because not elucidated. The details given by Alcina can be directly related to five other lines of evidence, all of which can now be fitted together. These lines are, 1) other early accounts, 2) two archaeological finds in the Philippines, 3) scattered surviving boat technology from isolated places, 4) a small number of old models, each unique, and 5) the principles which ensure a strong construction. Some of this evidence has already been presented in monographs 38 and 40 of this series. I will now present new evidence along all these lines together with the Alcina MS which illuminates the whole process of early eastern boatbuilding. The conclusion is that one particular construction system was very widespread; it can be traced back to the beginnings of the records and it was particularly well-adapted to the uses required and to the materials and tools available. The design is here called the lashed-lug planked boat: its crucial components are (a) the shell-first construction on a keel or dug-out foundation (b) edge-dowelled planking of hardwood carved to shape (c) lugs carved in situ in transverse rows across the inside of the boat (d) flexible frames placed in tension to compress the planks together, (e) many transverse thwarts also lashed down to the lugs and rib-ends to squeeze the hull. I argue that the dowelling technique required an iron tool and replaced sewing which did not. We can infer that a variety of sturdy seagoing boats of several kinds have been built with this standard construction system over at least a thousand years and over a wide area ranging from southern Taiwan to Timor, with the main centre of ·development in early historical times the Visayan Islands and the Moluccas. An interesting question is how many of these features were known to the ancestors of the people who colonized the Pacific. Possibly also we are looking at a construction technique that originated in an early South Asian culture and spread in the opposite direction more than 2500 years ago, from which the earliest Scandinavian boats were derived. To infer so much means that the several elements of the technique must have spread in the Indo-European Bronze or Iron Ages, and examples may turn up from Asiatic lake deposits.