The Cruise of By Philip Thorneycroft Teuscher Philip Teuscher is a professional sailor who has contributed to Sea History on such diverse subjects as the steamboats of Istanbul, kerosene lighthouses in the Bahamas, and Caribbean sailing craft. In addition to being a writer/photographer, he produced, wrote and directed the fifty-minute documentary Last of the Karaphuna about the island Carib of Dominica. His last project, "The Last Drift," an oral history of Connecticut's last sailors, the natural-growth oystermen, was funded by a grant from the Connecticut Humanities Council. Captain Teuscher was the I989 recipient of the NMHS James Monroe A ward for his contribution to the cause of maritime history. Today, a Carib Canoe builder uses tools of steel, instead of stone. But his hands are guided by knowledge handed from generation to generation in an oral tradition whose origins began in the rainfo rests of South America. Here, a hollowed gommer log is shaped fo r the lower hull, just prior to being widened.
The Northeast Trades whi stled through the narrow chan nels between the mountainous Windward Islands, roiling the sea to a tumbling process ion of whitecaps. Flying fi sh, wings fluttering, glided across a trough, skittering from wavelet to wavelet. The beakhead of a canoe rode up on a cresting wave, then slid , quartering the curl of the swell , across the trough and up the shoulder of the next sea. Sixty paddlers, their torsos bending together, drove the vessel over the crest. Just before she disappeared, her pointed stern pitched up and and the steering oarsman was momentarily silhouetted against the Caribbean sky . " Ookuwatee! " cried the paddlers, " the sea is rough! "
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Boulders are placed in a wedge shaped pile amidships and water is added to sojien the wood. This gradually widens the logfor increased beam. Fires are also lit parallel to each side of the hollowed log , which speeds up the process. In the background is the rugged windward Dominican coast.
Thi s vignette may have been witnessed from the swaying poop of a Spani sh caravel almost five hundred years ago. Columbus and other seaborne adventurers marvelled at the size, speed, diversity and sea-keeping characteristics of native vessels that they observed in the Bahamian and Caribbean archipelagoes. Today , one surviving canoe type graces these waters where sixteenth century seamen chronicled many. This "kanaua" is built by the Karaphuna of Domin ica. (See SH 27 , p 47.) The Karaphuna are the only remaining su rvi vors of the native peoples who lived in the Caribbean before the arrival of the Europeans. The Taino, Arawak and Ciboney, who al so inhabited the Caribbean area, were all but eliminated by di sease, warfare or assimilation by the 1600s. The kanaua once ferried the Karaphunas ' warrior ancestors on the rainforest rivers of South America and on to migratory raiding voyages of conquest up the Antillian chain of islands . Now , the canoes are used for fi shing, transport and smuggling . For almost five centuri es the Karaphuna, from whose language our words canoe, hammock, Caribbean and cannibal are derived , have strugg led to maintain their cu ltural and ethnic identity. The former threat of extinction by arms has been replaced by economic and political pressures that threaten the same fate. Today, a remnant three thousand Karaphuna farm and fi sh off a small reservation on the northeast corner of Dominica, an island of the Windward group. In conjunction with the 1992 Quincentenary , a group plans to build a Karaphuna war canoe and to launch it on a voyage for participation in the hemi spheric celebrations slated for 1992. Thi s project is called "The Crui se of the Ookuwatee,"
At leji , the Ocean Star exemplifies the refi'ned aesthetic of a Carib canoe' s f orward section. Th e "beak" is the lower hull. For additional freeboard, a sawn plank is attached to the lower hull, and the resulting seam is delineated with a white stripe. When canoes are stored , palm fronds are placed inside to trap moisture and keep the hulls from drying out and splitting.
SEA HISTORY 55, AUTUMN 1990