Floating on the Waves of Time. Construction and First Tests of Replicas of the Micronesian Canoe Model from Central Naval Museum

10.33876/2311-0546/2024-1/299-307

Abstract

This article is the second one in a series of studies of the model of the Micronesian canoe of the Marshall Islands from the Central Naval Museum, built according to the drawings made during the expedition of Otto von Kotzebue. The first article was devoted to the history of the creation of the model itself and a theoretical consideration of Micronesian shipbuilding and the migrations of Proto-Micronesians to the remote archipelagos of the Pacific Ocean (Lebedeva 2020). It also described the process of taking measurements from the model and creating a 3D copy. The present article is devoted to further work with these data, used to build an enlarged copy of the model. The model was tested in open water to analyze the canoe’s behavior in various wind-wave conditions. Such experiments are necessary to understand the seafaring capabilities of Micronesian ships in the navigational and geographic environment in which the development of the Pacific islands took place.