Ever since building my first Hokule'a model in 1993, I have been intrigued by how the vessel's steering paddle is mounted and lashed. I asked myself whether this was really the way ancient canoe builders fitted the steering paddle in this fashion.
I am sure as well that those like the late Kawainui Kane , Tommy Holmes, and others involved in the proposal to build Hokule'a, must have pondered how to fix and operate that steering paddle on a double-hulled canoe. There is scant literature available about this topic.
Amongst the seventy-six boat and canoe drawings executed by Francois-Edmont Paris, French Admiral and naval engineer, after circumnavigating the world on board the Astrolabe, and published in 1843, there is the drawing of the steering paddle used on the Tuamotu double-hulled canoe. Although the drawing is very faint and simple, it would however, lend credence as to the way the steering paddle is mounted on contemporary voyaging canoes. It clearly shows the paddle lashed onto what seems to be a boom.
There is no doubt that the present way the steering paddle is mounted on the Hokule'a, the Hikianalia, and all those other double-hulled canoes built across Oceania has been “sea tested”. I would love to read comments about this subject.
