Navigation Secrets of the South Seas as Told to a Young American

Excerpt from the Newly Rereleased ‘Last Navigator’

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Second of Two Parts: This is an excerpt from the newly rereleased book “The Last Navigator: A Young Man, An Ancient Mariner, the Secrets of the Sea.” Published by Abbeville Press, it is available on its website. In the scenes that follow master navigator Piailug finds an eager student in Steve Thomas from America.

He began instruction that afternoon in the ship’s fo’c’sle, the only private place we could find, amid the coiled hawsers, cans of paint, and outboard motors. I launched into a long list of questions from my preliminary research. He listened patiently, and carefully answered each question in simple English.

When I paused to contemplate my notes, he took my pad and pencil, removed a plastic prescription bottle from his woven pandanus handbasket, and used it to trace a circle. Then, grasping the pencil as if for the first time, he painstakingly placed thirty-two dots around the circle.

“First we must learn the stars,” he explained gently. “Do you know the stars in our language?”

I began with Maeilap, the name for Altair, then managed Paiyefaeng (Gamma Aquilae), Wuul (Aldebaran), Mwaerigaer (Pleiades), Yiugiuliig (Cassiopeia), and Meon (Vega) before I needed help.

“Where did you learn this?” he demanded in surprise.

“From you,” I said factually. He gave me a sidelong glance—I had learned the names from the film footage. Then he helped me fill out the rest of the names of the stars in my notebook.

Micronesian navigators use the rising and setting positions of fifteen stars or constellations to define thirty-two points around the horizon. The stars’ rising po- sitions are indicated by the prefix Taen, setting positions by the prefix tupwul, both spoken with an “a” suffixed to bridge two consonants. Since the stars keep their positions relative to one another as if painted on the underside of a vast dome, they always rise in the same place on the eastern horizon, follow the same arc through the heavens, and set in the same place on the western horizon. It is true that the stars rise four minutes earlier each evening, which causes the night sky to change with the seasons, but they always rise and set in the same place.

Micronesian navigators use the stars both to name the directions around the horizon and to maintain direction at sea, by pointing the bow of the canoe at the rising or setting star, or one that follows the same arc. This circular array of stars has been called the “sidereal compass” by Westerners.

“My grandfather Raangepiy taught me the stars,” Piailug commented as I scribbled the names in my notebook, “but I didn’t write it down like you are doing. I kept everything in my head.” He paused for a moment and concluded: “This is called paafiu.”

Paafiu, meaning “numbering the stars,” is the young student’s first lesson in navigation; in it he learns the principal navigational stars. Piailug began to learn paafiu at age five, accompanying his grandfather while he worked or fished. Sometimes the old man simply had him repeat the names of the stars. Other times he would place thirty-two lumps of coral in a circle on a woven pandanus mat to help him visualize the star points. This is called fferaeg giyegiy, or “unfolding the mat.”

Raangepiy tied strands of banana fiber between the coral lumps representing the major axes—north-south, east-west, northwest-southeast, northeast-southwest—to help his grandson visualize the reciprocal relationships. Piailug learned his next two lessons on the mat as well. For amas, or “facing,” Raangepiy constructed a small canoe of palm fronds, placed it in the center of the circle, and had Piailug name the stars that lay over the canoe’s bow, stern, outrigger, and lee platform. At sea, if the guiding star is unavailable or obscured, the navigator can steer by a star over the stern, outrigger, or lee platform.

In the second lesson, yaerhowumw, Raangepiy pointed to each star in the circle and asked Piailug to name that star and its reciprocal or “partner” star, thus inculcating the reciprocal relationship between the star points—critical knowledge at sea. When I had finished copying the names of all the stars in the paafiu array, Piailug took back the pencil and notebook and drew lines to represent the coconut midribs.

“These are paths,” he explained. “There are many of them. Paths connect rising Maeilap with setting Maeilap, rising Paiyefaeng with setting Paiyeor, rising Wuul with setting Yeoliuyeon—paths connect all the stars. You must always place yourself in the center of the paths. Do you understand this?”

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I nodded yes. I understood that just as I, a Western navigator, projected my compass rose onto the world, placing myself in the center of a sunburst pattern of radians—north, south, east, and west—he mentally projected paafiu. Then he placed a dot in the center of the circle of stars, at the intersection of the paths.

“This is Satawal,” he said. He pointed to the rising Yeoliuyeon, Orion’s Belt. “Houk lies under this star. Chuuk lies under this star, Maeilap.” He glanced up to see if I was following. “Polowat lies under rising Paiyefaeng, Pollap under rising Wuul, Piig under rising Welegeo, Pigeeleo under setting Maeilapelefaeng, Faraulep under setting Mwaerigaer, Lamotrek under setting Paiyefaeng. Do you see, Steve?

We call this woofaniuw, woofaniuw for Satawal.” Woofaniuw means literally “to gaze at the island.” It is the paliuw’s chart case, for it delineates the star courses to all known points in his world. Just as a Western navigator cannot voyage without the right charts, a paliuw is helpless without woofaniuw; his voyaging range is as great or as limited as his knowledge of the star courses. Piailug later recorded the star courses to and from all the islands in the central Carolines, from Pohnpei and Kosrae in the east to Yap and the Philippines in the west and Saipan and Guam in the north.

Then, to my astonishment, he recorded the courses from Satawal to Piig, then north to Hawaii; from Hawaii he delineated courses to North America, South America, Tahiti, the Marquesas, Samoa and Japan. He told me he learned this woofaniuw from his grandfather.

PART ONE: An interview with Steve Thomas

Q&A: ‘Amazing I Pulled It Off,’ Author Says Peter Swanson   ·   Oct 21 Read full story

The next day we resumed our lessons. Piailug seemed to teach me with urgency, immediately sensing what I understood from my own sea experience and previous study, and what was new to me I asked if he used the shape of the waves to tell which direction the current was setting his canoe, one of the most formidable problems for any navigator.

I gestured with my hands to show the waves coming from the direction of the wind and the current flowing against them: “In this case,” I said, “the waves would get bigger.”

“Not bigger but steeper,” he corrected me. “And what if the current goes with wind and wave?” he asked.

“The waves will be lower, smoother,” I answered. He nodded.

“We use the waves to tell the current,” he explained, “but first we do foaton mwir [literally: facing astern]. We look back at the island to see if it has moved.”

He sketched a map of Satawal and the surrounding islands on the back of an old envelope. When departing on a voyage, he explained, he sailed out to the point at which Satawal was about to dip beneath the horizon, then observed the effects of the current. If Satawal had moved north, he knew a current was pushing him south. If Satawal had moved south, the current was pushing him north. The procedure was nearly identical to Western practice, using a hand bearing compass, except that Piailug visualized the islands moving in the sea while the canoe remained rooted to the bottom.

“What if you are here, out of sight of all islands?” I asked, drawing an “x” on the envelope. “If the current changes, how do you know?”

I expected him to elaborate on the art of reading the current by its effects on the shape of ocean swells. But instead he studied the sketch for a long time. Then slowly, almost reverently, he placed some dots near the island of Pigeeleo.

“A bird stays here,” he explained in a low, intense voice, “a dolphin stays here. Over here is a fish—I don’t know what you call it in America, the kind we call aiunn [crevalle jack, Caranx hippos]. When you see one you know you are not on the road to the island.” Then he fell silent, the muscles in his jaw twitching and jerking.

“Are these birds and fishes there all the time?” I asked.

“Yes. I have seen them,” he answered. “It is just special birds and fish. They do something special: Fly close to the water, have special marks on their back or sides [slapping himself on the back and sides], swim a certain way in the water.” He grew reflective: “I don’t know; it is said that when they die another bird or fish will come to take their place. But I know the creatures live in their place for a long time.” He was astonished when I told him we didn’t use such signs.

This was pwugoff, one of the most intriguing elements of Micronesian navigation, a system which charts the range and star course to a ring of sea creatures around each island. That certain birds and fish returned to the same feeding grounds day in and day out seemed quite plausible to me. I had been captain of a yacht whose owner frequently treated his guests to whale-watching expeditions. We always found the humpbacks in the same spot on Stellwagen Bank, off Boston.

But pwugoff seemed to be more than a catalogue of fauna. Micronesians I had talked to during my preliminary research referred to it guardedly, and looked surprised that I even knew of it.

The ship continued on to Eauripik. At sunset I stood with Piailug at the rail, the raking light modeling the sharp folds of his frown, the squint of his eyes, and his high, full, almost sensual cheekbones. He watched the water intently, his hand resting lightly on the rail, his body seeming to merge with the rolling steel deck at his feet.

I asked where the current was coming from. He pointed toward the setting sun and continued to watch the water. “From there,” he said matter-of-factly, “from the west.”

The pilot charts showed it was the time of year for the Equatorial Countercurrent to set in. During the winter months, when the North Pacific High—a vast area of high barometric pressure that dominates the weather patterns of the whole northern Pacific—moves south, the North Equatorial Current flows from east to west through the Caroline Islands. As winter shades into spring, the High migrates north, with the North Equatorial Current tagging along. During the summer and fall, the Equatorial Countercurrent flows through the Caroline Islands from west to east.

For me to measure the current, I would have had to take bearings on an island—but we were out of sight of land—or take sextant observations of the sun, stars, or other heavenly bodies. Piailug had done neither; he had simply been watching the waves.

I knew from the literature and our earlier discussions that he could determine the current from the ocean swells. But this evening there were no swells, merely wavelets too small even to form whitecaps.

“How can you determine the current when there are no swells?” I asked.

“You look at the water and it is tight,” he answered. “The small waves go like this [pushing in one direction] and then—how can I explain?” He extended both his hands and pulled them back as if stroking the keys of a piano. He claimed this sign was now present and that it indicated a weak current from the west, flowing against the light northeasterly wind.

I had never read about such a sign in the literature and I pressed him for a more articulate description. He tried to get me to see a kind of “tightness” in the water—tiny ripples flowing on the surface, almost like the wrinkles on a weatherbeaten face. If I watched carefully enough, he said, I would perceive the ripples flowing against the wind and wavelets. I stared at the shimmering water until my eyes hurt, but could detect nothing, just the wavelets, glittering like a multitude of fishes caught up in the nets of the sea.

In the morning we anchored off Eauripik. I asked the captain the direction of the current during the night. He glanced at the ship’s track penciled on the chart and at the sextant shots the first mate had plotted. It had been weak, he told me, from the west.

I had been told by other researchers not to expect anyone to discuss navigation for at least six months. But now, two days after I had met Piailug for the first time, he was freely discussing elements I understood to be secret.

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