IDNO

P.9472.ACH1

Description

On Catalogue Card: "Canoe, Tubetube, Engineer group."

A group of five men posing? launching a waga (canoe) from the beach at Tubetube. The large outrigger canoe is decorated with shells and streamers on the prow and stern. The pandanus leaf sail is rolled up on the deck of the waga. [JD 04/12/2020]

Place

Oceania Melanesia; Papua New Guinea; Massim; Louisiade Archipelago; Engineer Group; Tubetube [British New Guinea]

Cultural Affliation

Named Person

Photographer

Seligman, Charles Gabriel S.

Collector / Expedition

Cooke-Daniels Ethnographical Expedition

Date

1903 - 1904

Collection Name

Mounted Haddon Collection

Source

Format

Print Black & White Mounted

Primary Documentation

Other Information

Related Image: This image was made during the Daniels Ethnographical Expedition. Other prints of this waga (although with more crew members) are at the Royal Anthropological Institute Archive: for example Seligman 364/11/21; 364/11/25. The RAI images were also made at Tubetube, Milne Bay Province. [Information provided by Heather Donaghue, AMA Postgraduate Researcher, JD 04/12/2020]

Publication: Image published in 'Seligmann, C. G., and W. Mersh Strong. “Anthropogeographical Investigations in British New Guinea.” The Geographical Journal, vol. 27, no. 3, 1906, pp. 225–242, and captioned: "Waga at Tube Tube, Engineer Group."
Related text on pp.238-9 notes, "One of the most interesting features of Tube Tube was a collection of waga, the large sea-going built-up outrigger canoes in which the men of Tube Tube made their voyages. The most careful inquiry failed to do more than elicit guesses as to the meaning of the carving with which the waga are ornamented. But since the Tube Tube folk knew that some at least of the waga were built on Murua, and since this was not far from the direction in which we must sail to reach the Trobriands, which Major Daniels had determined to visit, our journey from Tube Tube resolved itself into an island cruise in the track of the waga. And I may so far anticipate the order of our cruise as to say that waga are built not only at Murua, but also in the islands of the Marshall Bennet group, and probably, though to a less extent, at Misima, as they certainly are at Kiriwina.
Here, then, the waga are built and brought in one step or in a series of stages to Tube Tube, carrying with them almost always and wherever they go the original names given to them by their makers.* Without entering in detail into the technology of their building, it will be sufficient here to point out that these craft seem to represent the highest development of Papuan shipbuilding. Their length over all is often quite 50 feet, and their sides are built up with three or four broad hewn planks to a moulded depth of 4 or 5 feet, yet without a nail being used anywhere in their construction, and no wooden pegs are employed, except in connection with the outrigger. Nevertheless, the hull is strong enough to bear, not only the strains of heavy loads and high seas, but the even more trying stresses of continual beaching and launching. It is sufficiently rigid to hold the caulking in the seams, yet with a pliancy lent by its lashed fastenings which allow it to give when a rigid nailed fabric, unless enormously stout and heavy, would be very apt to tear itself apart and break up. The canvas of the waga consists of a single oval sail made of strips of pandanus leaf sewn together, while the ropes made, at any rate when repairs are necessary at Tube Tube, of hibiscus bast, form excellent stays and running rigging. Its size made the waga unhandy to paddle with- out a very large crew, or else at a very slow rate, and though a few paddles of the ordinary sort were carried, as well as the large one used for steering, they were seldom called into service, except in such an emergency as the wind failing and a current drifting the canoe into some position of danger. The craft was only intended to be used under canvas and for offshore work, or, as we should say, for deep-water voyages. Tube Tube seamen aimed as far as possible to make a fair wind of it when they put out to sea, and the fortunate location of their island enabled them to go and come between many places during both seasons of the year, with at the worst a wind with which they could lay their course out and back. They could, however, work the waga to windward when their work lay that way, and although this was but slow travelling, their destination would be reached with speed enough to satisfy the easy-going natives."
[Source: www.jstor.org/stable/1776422, JD 04/12/2020]