Kon-Tiki Expedition (1947)

Overview

The Kon-Tiki expedition was funded by private loans, along with donations of equipment from the United States Army. Heyerdahl and a small team went to Peru, where, with the help of dockyard facilities provided by the Peruvian authorities, they constructed the raft out of balsa logs and other native materials in an indigenous style as recorded in illustrations by Spanish conquistadores. The trip began on April 28, 1947. Heyerdahl and five companions sailed the raft for 101 days over 6,900 km (4,300 miles) across the Pacific Ocean before smashing into a reef at Raroia in the Tuamotus on August 7, 1947. The crew made successful landfall and all returned safely.

Heyerdahl believed that a sun-worshiping blond/red-haired and blue-eyed Caucasian people (whom he called the "Tiki people") from South America could have reached Polynesia during pre-Columbian times by drifting with the wind directions. His aim in mounting the Kon-Tiki expedition was to show, by using only the materials and technologies available to those people at the time, that there were no technical reasons to prevent them from having done so.

Crew

Kon-Tiki had a six-man crew, five of whom were Norwegian; Bengt Danielsson was Swedish. A seventh member of the team handled administration from land but did not travel on the raft.

Thor Heyerdahl (1914–2002) was the expedition leader. He was also the author of the book of the expedition and the narrator of the story. Heyerdahl had studied the ancient people of South America and Polynesia and believed that there was a link between the two.

Erik Hesselberg (1914–1972) was the navigator and artist. He painted the large Kon-Tiki figure on the raft's sail. His children's book Kon-Tiki and I appeared in Norwegian in 1949 and has since been published in more than 15 languages.

Bengt Danielsson (1921–1997) took on the role of steward, in charge of supplies and daily rations. Danielsson was a Swedish sociologist interested in human migration. He served as translator, as he was the only member of the crew who spoke Spanish. He was a voracious reader; his box aboard the raft contained many books.

Knut Haugland (1917–2009) was a radio expert, decorated by the British in World War II for actions in the Norwegian heavy water sabotage that stalled what were believed to be Germany's plans to develop an atomic bomb.

Construction

The main body of the float was composed of nine balsa tree trunks up to 14 m (45 ft) long, 60 cm (2 ft) in diameter, lashed together with 30 mm (1+1⁄4 in) hemp ropes. Cross-pieces of balsa logs 5.5 m (18 ft) long and 30 cm (1 ft) in diameter were lashed across the logs at 91 cm (3 ft) intervals to give lateral support. Pine splashboards clad the bow, and lengths of pine 25 mm (1 in) thick and 60 cm (2 ft) wide were wedged between the balsa logs and used as centreboards.

The mainmast was made of lengths of mangrove wood lashed together to form an A-frame 8.8 m (29 ft) high. Behind the mainmast was a cabin of plaited bamboo 4.3 m (14 ft) long and 2.4 m (8 ft) wide, about 1.2–1.5 m (4–5 ft) high and roofed with banana leaf thatch. At the stern was a 5.8 m (19 ft) long steering oar of mangrove wood, with a blade of fir. The mainsail was 4.6 by 5.5 m (15 by 18 ft) on a yard of bamboo stems lashed together. Photographs also show a topsail above the mainsail, and also a mizzen sail, mounted at the stern.

The raft was partially decked in split bamboo.

Supplies

Kon-Tiki carried 1,040 litres (275 US gal) of drinking water in 56 water cans, as well as a number of sealed bamboo rods. The purpose stated by Heyerdahl for carrying modern and ancient containers was to test the effectiveness of ancient water storage. For food Kon-Tiki carried 200 coconuts, sweet potatoes, bottle gourds and other assorted fruit and roots. The U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps provided field rations, tinned food and survival equipment. In return, the Kon-Tiki explorers reported on the quality and utility of the provisions. They also caught plentiful numbers of fish, particularly flying fish, "dolphin fish", yellowfin tuna, bonito and shark.

Heyerdahl and crew were equipped with water-tight sports wristwatches manufactured by Swiss watchmaking firm Eterna. After the journey, Eterna decided to brand their sports watches as "Kon-Tiki".

Communications

The expedition carried an amateur radio station with the call sign of LI2B operated by former World War II Norwegian resistance radio operators Knut Haugland and Torstein Raaby. Haugland and Raaby maintained regular communication with a number of American, Canadian, and South American stations that relayed Kon Tiki's status to the Norwegian Embassy in Washington, D.C. On August 5, Haugland made contact with a station in Oslo, Norway, 16,000 kilometres (10,000 mi) away.

Kon Tiki's transmitters were powered by batteries and a hand-cranked generator and operated on the 40, 20, 10, and 6-meter bands. Each unit was water resistant, used 2E30 vacuum tubes, and provided approximately 6 watts of RF output; the equivalent of a small flashlight. Two British 3-16 MHz Mark II transmitters were also carried on board, as was a VHF transmitter for communicating with aircraft and a hand-cranked survival radio of the Gibson Girl type for 500 and 8280 kHz.

The radio receiver used throughout the voyage, a National Radio Company NC-173, once required a thorough drying out after being soaked when landing in Rarotonga.

The Voyage

Kon-Tiki left Callao, Peru, on the afternoon of April 28, 1947. To avoid coastal traffic it was initially towed 80 km (50 mi) out by the Peruvian Navy fleet tug Guardian Rios, then sailed roughly west carried along on the Humboldt Current.

On July 2, Heyerdahl writes about an encounter with a rogue wave; in his book he describes a "Three Sister" phenomenon: "During a night-shift with quiet seas appears an 'abnormal huge wave' followed by two more waves. The raft is being swept up and down and is covered in water." After the three waves he describes the sea as quiet as before.

The crew's first sight of land was the atoll of Puka-Puka on July 30. On August 4, the 97th day after departure, Kon-Tiki reached the Angatau atoll. The crew made brief contact with the inhabitants of Angatau Island, but were unable to land safely. Calculations made by Heyerdahl before the trip had indicated that 97 days was the minimum amount of time required to reach the Tuamotus, so the encounter with Angatau showed that they had made good time.

On August 7, the voyage ended when the raft struck a reef and was then beached on an uninhabited islet off Raroia atoll in the Tuamotus.

Anthropology

The basis of the Kon-Tiki expedition was pseudoscientific, racially controversial, and has not gained acceptance among scientists (even prior to the voyage). Heyerdahl believed that the original inhabitants of Easter Island (and the rest of Polynesia) were the "Tiki people", a race of "white bearded men" who supposedly originally sailed from Peru. He described these "Tiki people" as being a sun-worshipping fair-skinned people with blue eyes, fair or red hair, tall statures, and beards. He further said that these people were originally from the Middle East, and had crossed the Atlantic earlier to found the great Mesoamerican civilizations. By 500 CE, a branch of these people were supposedly forced out into Tiahuanaco where they became the ruling class of the Inca Empire and set out to voyage into the Pacific Ocean under the leadership of "Con Ticci Viracocha".

He argued that the monumental statues known as moai resembled sculptures more typical of pre-Columbian Peru than any Polynesian designs.

Later recreations of Kon-Tiki

In 1954, William Willis sailed alone on a raft Seven Little Sisters from Peru to American Samoa, successfully completing the journey. He sailed 10,800 km (6,700 mi), which was 3,500 km (2,200 mi) farther than Kon-Tiki.

In 1955, the Czech explorer and adventurer Eduard Ingris attempted to recreate the Kon-Tiki expedition on a balsa raft called Kantuta. His first expedition, Kantuta I, took place in 1955–1956 and led to failure.

A French seafarer, Éric de Bisschop, committed himself in a project he had considered for some years: he built a Polynesian raft in order to cross the eastern Pacific Ocean from Tahiti to Chile (contrary to Thor Heyerdahl's crossing); the Tahiti-Nui left Papeete with a crew of five on November 8, 1956.

A second Tahiti-Nui was built in Constitución, Chile, leaving on April 13, 1958, towards Callao, then towards the Marquesas. It missed its target and after four months, the raft began to sink.

A Peruvian expedition led by Carlos Caravedo crossed the Pacific Ocean in 1965 in 115 days in a raft named Tangaroa, of which 18 days were used by the crew to cross Tuamotus, the Tuamotu Archipelago, making Tangaroa the only raft that has managed to cross that dangerous archipelago of French Polynesia by its own means.

The 1973 Las Balsas expedition is the only known multiple-raft crossing of the Pacific Ocean. It is the longest-known raft voyage in history.

In 2006, the Tangaroa Expedition recreated the Kon-Tiki voyage using a newly built raft, the Tangaroa, named after the Māori sea-god Tangaroa.

On January 30, 2011, An-Tiki, a raft modeled after Kon-Tiki, began a 4,800-kilometre (3,000 mi), 70-day journey across the Atlantic Ocean from the Canary Islands to the island of Eleuthera in the Bahamas.