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Updated: May 14, 2025
The interruption broke up the conversation, which had already begun to lag, and we presently hired some natives and an out-rigger canoe or two, and went out to overlook a grand surf-bathing contest.
Water sluiced our bare backs and ran in streams down the brawny arms bending to the oars. We paddled an hour before the wind was favorable, and a dreary hour it was. The canoe had an out-rigger, but was so narrow that none could sit except on the sharp side. I fell asleep even upon it, and woke in the sea, with the chief, who had flung himself to my rescue, clutching my hair.
In sailing along, therefore, the log just skims the tops of the waves, but scarcely ever buries itself in them, so that little or no interruption to the velocity of the canoe is caused by the out-rigger.
The one sail seemed to pull the boat over from the wind. No one was really in the boat. But sitting far out, on a bamboo out-rigger, high into the wind-side, above the water, a sailor was balancing the boat and holding the sail by a long rope. Only on one side of the boat was there a bamboo pole fixed lengthways.
Their canoes appeared from forty to fifty feet long, were neatly made, and turned a little up at the extremities; there was a stage which lay across the midships of the boat, and projected out some distance on one side; it was bent upwards a little at the outer end, to prevent its dipping in the water, by the motion of the boat; this stage seemed intended for the warriors to use their weapons upon: on the opposite side, was fitted in a different manner, an out-rigger to balance the boat; three of the rowers sat before and three abaft the stage, so that those intended for battle were not at all incommoded by them.
But when he has hoisted sail, he sits on the out-rigger, as the sail balances the boat on the sailing side, opposite the wind. The boat easily rolls over, because it has no sharp keel going down into the water. But it is swifter before the wind, just because it has no keel to keep it back." "Very clever are your Filipino sailors," I admitted.
I had been many months there in the condition of a prisoner, if not a slave, before I was allowed to go beyond the fortifications. At last the young chief invited me to accompany him. He did not explain where he was going. He and all those with him were painted in their gayest colours. We reached the sea-shore, and embarked in a large double canoe, with an out-rigger to prevent her capsizing.
It did not seem to be a well-balanced boat, yet it sailed along at a great speed; and risky as the sport seemed, the sailor sat perfectly safe on his high and dangerous looking perch, above the water. "What kind of boat is that?" I asked. "An out-rigger boat. Some people call it a dug-out boat," replied Filippa. "I'll tell you more about it," added Fil.
These beams kept the plank parallel with the canoe, but not in contact with it, for it floated in the water with an open space between; thus forming a sort of double canoe. This we found was intended to prevent the upsetting of the canoe, which was so narrow that it could not have maintained an upright position without the out-rigger.
Shrouds extend from the mast-head to the gunwale of the canoe; besides which, slender backstays are carried to the extremity of the out-rigger; and these ropes, by reason of their great spread, give such powerful support to the mast, though loaded with a prodigious sail, that a very slender spar is sufficient. The method of working the sails of these canoes is as follows.
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