NO. 2 (IQ20) OUTRIGGER CANOES OF INDONESIA 105 



with them and now it has passed to the East African coast. In the 

 same way we find it in use in the Philippine Islands, particularly 

 among the Moros trading and smuggling between the southern 

 islands and British North Borneo. Southwards it extends to Java, 

 Bali and the neighbouring islands and eastwards to Western 

 New Guinea. Only in the west of the Archipelago — on the 

 east coast of the island of Sumatra — do we find it absent, being 

 there replaced by boats without outriggers. (This exception 

 appears to be a consequence of the strong influence exercised 

 upon Sumatra by the Arabs who have never used nor understood 

 the outrigger.) 



With regard to the single outrigger, apart from South India and 

 Ceylon, the Andamans and the Nicobars, the only peoples using 

 it consistently as their dominant boat type are the Papuasians 

 and the Polynesians, to whom, with the exception of the Papuans 

 of North-West New Guinea, the double outrigger is as foreign 

 as the single is to the Indonesians. Taken generally the present- 

 day far eastern distribution of the single outrigger is confined 

 to the race distribution of the Papuasians, Polynesians and 

 Micronesians. Except in North-West New Guinea there is no 

 overlapping of the two types. Structurally and from the nautical 

 standpoint, the small single outrigger represents a stronger 

 and more handy craft than the double one of the same size, 

 especially when running before the wind, but it suffers from the 

 fatal defect of being unable to beat to windward except at great 

 risk of capsize, unless most unsailorlike means be resorted to. Of 

 the methods evolved to meet this difficulty, the most common is 

 that of having the hull double-ended, with the mast in the centre, 

 and stem and stern interchangeable according to what tack the 

 canoe is on. This has been adopted in Ceylon. A second, evolved 

 only in North Java and on one short stretch of the Indian coast, 

 is to shift the outrigger frame from side to side as required by the 

 wind ; this device allows the canoe to have a permanent stern and 

 steering gear always at the same end. In large outrigger craft 

 too big for either device to be adopted, such vessels, of which the 

 two-masted Sinhalese outrigger coasters, running to 30 tons 

 burden, are the best surviving example, we find these vessels can 

 be employed only during the fine weather season of the year, when 

 winds are light and are often in the nature of land and sea 

 breezes. These boats creep along the coast never venturing far 



