Three Late 18th Century CE East Polynesian Sails in the British Museum Collected from New Zealand, Tahiti and Hawaii (or the Marquesas) Reveal Regional Adaptations in Sailing Technology

Three unique sails in the British Museum provide valuable information about sailing technology and practice in the late 18th century, CE, and insights into early East Polynesian migration. The sails were collected from New Zealand, Tahiti, and the third most probably from Hawaii or the Marquesas. Tacking double canoes were used in the settlement of East Polynesia, in combination with the Oceanic spritsail, and the sails reveal different adaptations that match patterns of interaction and isolation among the island groups as indicated by the movement of industrial stone. The Māori and Hawaiian/Marquesan sails were furthest apart geographically but remained the most similar in the isolated margins of East Polynesia, and both adapted to an increase in paddling and downwind sailing. The Tahitian canoe, located in central East Polynesia, remained better adapted for ocean voyaging, and shared structural elements with West Polynesia, potentially through the Cooks Islands. The paper describes sail forms, examines selected early historical drawings to see how they were used in the late 18th century and uses methods of wind engineering to estimate their sailing performance. The paper finds evidence for adaptive variation and change between sails with shared ancestry.