Heyerdahl - The Ra Expeditions

To Yvonne

NINE

In the Clutches of the Sea 188

TEN

Into American Waters 224

ELEVEN

Ra 11. By Papyrus Boat from Africa to America 285 Postscript 337

1. Reed boat of Easter Island

2, 3, 4, 5. Reed boats in use on Lake Chad, Lake Zwai, Lake Tana and in Sardinia

6, 7. Reed boats in Mexico and on Lake Titicaca

8. Ancient reed boat models

9. Egyptian relief: papyrus gathering

10. Egyptian relief: papyrus binding

11. Egyptian relief: naval action with papyrus boats

12. Egyptian mural: noble on board a papyrus raft

13. Egyptian relief: cattle freighting

14. Egyptian relief: straddled mast

15. Bjorn Landstrom drawing a papyrus boat

16. Examining a papyrus reed

17 to 22. Stages in building the papyrus ship

23. Finishing the stern

24. The ''paper boat" on the desert sand

25. 26. Dragging the papyrus ship to the water 27 to 33. Seven men from seven nations

34. The expeditions members

35. The participants' flags

36. A model of Ra is presented

37. The naming ceremony at Safi

38. Yuri checking the provisions

39. Stowing the wooden boxes in the cabin

40. Egyptian hardtack

41. Some of the 160 ceramic storage jars

42. The Ra leaves Safi harbor

43. Bon voyage by rocket and siren

44. Steerage gear of the Ra

45. On the open Atlantic

46. The sail is hoisted

47. Under full sail

48. Alone on the ocean

49. Experimenting with rigging and steering gear

50. Streaming sea anchors

51. Splicing the broken rudder-oars

52. Norman with his sextant

53. Safi the monkey

54. Slicing salt meat

55. A broken jar of nuts

56. Eggs preserved in lime paste

57. The galley

58. Jar damaged by chafing

59. 60. Flying fish on board

61. A dorado caught by the author

62. Lunch round the chicken coop

63. The author's "nosometer**

64. Norman operating the transmitter

65. Changing watch

66. Basket cabin interior

67. Georges trims Santiago's hair

68. 69. The steering oar breaks again

70. Norman at the masthead

71. Yuri shaving

72. 73. Atlantic pollution

74. Papyrus life belt

75. Georges teaching Abdullah to write

76. African Neptune crossing our bow

77. Sack sent by African Neptune

78, 79. The sack's contents

80, 81. Ra photographed from African Neptune

82. Shipboard feast at halfway point

83. Chart of a month's voyage

84. Opposite list from ordinary boats

85. Problems begin aft

86. The after deck sags

87. Abdullah praying

88. The afterdeck submerges

89. The life raft is cut up

90. Carlo helps secure the sea anchor

91. Abdullah's magic remedies

92. Georges and Abdullah fixing bulwarks

93. Abdullah discovers the sea is salt

94. New bunk sites

95. Sharks gather

96. Results of the last storm

97. Norman and author at the receiver

98. An American yacht arrives

99. The Ra as seen from the yacht

100. The mast is cut away

101. Everything of value transferred to yacht

102. Starboard side under water

103. Port side undamaged

104. 105. Farewell Ra

106. Thanks for the ride, Ra

107. Ra II at sea

108. Madani Ait Ouhanni from Morocco

109. Kei Ohara from Japan

110. Ra II under gray skies

111. Ra II at nightfall

THE RA EXPEDITIONS

Chapter One

ONE RIDDLE, TWO ANSWERS AND NO SOLUTION

/V REED flutters in the wind.

We break it off.

It floats. It can bear a frog.

Two hundred thousand reeds flutter in the wind. A whole meadow billows like a green cornfield along the shore.

We cut it down. We tie it into bundles, like great corn sheaves. The bundles float. We go on board. A Russian, an African, a Mexican, an Egyptian, an American, an Italian, and myself a Norwegian, with a monkey and a lot of clucking hens. We are off to America. We are in Egypt. It's blowing sand, it's dry and hot, it's the Sahara.

Abdullah assures me that the reeds will float. I tell him that America is a long way off. He does not think people like black skins in America, but I assure him he is wrong. He does not know where America is, but we will get there in any case, if the wind is blowing that way. We will be safe on the reeds as long as the ropes hold. As long as the ropes hold, he says. Will the ropes hold?

I felt someone shaking me by the shoulder and woke up. It was Abdullah. "It's three o'clock," he said. "We are starting work again." The sun was baking inside the hot tent canvas. I sat up and peered through a gap in the door opening. The dry heat and blinding sunshine of the Sahara thrust at me from outside. Sun, sun, sun. A

sun-soaked expanse of sand met the bluest thing God has created, a cloudless desert sky unfolding in the afternoon sunshine above a world of golden-gray sand.

A row of three large and two small pyramids were set like shark's teeth against the arch of sky. They had stood so, motionless and unchanging, since the time when men were part of nature and built in accord with nature. And in front of them, down in the shallow depression, lay something timeless, built yesterday, built ten thousand years ago: a boat in the desert sand, a sort of Noah's ark stranded in the wilderness of the Sahara, far from surf and seaweed. Two camels stood beside it, chewing. What were they chewing? Trimmings from the boat itself, perhaps, "the paper boat." It was built of papyrus. The golden reeds were lashed together in bundles taking the form of a ship with prow and sternpost which stood out against the blue sky like a recumbent crescent moon.

Abdullah was already on his way down there. And two coal-black Budumas in fluttering white robes were clambering on board, while Egyptians in colorful garments dragged up fresh bundles of papyrus reed. There was work to be done. "Bot! Botl" shouted Abdullah. "More reeds!" I staggered out onto the hot sand as if I had awakened from a thousand-year sleep. After all, they were working for me, it was I who had conceived the absurd idea of reviving a boatbuilder's art that the Pharaoh Cheops and his generation were already beginning to abandon at the time they ordered the building of those mighty forms, the pyramids which now stood there like a solid mountain range, hiding our timeless shipyard from the twentieth-century maelstrom whirling in Cairo's hectic city streets down in the green Nile Valley on the other side.

Our world, outside the tents, was bare sand. Hot sand, pyramids, more sand, and huge stacks of sun-dried reeds, brittle, combustible papyrus reeds, which the men were dragging over to the licorice skinned boatbuilders who sat on the crescent moon, tightening rope lashings with the aid of hands, teeth and naked feet. They were building a boata papyrus boat. A kaday they called it in their Buduma tongue, and they knew what they were building. Busy fingers and teeth strapped the loops round the reeds as only experts could. "A paper boat," said the people at the Papyrus Institute down in the Nile Valley. For there they soaked these reeds in water and