Skip to content
Stela
ENFR

Halls

We built IWe discovered IIWe imagined IIIWe changed the world IVWhat we lost VWhat we leave behind VI

Explore

TimelineMapJourneysSearch the archive

Language

Français

Settings

RH-0135InventionsOceania

The Ratu Finau, a drua, and the axe marks of its builders

Dated
c. 1913
Place
Fulaga, Lau Islands, Fiji; now at the Fiji Museum, Suva · The mataisau, hereditary canoe builders of Fulaga and the Lau Islands, Fiji
Coordinates
19° 08′ S · 178° 37′ W (approximate)
Remains
Intact
An old black-and-white photograph of a Fijian drua sailing on calm water below dark hills: two hulls joined by a broad deck, a raised platform with a small shelter in the middle, and a huge triangular sail of matting rising from a slanting mast. About a dozen men stand on the deck and at the ends of the hulls. This is a nineteenth-century drua, not the Ratu Finau.The image could not be loaded.Image not saved on this deviceSee it on the original record
ZoomLoad zoom (≈ 21 KB)Zoom needs a connection

John Horsburgh, photograph of Fijians on a drua, 19th century, Alexander Turnbull Library (PAColl-8257), public domain, via Wikimedia CommonsPDMOriginal record

Data saver is on. Images load only when you ask. You can change this in Settings at any time.

From the archivist

The Ratu Finau was built on Fulaga, in the southern Lau Islands of Fiji, around 1913, by mataisau, the hereditary carpenters who served the chiefs of Lau. Their master's name has not come down to us. Their hands have.

A drua was two hulls joined by a deck, made of hard vesi wood, without a single piece of metal. The great ones were longer than thirty metres and carried more than two hundred people. This one is small, about thirteen metres, made late, when such canoes had almost stopped being built. Along its hulls the builders left marks, cut with an axe, on purpose.

It sailed to Suva, and it is said to have raced the yachts in the harbour, and won. The family of the man who had paid for it kept it for decades, and in 1981 gave it to the national museum.

A century after it was built, a mataisau of the Lemaki clan, Kaiafa Ledua, came to the museum to measure it. From those lines, in 2016, a small team launched a new drua on the Navua River, the first of its size in a hundred years. The old canoe, he said, contains within it the secrets of building a drua.

Sometimes what a people keeps is a way to begin again.

Established

  • Drua were double-hulled sailing canoes built without metal; the largest were more than 100 feet long, carried more than 200 people and reached about fifteen knots (Nuttall, D'Arcy and Philp 2014).
  • The vesi loa timber of the southern Lau Islands drew craftsmen from Samoa, Tonga and Fiji, and drua building there was a shared, cross-cultural craft; no great drua has been built for more than a century (Nuttall, D'Arcy and Philp 2014).
  • The Ratu Finau, about 13.4 m long, was built on Fulaga in the southern Lau Islands at the command of Ratu Alifereti Finau, Tui Nayau; it is the oldest surviving of Fiji's great ocean-going double canoes (The Fiji Times 2017, 2026).
  • Its builders were mataisau, hereditary craftsmen of Lau who served the high chiefs; the name of the master builder is not given in the sources consulted (The Fiji Times 2017, 2023).
  • The Turner family gave the canoe to the Fiji Museum in 1981; it was restored in 1982 and conserved again recently, and it is the centrepiece of the museum's exhibition Voyages: Stories of an Ocean People (The Fiji Times 2023; Fiji Museum).
  • Kaiafa Ledua, a mataisau of the Lemaki clan, measured the Ratu Finau to help build a new drua, I Vola Siga Vou, launched on 30 October 2016; visiting New Zealand boatbuilders confirmed that marks on the old hulls were cut deliberately with an axe (The Fiji Times 2017).

Interpretation

Sources differ on the year of building, 1913 or 1914, and on its circumstances: one account says the canoe was made for Ratu Finau and sold to J. B. Turner to save drua-building knowledge, another that it was built for Turner, and a 1982 report says the original vessel rotted and the builder made a smaller replacement. Reports of its speed, from 17 to 25 knots for drua in general, come from oral and museum tradition rather than measurement. The meaning of the axe marks is the reading of today's builders. The film in which it is said to have last sailed, in the 1920s, is cited through Fiji Heritage and has not been checked here.

Looking ahead

In a thousand years, what will we have left that a descendant could measure with their hands, and build again?

Sources (5)
  1. Nuttall, P., D'Arcy, P., Philp, C. Waqa Tabu, sacred ships: the Fijian drua. International Journal of Maritime History 26 (3), 2014, p. 427-450. · doi.org
  2. Fiji Museum. Voyages: Stories of an Ocean People (exhibition presentation, Our Exhibitions). · fijimuseum.org.fj
  3. Simmons, M. 2 years to build a 'giant'. The Fiji Times, 8 January 2017. · www.fijitimes.com.fj
  4. The Fiji Times. Back in history: Ratu Finau good as new, 30 January 2023. · www.fijitimes.com.fj
  5. Kamea, J. Discovering Fiji: the reign of the mighty drua. The Fiji Times, 15 February 2026. · www.fijitimes.com.fj

Related fragments

A double-hulled voyaging canoe under two tan crab claw sails crosses choppy blue water towards the shore, flying the Hawaiian flag and the United States flag; crew in bright clothes stand on the deck between the hulls, small motorboats follow, and green mountains rise behind under white clouds.Image not loaded · data saverThe image could not be loaded.Image not saved on this deviceRH-0058

1976

Hōkūleʻa

Hawaiʻi, United States, to Tahiti, French Polynesia · Oceania

A square lattice of thin wooden sticks lashed together with fibre on a dark blue backing: straight sticks cross diagonally, a few curved sticks sweep across the frame, and small white shells are tied at many of the crossings.Image not loaded · data saverThe image could not be loaded.Image not saved on this deviceRH-0009

1920 to 1929

A map of the swell: Marshall Islands stick charts

Majuro, Marshall Islands · Oceania

A wide earthenware dish, reddish brown, shown upside down in a glass case on a dark cloth: its flat base and a central foot ring are visible, the body is cracked and glued from many pieces, and around the sloping sides runs faint stamped decoration of fine dotted lines in curving bands.Image not loaded · data saverThe image could not be loaded.Image not saved on this deviceRH-0056

c. 1000 BCE

Lapita pottery

Teouma, Efate, Shefa Province, Vanuatu · Oceania

Enlarged image · RH-0135

An old black-and-white photograph of a Fijian drua sailing on calm water below dark hills: two hulls joined by a broad deck, a raised platform with a small shelter in the middle, and a huge triangular sail of matting rising from a slanting mast. About a dozen men stand on the deck and at the ends of the hulls. This is a nineteenth-century drua, not the Ratu Finau.

John Horsburgh, photograph of Fijians on a drua, 19th century, Alexander Turnbull Library (PAColl-8257), public domain, via Wikimedia CommonsPDMOriginal record