The raft was full of blood. The team, exhausted by the stormy nights of the past days, began to "go completely astray". "Wherever we got around on deck, big sharks got in the way and beat against the logs, drummed against the bamboo hut and snapped around," the logbook says.
The bloodbath lasted five hours until the men had slaughtered the predatory fish. Nine up to two and a half meters tall animals lay piled up on the raft at the end and shredded the bamboo mats with their rough skin and sharp teeth. »The smell of shark meat hung in our noses«, and in their dreams the crew pursued »the evil, greedy shark mouth«.
The next morning the men threw the shark carcasses overboard. Tuna and other fish just tasted better. According to the logbook, the event was a trigger for the fact that one of the boys noticed that now it would soon be good to lie down comfortably in the grass on a palm island." The crew once wanted to taste and feel something different from cold fish and sea conditions.
What brought Heyerdahl to his crew?
The entry about the shark massacre, the "" triggered by "bloodthirst", as the Norwegian journalist Ragnar Kvam Jr. writes, is the only real indication of the mental state of this very special crew. Kvam has written a biography of the Norwegian Thor Heyerdahl (1914–2002), who had assembled the troupe a few months earlier. "A group of people," says Heyerdahl later in his travel descriptions, "who are to float together on a raft across the ocean, must be selected very carefully, otherwise there will be noise and mutiny."
Heyerdahl, however, hired his crew rather by chance: he had met Herman Watzinger at a sailor's home in New York, he still knew Torstein Raaby and Knut Haugland from his war assignment in Norway in 1940, Erik Hesselberg was a childhood friend and Bengt Danielsson, as the only non-Norwegian on board, had knocked on his door in Lima only a few months ago.
There in the Peruvian capital, the group came together for the first time in February 1947. Nobody knew the other, only Heyerdahl had met everyone personally. Except for Haugland, nobody had sailing experience. Heyerdahl couldn't even swim properly and was even water -shy in his childhood because he would have almost drowned twice. And none of the six had ever controlled a raft. They knew even less how they had to deal with the vehicle that they had assembled in Peru in a few weeks based on colonial spanish reports. They also didn't know whether it was suitable for high -sea.
It is hardly surprising, then, that many contemporaries described Heyerdahl's expedition as suicidal. A naval attaché in Lima promised the six Scandinavians as much whiskey as they could "drink for the rest of their lives" if they reached a South Sea island alive. The champagne bottle intended for the christening of the raft accidentally lay deep in the crates. That's why a coconut had to serve to name the raft »Kon-Tiki«.
From the square sail, a "bearded sun god" looked somewhat anxiously at the crew. The picture was supposed to depict the pre-Columbian god Viracocha, whom Heyerdahl considered the Polynesian god Tiki. Hesselberg, who was actually an artist, had painted it. He is said to have used a stone engraving in the ruined city of Tiahuanaco near Lake Titicaca as a model.
The journey started - bumpy
When the raft was pulled out of the port of the Peruvian city of Callao on April 28, 1947, Heyerdahl and "a parrot that unfortunately only speaks Spanish" were the only crew members, as he noted in his notes. The rest of the crew was on their way. Watzinger apparently enjoyed a glass of beer on land. Perhaps he suspected that there could be a ban on alcohol on the raft – and then he should: After a night of drinking, the light sailors almost lost their compass. After all six men had been brought by dinghy to the raft tumbling on the tugboat in the harbor basin, the journey could begin.
What Thor Heyerdahl writes in his book "Kon-Tiki – A Raft Drifting across the Pacific" sounds as fantastic as the whole plan of the trip. How do you come up with the absurd idea of going on a raft – without technical aids, without backup by an escort ship, on a journey of about 4300 nautical miles, the equivalent of almost 8000 kilometers, through an area that was not crossed by any shipping route at that time? So much is known about this: Heyerdahl came up with this thought at the sight of a half-naked man.
In 1937 he was on a somewhat unusual honeymoon. He wanted to live with his wife Liv like Adam and Eva on a South Sea island. On Fatu Hiva in French-Polynesia he met an old man with a "wrinkled, Borkigbraun skin", who "crouched in front of us half-naked and stared into the dying embers of a small, burned-out fireplace". Tei Tetua is said to have been not only the last cannibal, but also the "last survivor of all the extinct tribes" of the island and told him about Tiki. This was at the same time God and chief and brought the forefathers to Tetuas to the island. When Heyerdahl asked which direction Tiki came from, Tei Tetua told him, "from a mountainous country in the east that was withered under the sun".
Heyerdahl deals with this story in his dissertation, which occupied him for over eight years. His main thesis was that it must have been possible for pre-Columbians to sail from east to west with the Humboldt Current, the South Equatorial Current and the trade wind. For Heyerdahl, this spoke against the then generally accepted thesis of a settlement of Polynesia from Asia. Polynesia refers to all islands in the so-called Polynesian triangle between Hawaii in the north, New Zealand in the south and Easter Island in the east.
Heyerdahl's ties to the National Socialists and his actions
In his biography of Heyerdahl with the subtitle »Auf dem Floß zum Forscherfahm« (On the raft to the glory of researchers), author Kvam also describes the Norwegian's connection to Hitler's top anthropologist Professor Hans Friedrich Karl Günther (1891–1968). Heyerdahl had met him during a visit to the Museum of Ethnology in Berlin. The philologist was a founder of National Socialist racial ideology. There was a longer contact, especially after Heyerdahl's return from Fatu Hiva. Kvam explains the rapprochement by saying that Heyerdahl had little interest in current political developments. In dealing with Günther, he simply attested to his "political naivety".
But it is difficult that Heyerdahl not only exchanged ideas with Günther, but also brought him human bones from the South Seas at his express request. He had stolen several skulls from a burial site on Fatu Hiva. Although the inhabitants had emphatically explained to him that the temple site was taboo. But Heyerdahl defied the ban because, as his biographer suggests, he probably had "business intentions".
When Nazi Germany attacked Norway in 1940, Heyerdahl immediately reported to be a volunteer for the fight against the occupying powers. He was a pacifist for his life and struggled against any hierarchical command structure. This contradiction in dealing with National Socialism was critically discussed, especially in the press after the publication of KVAM's biography. Heyerdahl had long since been dead.
Probably not very serious advice
After the Second World War, he tried to present his thesis on the pre-Columbian settlement of Polynesia to the scientific community. For this he traveled to the USA, where his work was rejected outright. Because according to the state of knowledge at that time, the pre-Columbian peoples in South America had not been seafarers and had not had seaworthy boats at their disposal. When he said that they had rafts, an older colleague patted him on the back and jokingly said: "Yes, you can try to travel from Peru to the South Sea Islands with a balsafloat.«
This was exactly what the 33-year-old Heyerdahl did. Although he was completely burned down and lived in a Norwegian sailor in New York for cost reasons, he managed to obtain contacts with Norway's message in Washington and the US Pentagon Gelder and equipment. The Pentagon donated catering rations, waterproof sleeping bags, lifeguards, film cameras and other material - "briefly everything that an expedition could only want," writes Heyerdahl in his book. The US military hoped that the donation hoped that the equipment would be good under difficult conditions.
Heyerdahl sold the Norwegian publishing rights for his planned expedition report on poor terms in order to raise further funds. The publisher paid an advance, but defended the unfavorable contract with the words: "This amount stands, even if you have to admit that the journey is so risky that there may be no book." According to biographer Kvam, the National Geographic Society also considered the expedition "tantamount to suicide."
Stubbornness that saved lives
Heyerdahl was not deterred by this, traveled to Ecuador during the rainy season to beat fresh balsa trunks with his own hand after an adventurous drive over muddy jungle tracks. These were taken to the Peruvian naval base in the port of Callao near Lima. His stubbornness was to save his life. For he insisted that "not a single spit, nail and steel cable lashing" should be used in the construction of the raft. The approximately 14 meters long and almost 6 meters wide raft was tied together with 300 different rope pieces and should be a perfect copy of the Inca boat described in the Spanish chronicles, which in turn was based on pre-Columbian models.
Shortly before the departure, some experienced Norwegian seamen, who were in the port of Callao, explained that the tribes would pour water within two weeks and then go under. After 14 days at sea, the crew around Heyerdahl noticed exactly that, but apparently the juice inside the balsa wood was a natural impregnation and prevented the water from penetrating. The hemp ropes also cut into the soft balsa wood. As a result, they were protected and were not gripped between the tribes.
But the crew only learned all this on the high seas. The men quickly noticed that the raft floated up and down the waves like "a cork steamroller." At an average speed of one to two knots – that is 1.8 to 3.7 kilometers per hour – the raft drifted westwards. The team itself was only able to make very minor changes to the course. Only about 20 percent of the raft could be steered via the tiller. So it would have been impossible to turn back or stop. Heyerdahl's crew became aware of this several times. When Watzinger once tried to save his sleeping bag driven into the water by the wind, he almost died. Only by a courageous jump of Haugland and with the help of a lifeline Watzinger could be pulled back on board.
Otherwise, if one may believe the logbook, the trip was relatively uneventful. The "psychological shipwreck" feared by Heyerdahl did not occur. The crew, in addition to the rations of the US Army, fed on fishing. Whereby many fish were washed directly onto the raft by the deep swell. It was a real "land of plenty", wrote Heyerdahl. We slept in a bamboo hut on the raft. One of the few modern devices on board was a radio that could be used to send short messages. The team also sent birthday greetings to the Norwegian King Haakon VII.
The waves pushed the raft ashore
Because the raft was difficult to steer, the men had to wait to see which island and, above all, what kind of coastal formation they would encounter. On July 30, 1947, after 93 days of sailing and thus four days less than had been calculated under the most favorable conditions, land came into view: the island of Pukapuka, a coral atoll of the Cook Islands. But the raft kept drifting and the next island could not be reached either. On August 7, the crew got ready to drift to the dreaded reef of the Raroia Atoll in the Tuamotu Archipelago. 101 Days after their departure, the waves smashed the raft onto the reef. There it came to a standstill again for the first time.
It was like a miracle that none of the six crew members died.
They adhered to boxes, ropes and the bamboo hut and were thrown over the coral reef with the waves.
With its flat base, the raft slipped over the rocks of the reef into the lagoon behind it.
For several weeks the crew stayed in a Polynesian village until a French schooner brought them to Tahiti and from there to the USA. Heyerdahl and his crew had proved that a trip on a raft from South America to Polynesia would have been possible for the pre-Columbian peoples in general. The book about the expedition became a worldwide success, to date it has been translated into 70 languages and sold over 50 million copies. The documentary film that Heyerdahl had shot during the trip was also a success. He received two Oscars in 1951. The Kon-Tiki raft has been exhibited in its own museum in Oslo since 1957.
The scientific community was slow to react to Heyerdahl's expedition.
However, Heyerdahl was denied scientific recognition for a long time. The Norwegians are "good sailors" by nature, but otherwise the trip was more of a "scout trip", explained colleagues. It was only in 1952, after Heyerdahl had published his 821-page treatise, in which he scientifically defended the thesis of a colonization of Polynesia by a pre-Columbian immigration from America, that he received the attention, the absence of which had driven him out to sea five years earlier.
It was only in 2020 that people from South America and Polynesia were met from Columbus in the period before Columbus. According to the study in the specialist magazine "Nature", American indigenous people mixed with Polynesians for the first time between 1150 and 1230. Conversely, however, this does not prove a significant settlement from the east. The opponents of the thesis of Heyerdahl can therefore conclude that it was the Polynesians themselves who drove to South America as knowledgeable seafarers.
However, researchers agree on one thing: the colonization of the distant islands of Polynesia is more complex and not due to a single direct influence. Rather, different settlement stages and migratory movements must be taken into account. An insight that was also gained through the voyage of the Kon-Tiki 75 years ago.
Note. D. Red.: The indication of the distance traveled on the Pacific and the conversion of the nautical miles were not correct. We have corrected the errors.
