Kon-Tiki Read online

Up in Washington there was still bitter winter weather when I came back—cold and snowy February. Björn had tackled the radio problem and had interested the Radio Amateur League of America in listening in for reports from the raft. Knut and Torstein were busy preparing the transmission, which was to be done partly with short-wave transmitters specially constructed for our purpose and partly with secret sabotage sets used during the war. There were a thousand things to prepare, big and small, if we were to do all that we planned on the voyage.

  And the piles of paper in the files grew. Military and civilian documents—white, yellow, and blue—in English, Spanish, French, and Norwegian. Even a raft trip had to cost the paper industry half a fir tree in our practical age! Laws and regulations tied our hands everywhere, and knot after knot had to be loosened in turn.

  “I’ll swear this correspondence weighs twenty pounds,” said Knut one day despairingly as he bent over his typewriter.

  “Twenty-six,” said Torstein drily. “I’ve weighed it.”

  My mother must have had a clear idea of the conditions in these days of dramatic preparation when she wrote: “And I only wish I knew you were all six safe on board the raft!”

  Then one day an express telegram came from Lima. Herman had been caught in the backwash of a breaker and flung ashore, badly injured, with his neck dislocated. He was under treatment in Lima Hospital.

  Torstein Raaby was sent down by air at once with Gerd Void, the popular London secretary of the Norwegian parachute saboteurs in the war, who was now helping us in Washington. They found Herman better; he had been hung up by a strap round his head for half an hour while the doctors twisted the atlas vertebra in his neck back into position. The X-ray picture showed that the highest bone in his neck was cracked and had been turned right around. Herman’s splendid condition had saved his life, and he was soon back, blue and green and stiff and rheumatic, in the naval dockyard, where he had assembled the balsa wood and started the work. He had to remain in the doctor’s hands for several weeks, and it was doubtful whether he would be able to make the voyage with us. He himself never doubted it for a moment, despite his initial rough handling in the embrace of the Pacific.

  Then Erik arrived by air from Panama and Knut and I from Washington, and so we were all assembled at the starting point in Lima.

  Down in the naval dockyard lay the big balsa logs from the Quevedo forest. It was really a pathetic sight. Fresh-cut round logs, yellow bamboos, reeds, and green banana leaves lay in a heap, our building materials, in between rows of threatening gray submarines and destroyers. Six fair-skinned northerners and twenty brown Peruvian seamen with Inca blood in their veins swung axes and long machete knives and tugged at ropes and knots. Trim naval officers in blue and gold walked over and stared in bewilderment at these pale strangers and their crude vegetable materials which had suddenly appeared in the midst of their proud naval yard.

  For the first time for hundreds of years a balsa raft was being built in Callao Bay. In these coastal waters, where Inca legends affirm that their ancestors first learned to sail such rafts from Kon-Tiki’s vanished clan, modern Indians were forbidden to build such rafts by men of our own race. Sailing on an open raft can cost human lives. The descendants of the Incas have moved with the times; like us, they have creases in their trousers and are safely protected by the guns of their naval craft. Bamboo and balsa belong to the primitive past; here, too, life is marching on—to armor and steel.

  The ultramodern dockyard gave us wonderful support. With Bengt as interpreter and Herman as chief constructor we had the run of the carpenter’s and sailmaker’s shops, as well as half the storage space as a dump for our equipment and a small floating pier where the timber was put into the water when the building began.

  Nine of the thickest logs were chosen as sufficient to form the actual raft. Deep grooves were cut in the wood to prevent the ropes which were to fasten them and the whole raft together from slipping. Not a single spike, nail, or wire rope was used in the whole construction. The nine great logs were first laid loose side by side in the water so that they might all fall freely into their natural floating position before they were lashed securely together. The longest log, 45 feet long, was laid in the middle and projected a long way at both ends. Shorter and shorter logs were laid symmetrically on both sides of this, so that the sides of the raft were 30 feet long and the bow stuck out like a blunt plow. Astern the raft was cut off straight across, except that the three middle logs projected and supported a short thick block of balsa wood which lay athwart ship and held tholepins for the long steering oar. When the nine balsa logs were lashed securely together with separate lengths of inch-and-a-quarter hemp rope, the lighter balsa logs were made fast crossways over them at intervals of about 3 feet.

  The raft itself was now complete, laboriously fastened together with about three hundred different lengths of rope, each firmly knotted. A deck of split bamboos was laid upon it, fastened to it in the form of separate strips and covered with loose mats of plaited bamboo reeds. In the middle of the raft, but nearer the stern, we erected a small open cabin of bamboo canes, with walls of plaited bamboo reeds and a roof of bamboo slats with leathery banana leaves overlapping one another like tiles. Forward of the cabin we set up two masts side by side. They were cut from mangrove wood, as hard as iron, and leaned toward each other, so that they were lashed together crosswise at the top. The big rectangular square sail was hauled up on a yard made of two bamboo stems bound together to secure double strength.

  The nine big logs of timber which were to carry us over the sea were pointed at their forward ends in native fashion that they might glide more easily through the water, and quite low splashboards were fastened to the bow above the surface of the water.

  At various places, where there were large chinks between the logs, we pushed down in all five solid fir planks which stood on their edges in the water under the raft. They were scattered about without system and went down 5 feet into the water, being 1 inch thick and 2 feet wide. They were kept in place with wedges and ropes and served as tiny parallel keels or centerboards. Centerboards of this kind were used on all the balsa rafts of Inca times, long before the time of the discoveries, and were meant to prevent the flat wooden rafts from drifting sideways with wind and sea. We did not make any rail or protection round the raft, but we had a long slim balsa log which afforded foothold along each side.

  The whole construction was a faithful copy of the old vessels in Peru and Ecuador except for the low splashboards in the bow, which later proved to be entirely unnecessary. After finishing the raft itself, of course, we could arrange the details on board as we liked, so long as they had no effect on the movement and quality of the vessel. We knew that this raft was to be our whole world in the time that lay before us and that, consequently, the smallest detail on board would increase in dimensions and importance as the weeks passed.

  Therefore we gave the little deck as much variation as possible. The bamboo strips did not deck in the whole raft but formed a floor forward of the bamboo cabin and along the starboard side of it where the wall was open. The port side of the cabin was a kind of back yard full of boxes and gear made fast, with a narrow edge left to walk along. Forward in the bow, and in the stern as far as the after wall of the cabin, the nine gigantic logs were not decked in at all. So, when we moved round the bamboo cabin, we stepped from yellow bamboos and wickerwork down on to the round gray logs astern and up again on to piles of cargo on the other side. It was not many steps, but the psychological effect of the irregularity gave us variation and compensated us for our limited freedom of movement. Up at the masthead we placed a wooden platform, not so much in order to have a lookout post, when at last we came to land, as to be able to clamber up while en route and look at the sea from another angle.

  When the raft began to take shape and lay there among the warships, golden and fresh with ripe bamboos and green leaves, the minister of marine himself came to inspect us. We were immensely proud of our vessel a
s she lay there, a brave little reminder of Inca times among the threatening big warships. But the minister of marine was utterly horrified by what he saw. I was summoned to the naval office to sign a paper freeing the Navy from all responsibility for what we had built in its harbor, and to the harbor master to sign a paper saying that, if I left the harbor with men and cargo on board, it was entirely on my own responsibility and at my own risk.

  Later a number of foreign naval experts and diplomats were admitted to the dockyard to see the raft. They were no more encouraging, and a few days afterward I was sent for by the ambassador of one of the Great Powers.

  “Are your parents living?” he asked me. And, when I replied in the affirmative, he looked me straight in the eyes and said in a hollow voice, full of foreboding:

  “Your mother and father will be very grieved when they hear of your death.”

  As a private individual he begged me to give up the voyage while there was yet time. An admiral who had inspected the raft had told him that we should never get across alive. In the first place, the raft’s dimensions were wrong. It was so small that it would founder in a big sea; at the same time it was just long enough to be lifted up by two lines of waves at the same time, and with the raft filled with men and cargo the fragile balsa logs would break under the strain. And, what was worse, the biggest balsa exporter in the country had told him that the porous balsa logs would float only a quarter of the distance across the sea before they became so completely waterlogged that they would sink under us.

  This sounded bad but, as we stuck to our guns, we were given a Bible as a present to take with us on our voyage. All in all, there was little encouragement to be had from the experts who looked at the raft. Gales and perhaps hurricanes would wash us overboard and destroy the low, open craft, which would simply lie helpless and drift in circles about the ocean before wind and sea. Even in an ordinary choppy sea we should be continually drenched with salt water which would take the skin off our legs and ruin everything on board. If we added up all that the different experts, each in turn, had pointed out as the vital flaw in the construction itself, there was not a length of rope, not a knot, not a measurement, not a piece of wood in the whole raft which would not cause us to founder at sea. High wagers were made as to how many days the raft would last, and a flippant naval attaché bet all the whisky the members of the expedition could drink for the rest of their lives if they reached the South Sea islands alive.

  Worst of all was when a Norwegian ship came into port and we took the skipper and one or two of his most experienced sea dogs into the dockyard. We were eager to hear their practical reactions. And our disappointment was great when they all agreed that the blunt-bowed, clumsy craft would never get any help from the sail, while the skipper maintained that, if we kept afloat, the raft would take a year or two to drift across with the Humboldt Current. The boatswain looked at our lashings and shook his head. We need not worry. The raft would not hold together for a fortnight before every single rope was worn through, for when at sea the big logs would be continually moving up and down and rubbing against one another. Unless we used wire ropes or chains, we might as well pack up.

  These were difficult arguments to stifle. If only one of them proved to be right, we had not a chance. I am afraid I asked myself many times if we knew what we were doing. I could not counter the warnings one by one myself because I was not a seaman. But I had in reserve one single trump in my hand, on which the whole voyage was founded. I knew all the time in my heart that a prehistoric civilization had been spread from Peru and across to the islands at a time when rafts like ours were the only vessels on that coast. And I drew the general conclusion that, if balsa wood had floated and lashings held for Kon-Tiki in 500 A.D., they would do the same for us now if we blindly made our raft an exact copy of his. Bengt and Herman had gone into the theory most thoroughly, and, while the experts lamented, all the boys took the thing quite calmly and had a royal time in Lima. There was just one evening when Torstein asked anxiously if I was sure the ocean currents went the right way. We had been to the movies and seen Dorothy Lamour dancing about in a straw skirt among palms and hula girls on a lovely South Sea island.

  “That’s where we must go,” said Torstein. “And I’m sorry for you if the currents don’t go as you say they do!”

  When the day of our departure was approaching, we went to the regular passport control office to get permission to leave the country. Bengt stood first in the line as interpreter.

  “What is your name?” asked a ceremonious little clerk, looking suspiciously over his spectacles at Bengt’s huge beard.

  “Bengt Emmerik Danielsson,” Bengt answered respectfully.

  The man put a long form into his typewriter.

  “By what boat did you come to Peru?”

  “Well, you see,” Bengt explained, bending over the mild little man, “I didn’t come by boat. I came to Peru by canoe.”

  The man looked at Bengt dumb with astonishment and tapped out “canoe” in an open space on the form.

  “And by what boat are you leaving Peru?”

  “Well, you see, again,” said Bengt politely, “I’m not leaving Peru by boat. I’m leaving by raft.”

  “A likely story!” the clerk cried angrily and tore the paper out of the machine. “Will you please answer my questions properly?”

  A few days before we sailed, provisions and water and all our equipment were stowed on board the raft. We took provisions for six men for four months, in the form of solid little cardboard cartons containing military rations. Herman had the idea of boiling asphalt and pouring it so as to make a level layer round each separate carton. Then we strewed sand on the cartons, to prevent them from sticking together, and stowed them, packed close, under the bamboo deck where they filled the space between the nine low crossbeams which supported the deck.

  At a crystal-clear spring high up in the mountains we filled fifty-six small water cans with 275 gallons of drinking water. These, too, we made fast in between the crossbeams so that the sea might always splash round them. On the bamboo deck we lashed fast the rest of the equipment including large wicker baskets full of fruit, roots, and coconuts.

  Knut and Torstein took one corner of the bamboo cabin for the radio, and inside the hut, down between the crossbeams, we made fast eight boxes. Two were reserved for scientific instruments and films; the other six were allotted one to each of us, with an intimation that each man could take with him as much private property as he could find room for in his own box. As Erik had brought several rolls of drawing paper and a guitar, his box was so full that he had to put his stockings in Torstein’s. It took four seamen to carry Bengt’s box on board. He brought nothing but books but he had managed to cram in seventy-three sociological and ethnological works. We laid plaited reed mats and our straw mattresses on top of the boxes and then we were ready to start.

  First, the raft was towed out of the naval area and paddled round in the harbor for a while to see if the cargo was stowed evenly. Then she was towed across to the Callao Yacht Club, where invited guests and other persons interested were to be present at the naming of the raft the day before we sailed.

  On April 27, 1947, the Norwegian flag was hoisted. Along a yard at the masthead waved the flags of the foreign countries which had given the expedition practical support. The quay was packed with people who wanted to see the strange craft christened. Both color and lineaments betrayed that many of them had remote ancestors who had sailed along the coast on balsa rafts. But there were also descendants of the old Spaniards, headed by representatives of the Peruvian Navy and the government, besides the ambassadors of the United States, Great Britain, France, China, Argentina, and Cuba; the former governor of the British colonies in the Pacific; the Swedish and Belgian ministers; and our friends from the little Norwegian colony with Consul General Bahr at their head. There were swarms of journalists and a clicking of movie cameras; indeed, the only things that were lacking were a brass band and a big drum.
One thing was quite clear to us all—if the raft went to pieces outside the bay, we would paddle to Polynesia, each of us on a log, rather than dare come back here again.

  Gerd Void, the expedition’s secretary and contact on the mainland, was to christen the raft with milk from a coconut, partly to be in harmony with the Stone Age and partly because, owing to a misunderstanding, the champagne had been put at the bottom of Torstein’s private box. When our friends had been told in English and Spanish that the raft was named after the Incas’ great forerunner—the sun-king who had vanished westward over the sea from Peru and appeared in Polynesia 1,500 years ago—Gerd Void christened the raft Kon-Tiki. She smashed the coconut (previously cracked) so hard against the bow that milk and bits of coconut filled the hair of all those who stood reverently around.

  Then the bamboo yard was hauled up and the sail shaken out, with Kon-Tiki’s bearded head, painted in red by our artist Erik, in its center. It was a faithful copy of the sun-king’s head cut in red stone on a statue in the ruined city of Tiahuanaco.

  “Ah! Señor Danielsson,” the foreman of our dockyard workers cried in delight when he saw the bearded face on the sail.

  He had called Bengt Señor Kon-Tiki for two months, ever since we had shown him the bearded face of Kon-Tiki on a piece of paper. But now he had at last realized that Danielsson was Bengt’s right name.

  Before we sailed, we all had a farewell audience with the President, and then we went for a trip far up into the black mountains to look our fill on rock and scree before we drifted out into the endless ocean. While we were working on the raft down on the coast, we had stayed in a boardinghouse in a palm grove outside Lima and driven to and from Callao in an Air Ministry car with a private chauffeur whom Gerd had contrived to borrow for the expedition. Now we asked the chauffeur to drive us straight to the mountains, as far in as he could get in one day. We drove up over desert roads, along old irrigation canals from Inca times, till we came to the dizzy height of 12,000 feet above the raft’s mast. Here we simply devoured rocks and mountain peaks and green grass with our eyes and tried to surfeit ourselves with the tranquil mountain mass of the Andes range that lay before us. We tried to convince ourselves that we were thoroughly tired of stone and solid earth and wanted to sail out and get to know the sea.