David Henry Lewis (1917 – 23 October 2002) was a

sailor A sailor, seaman, mariner, or seafarer is a person who works aboard a watercraft as part of its crew, and may work in any one of a number of different fields that are related to the operation and maintenance of a ship. While the term ''sailor'' ...

adventurer An adventure is an exciting experience or undertaking that is typically bold, sometimes risky. Adventures may be activities with danger such as traveling, exploring, skydiving, mountain climbing, scuba diving, river rafting, or other extreme ...

, doctor, and scholar of

Polynesian culture Polynesian culture is the culture of the indigenous peoples of Polynesia who share common traits in language, customs and society. The development of Polynesian culture is typically divided into four different historical eras: * Exploration and ...

. He is best known for his studies on the traditional systems of navigation used by the Pacific Islanders. His studies, published in the book ''

We, the Navigators ''We, the Navigators, The Ancient Art of Landfinding in the Pacific'' is a 1972 book by the British-born New Zealand doctor David Lewis, which explains the principles of Micronesian and Polynesian navigation through his experience of placing hi ...

'', made these navigational methods known to a wide audience and helped to inspire a revival of traditional voyaging methods in the South Pacific.

Early life

Lewis was born in

Plymouth Plymouth ( ) is a port city status in the United Kingdom, city and unitary authority in Devon, South West England. It is located on Devon's south coast between the rivers River Plym, Plym and River Tamar, Tamar, about southwest of Exeter and ...

, England, and raised in New Zealand and

Rarotonga Rarotonga is the largest and most populous of the Cook Islands. The island is volcanic, with an area of , and is home to almost 75% of the country's population, with 10,898 of a total population of 15,040. The Parliament of the Cook Islands, Coo ...

. He was sent to the Polynesian school in Rarotonga, where he apparently developed his appreciation for Polynesian identity and culture. He remained a New Zealander throughout his life, though he eventually retired to Queensland. After an adventurous childhood and teenage years including mountaineering and skiing in New Zealand, and a multi-hundred mile kayak journey, he traveled to England in 1938 for medical training at the

University of Leeds The University of Leeds is a public research university in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. It was established in 1874 as the Yorkshire College of Science. In 1884, it merged with the Leeds School of Medicine (established 1831) and was renamed Y ...

, and served in the British army as a medical officer. After the war, he worked as a doctor in London, and was involved in setting up the

National Health Service The National Health Service (NHS) is the term for the publicly funded health care, publicly funded healthcare systems of the United Kingdom: the National Health Service (England), NHS Scotland, NHS Wales, and Health and Social Care (Northern ...

Sailing

With the announcement in 1960 of the first single-handed trans-Atlantic yacht race (from Plymouth, UK to the US East Coast), Lewis decided to enter in a small 25-foot boat. Following a series of accidents, including a

dismasting Dismasting, also called demasting, occurs to a sailing ship when one or more of the mast (sailing), masts responsible for hoisting the sails that propel the vessel breaks. Dismasting usually occurs as the result of high winds during a storm act ...

shortly after leaving, he finished third (Francis Chichester came first), as described in his book ''The Ship Would Not Travel Due West''. He later decided to sail around the world with his second wife and two small daughters, and built the ocean cruising

catamaran A catamaran () (informally, a "cat") is a watercraft with two parallel hull (watercraft), hulls of equal size. The wide distance between a catamaran's hulls imparts stability through resistance to rolling and overturning; no ballast is requi ...

''Rehu Moana'', for this purpose. After an initial voyage towards Greenland, he entered the 1964 single-handed trans-Atlantic race and picked up his family in the United States. They circumnavigated by way of the

Strait of Magellan The Strait of Magellan (), also called the Straits of Magellan, is a navigable sea route in southern Chile separating mainland South America to the north and the Tierra del Fuego archipelago to the south. Considered the most important natura ...

, the South Pacific and the

Cape of Good Hope The Cape of Good Hope ( ) is a rocky headland on the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic coast of the Cape Peninsula in South Africa. A List of common misconceptions#Geography, common misconception is that the Cape of Good Hope is the southern tip of Afri ...

. (See his book ''Daughters of the Wind''.) This was the world's first circumnavigation by

multihull A multihull is a boat or ship with more than one Hull (watercraft), hull, whereas a vessel with a single hull is a monohull. The most common multihulls are catamarans (with two hulls), and trimarans (with three hulls). There are other types, wi ...

. Following his longstanding interest in old navigational methods used to explore and populate the Pacific, he employed

stellar navigation Celestial navigation, also known as astronavigation, is the practice of position fixing using stars and other celestial bodies that enables a navigator to accurately determine their actual current physical position in space or on the surface o ...

for the Tahiti-Rarotonga-New Zealand leg of the ''Rehu Moana'' voyage without using a

compass A compass is a device that shows the cardinal directions used for navigation and geographic orientation. It commonly consists of a magnetized needle or other element, such as a compass card or compass rose, which can pivot to align itself with No ...

sextant A sextant is a doubly reflecting navigation instrument that measures the angular distance between two visible objects. The primary use of a sextant is to measure the angle between an astronomical object and the horizon for the purposes of cel ...

marine chronometer A marine chronometer is a precision timepiece that is carried on a ship and employed in the determination of the ship's position by celestial navigation. It is used to determine longitude by comparing Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), and the time at t ...

Research and literary career

See also: Polyesian navigation

Micronesian navigation Micronesian navigation techniques are those navigation skills used for thousands of years by the navigators who voyaged between the thousands of small islands in the western Pacific Ocean in the subregion of Oceania, that is commonly known as Mi ...

In 1967, Lewis acquired another boat, ''Isbjorn'', to embark on further field studies of traditional navigation techniques of Pacific islanders. With a research grant from the

Australian National University The Australian National University (ANU) is a public university, public research university and member of the Group of Eight (Australian universities), Group of Eight, located in Canberra, the capital of Australia. Its main campus in Acton, A ...

and with his second wife, two daughters and 19-year-old son, he set out for the Pacific again to study traditional navigation techniques. While there, he was welcomed into the cultures of various

Pacific Islanders Pacific Islanders, Pasifika, Pasefika, Pacificans, or rarely Pacificers are the peoples of the Pacific Islands. As an ethnic/racial term, it is used to describe the original peoples—inhabitants and diasporas—of any of the three major subreg ...

such as

Hipour Hipour was a master navigator from the navigational school of Weriyeng and the island of Puluwat. He is notable for teaching author Thomas Gladwin the art of navigation for his 1970 book, '' East Is a Big Bird'', which greatly reinvigorated int ...

, who taught him their navigational lore, heretofore largely unrecognized by those outside Polynesia. Lewis chronicled this voyage and research in various articles and in his books ''We, the Navigators'' and ''The Voyaging Stars''. The title of the former plays on ''We the Tikopia'', a classic study by New Zealand anthropologst

Raymond Firth Sir Raymond William Firth (25 March 1901 – 22 February 2002) was an ethnologist from New Zealand. As a result of Firth's ethnographic work, actual behaviour of societies (social organization) is separated from the idealized rules of behavio ...

of a tiny South Pacific island of that name, whose Polyesian inhabitants are gifted navigators. Lewis was also one of the first academics to document

te lapa ''Te lapa'' is a Polynesian term for an unexplained light phenomenon underneath, or on the surface of, the ocean. ''Te lapa'' has been loosely translated as "flashing light", "underwater lightning", "the flashing", or "something that flashes". ...

, an unexplained light phenomenon used by Polynesians to navigate. David Lewis also sought out navigators of the

Caroline Islands The Caroline Islands (or the Carolines) are a widely scattered archipelago of tiny islands in the western Pacific Ocean, to the north of New Guinea. Politically, they are divided between the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) in the cen ...

Santa Cruz Islands The Santa Cruz Islands form an archipelago in Temotu Province, Solomon Islands. They lie approximately to the southeast of the Solomon Islands (archipelago), Solomon Islands archipelago, just north of the archipelago of Vanuatu and are con ...

and

Tonga Tonga, officially the Kingdom of Tonga, is an island country in Polynesia, part of Oceania. The country has 171 islands, of which 45 are inhabited. Its total surface area is about , scattered over in the southern Pacific Ocean. accordin ...

to confirm that traditional techniques had been retained by navigators from Polynesia, Micronesia and Melanesia. The voyages of Lewis on his

ketch A ketch is a two- masted sailboat whose mainmast is taller than the mizzen mast (or aft-mast), and whose mizzen mast is stepped forward of the rudder post. The mizzen mast stepped forward of the rudder post is what distinguishes the ketch f ...

''Isbjorn'' included: Tevake navigating between the Santa Cruz Islands; and

Puluwat Poluwat, also Polowat, formerly Puluwat, is a coral atoll and a municipality of Chuuk state, Federated States of Micronesia. Name The name of the island goes back to Proto-Chuukic ''*pʷolowado''. Geography Polowat is located in the northwes ...

navigating in the Caroline Islands; and also conversations with Fe’iloakitau Kaho, Ve’ehala and Kaloni Kienga from

; Temi Rewi of Beru and Iotiabata Ata of

Tarawa Tarawa is an atoll and the capital of the Republic of Kiribati,Kiribati
''

Gilbert Islands The Gilbert Islands (;Reilly Ridgell. ''Pacific Nations and Territories: The Islands of Micronesia, Melanesia, and Polynesia.'' 3rd. Ed. Honolulu: Bess Press, 1995. p. 95. formerly Kingsmill or King's-Mill IslandsVery often, this name applied o ...

; and Yaleilei of

Satawal Satawal is a solitary coral atoll of one island with about 500 people on just over 1 km2 located in the Caroline Islands in the Pacific Ocean. It forms a legislative district in Yap State in the Federated States of Micronesia. Satawal is the ...

in the Caroline Islands. Lewis' voyages and resulting books gave inspiration to the revival in traditional Polynesian canoe building and voyaging. In 1976, Lewis joined

Polynesian Voyaging Society The Polynesian Voyaging Society (PVS) is a non-profit research and educational corporation based in Honolulu, Hawaii. PVS was established to research and perpetuate traditional Polynesian voyaging methods. Using replicas of traditional double-hul ...

's first experimental voyage from Hawaii to Tahiti on '' Hokule'a''. The team successfully navigated using traditional methods to Tahiti. Lewis departed from Hokule'a in Tahiti and went on to work in his own research. Along with Dr. Marianne (Mimi) George, he identified that traditional

Polynesian navigation Polynesian navigation or Polynesian wayfinding was used for thousands of years to enable long voyages across thousands of kilometres of the Pelagic zone, open Pacific Ocean. Polynesians made contact with nearly every island within the vast Poly ...

al techniques were still preserved in the

Polynesian outlier Polynesian outliers are a number of culturally Polynesian societies that geographically lie outside the main region of Polynesian influence, known as the Polynesian Triangle; instead, Polynesian outliers are scattered in the two other Pacific su ...

Taumako. Lewis's next adventure in 1972 was an attempt at circumnavigating

Antarctica Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean (also known as the Antarctic Ocean), it contains the geographic South Pole. ...

single-handed. For this he acquired a small steel yacht, named ''Ice Bird''. Facing treacherous conditions in the Southern Ocean after departing, Lewis was not heard from for 13 weeks but eventually managed to sail the ''Ice Bird'' to the Antarctic Peninsula under a jury rig after dismasting. Lewis was rescued by personnel from the Antarctic research outpost

Palmer Station Palmer Station is a United States research station in Antarctica located on Anvers island (aka Antwerp Island), the only U.S. station on the continent located north of the Antarctic Circle. The first Palmer was built in 1965, but the current sit ...

, who subsequently repaired the Ice Bird while Lewis spent the Antarctic winter in Australia. He also met Calypso during

Jacques Cousteau Jacques-Yves Cousteau, (, also , ; 11 June 191025 June 1997) was a French naval officer, oceanographer, filmmaker and author. He co-invented the first successful open-circuit self-contained underwater breathing apparatus (SCUBA), called the ...

's Antarctica expedition and was greeted by Cousteau and crew onboard who helped him as much as he could and also contacted Lewis' family in Australia. Ice Bird Trials Off Palmer Station 1973

After returning eight months later, Lewis left Palmer station to complete the voyage, but that very same day was caught in a heavy ice field and had to be towed to open water by the R.V. Hero. Later, Lewis capsized again and eventually brought the boat to

Cape Town Cape Town is the legislature, legislative capital city, capital of South Africa. It is the country's oldest city and the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. Cape Town is the country's List of municipalities in South Africa, second-largest ...

, South Africa. Edited aspects of these events are described in his bestseller book, '' Ice Bird''. His son, Barry, sailed the yacht back to Sydney from South Africa where it underwent extensive work to prevent further corrosion. In 1982, Dr. Lewis donated "Ice Bird" to the

Powerhouse Museum The Powerhouse Museum, formerly known as the Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences (MAAS), is a collection of 4 museums in Sydney, owned by the Government of New South Wales. Powerhouse is a contemporary museum of applied arts and sciences, explori ...

in Sydney, Australia. After the ''Ice Bird'' voyage, Lewis was involved in setting up the Oceanic Research Foundation with the aim of sending private expeditions to the Antarctic. In a 17.4-metre (57 ft) Alan Payne designed steel yacht named "Solo" with seven other crew, Lewis made a summer expedition to Antarctica and wintered over there, 1977–78. Lewis spent some of his later years conducting research into traditional navigation techniques of the Inuit on the Bering Strait region. One obituary said of Lewis that he "always brought his crews home intact. He was a typical Polynesian sailor, getting into trouble through haste and neglect, then, with near superhuman courage and seamanship, fighting his way out of it". Following this, he retired to New Zealand to write his autobiography, ''Shapes on the Wind''; one of 12 books he wrote. In the

2001 Queen's Birthday Honours The Queen's Birthday Honours 2001 was announced on 16 June 2001 for the United Kingdom (including Northern Ireland), New Zealand (4 June), Australia (11 June), Barbados, Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Sa ...

, Lewis was appointed a

Distinguished Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit The New Zealand Order of Merit () is an order of merit in the New Zealand royal honours system. It was established by royal warrant on 30 May 1996 by Elizabeth II, Queen of New Zealand, "for those persons who in any field of endeavour, have r ...

, for services to yachting and exploration. He finally retired to Australia, and died at Gympie, Queensland.

Publications

#''The Ship Would Not Travel Due West'', by David H. Lewis, 1961 #''Dreamers of the Day'', by David H. Lewis, 1964 #''Daughters of the Wind'', by David H. Lewis, 1967 #''Children Of Three Oceans'', by David H. Lewis, 1969 #''

We, The Navigators ''We, the Navigators, The Ancient Art of Landfinding in the Pacific'' is a 1972 book by the British-born New Zealand doctor David Lewis, which explains the principles of Micronesian and Polynesian navigation through his experience of placing hi ...

'', by David H. Lewis, 1972 #''Ice Bird'', by David H. Lewis, 1976 #''The Voyaging Stars'', by David H. Lewis, 1978 #''Voyage To The Ice. The Antarctic Expedition of Solo'', by David H. Lewis, 1979 #''Icebound In Antarctica'', by David H. Lewis with Mimi George, 1988 # #''Shapes on the Wind'', by David H. Lewis, 2000

Early life

Sailing

Research and literary career

See also

Publications

References

Further reading