Word: shipping
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...Modern scholars identify these voyagers as ancient Indonesians, based upon the indelible linguistic and DNA footprints they left behind in East Africa. However, Madagascar is only the mid-point of Beale's projected voyage: from there, he plans to sail the ship around the Cape of Good Hope, one of the most perilous sea passages on earth, and then north to Ghana, ending his odyssey beneath the cliffs of Accra. The historic evidence for Indonesian contact with West Africa is shaky, as Beale readily concedes. The case relies largely upon striking similarities in traditional African and Indonesian music. The Madagascar...
...Burningham has built several replica ships, but the Borobudur, he says, was "my greatest challenge, the most speculative reconstruction I've ever worked on." In addition to the handful of ship carvings at Borobudur and a few vaguely analogous shipwrecks, he was also guided by Assad's instincts and experience. Burningham built a model based upon historical estimates of load and the limits of materials available at the time, then gave it to Assad to construct on the Indonesian island of Pagerungan Kecil. "He not only built from the model," says Burningham, "he also interpreted...
...ship was constructed from seven kinds of hardwood native to Indonesia and joined entirely by pegs, which Assad calls "tree nails." Burningham declares himself "just about satisfied" with the results. "Stability is adequate, not excellent, and the maximum speed is about 7 1/2 knots. She has a terrific motion and doesn't pitch or roll." The ship that he and Assad built is a funny-looking duck, with masts like narrow pointed ladders, canted sails and stout bamboo outriggers. The ship's captain, Alan Campbell, a Scotsman now living in Tasmania, recalls his first impression: "Some ships, when you first...
...team used traditional caulking, the sere bark of the paper tree, but it proved leaky, so they switched to standard marine waterproofing. Modern navigation and communications technology, such as the satellite-based global-positioning system, or GPS, have been installed with no apologies. Ports are cut in the ship's sides so that it can be propelled with paddles if there's no wind. The toilet, at least, can't be surpassed for authenticity: a meter-square box attached to the ship's starboard side, with a hole in the bottom and a canvas curtain across...
...Philip Beale looked a bit dazed. His adventure has every appearance of being just what he says it is: an extravagant youthful dream he has clung to for 20 years and which he is now riding out into the broad world, where so much can go awry. As his ship poked its nose out into the sea, he tried once again to explain what on earth possessed him, why someone with no background as an adventurer and no special expertise in maritime history would undertake such an arduous voyage. Baffled, it seems, that anyone might fail to grasp the logic...