Fishing for Islands

How would you like to cross the Pacific Ocean in a home-made boat?Sounds impossible, doesn’t it? – but that’s what the Polynesians did, skimming through the water at 20 km an hour with enough provisions on board for several weeks at sea. They and other peoples of the Pacific rim built boats for fishing, travelling, carrying goods, exploring and war.Fishing for Islands celebrates these traditional boats of South-east Asia and the Pacific, and shows how they were made, using bamboo, timber, vines, coconut fibre and so on. It also traces the movement of Melanesian and Polynesian people, beginning with short island-hops in bark or reed canoes and gradually extending out into the vastness of the Pacific, navigating by memory and the stars.This is a John Nicholson classic: a superbly illustrated, down-to-earth and very personal angle on history, informed by a passion for the things that people design and make.