[Article] Ancient ship seeks to prove Africa-Asia ties

Victor

http://home.eircom.net/content/reuters/worldnews/2366605?view=Eircomnet

Ancient ship seeks to prove Africa-Asia ties
From:Reuters
Sunday, 18th January, 2004
By Gordon Bell

CAPE TOWN (Reuters) - It looks more like a giant spider than a boat, yet the Borobudur has already sailed more than 8,000 miles, retracing an ancient trading route stretching from Asia to the bulge of Africa.

The strange craft with its muddle of beams and gangly outriggers seems somewhat out of place moored outside Cape Town's opulent Cape Grace Hotel, wedged between the gleaming yachts of millionaires.

The 19-metre-long (57-foot) wooden vessel, based on an 8th century Indonesian design, left Jakarta in August and is on its way to Ghana -- seeking to prove that trade links between Africa and southeast Asia were thriving more than 1,000 years ago.

Apart from some modern safety features such as radar, global positioning system and a satellite phone, the boat is an almost flawless replica of a carving on the wall of Java's Borobudur Temple.

Philip Beale, 42, left his job as a fund manager in London two years ago to live out a decades-long dream to test the ancient design, an ambition he has had since visiting the Indonesian temple as a 21-year-old.

"You could say it's been on my to-do list for 20 years," he told Reuters, on the quay at the Victoria and Albert Waterfront, one of South Africa's top tourist spots.

The total cost of building the ship and running the expedition is estimated at 200,000 pounds, covered largely through private and corporate sponsorship as well as funding by the Indonesian government.

INDONESIAN INFLUENCE ON AFRICA

Beale's expedition aims to prove that Indonesian trade ships could make the 10,000 mile (16,000 km) journey around Africa's Cape of Good Hope.

Some people believe the route to be a first millennium trading route that brought spices and silks from the Orient to Madagascar and other African shores in exchange for iron ore, ivory and skins.

One school of thought even suggests early Indonesians may have colonised Madagascar and exerted a strong cultural influence over parts of the continent.

If the early trading route theory could be proved, it would supplant claims that the Chinese were the first foreigners to visit southern Africa, believed to be in the 14th century, about 100 years before the first documented European journeys to the continent.

The Borobudur, and a 15-person crew, including eight Indonesians, visited the Maldives and Madagascar before stopping off in Cape Town. It sets sail for St Helena after a week's break, the final stop before the journey ends in Accra, Ghana around February 20.

The trip was extended by more than a month after a vicious Indian Ocean storm shredded one of the main sails.

The boat was built on Kangean Island, north of the Indonesian island of Bali, using tools and materials that would have been available in the 8th Century A.D. Its two huge cotton sails, hoisted and lowered by hand, can push the 38-tonne craft to a top speed of around eight knots.

The Borobudur's teak planks above water are held together by wooden dowels and below the water-line dense ironwood keeps the sea water out -- as far as possible.

Even so, every 20 to 30 minutes the crew must work a bilge pump at the back of the ship to expel inevitable seepage.

"It won't fall apart, it's built like a tank," Beale said proudly.

Crew members, who work in four-hour shifts at night and six-hour shifts during the day, have few luxuries, apart from a small hi-fi powered by a diesel generator.

There is no toilet or refrigeration on board, and cooking the tinned foods, rice and freshly-caught fish is shared among the crew. Fresh water can be stored below deck.

INDONESIAN OR INDIAN?

The trip is not without controversy. Cyril Hromnik, a South Africa-based expert in early African and Indian Ocean history, has questioned the boat's provenance and says the design is Indian, not Indonesian.

Indonesians, he says, were merely passengers on Indian trading routes and were often shipped to Africa as labour for early gold mines.

"What this ship is doing here is terrifically demonstrating Indian trade with the continent," Hromnik said.

Whatever its true origin, the strange craft created a buzz in Cape Town's harbour, drawing crowds of onlookers. The boat likely to go back to Indonesia after the voyage and put on display.

Capt'n Midnight

Remember the Kon Tiki ?
Unfortunately gentics point to an Asian origin for the polynesians.
So just because a voyage can be done does not mean ancients did it.