National Geographic April 1994 [antikvár]

Geographica REX WARNER (ABOVEl; JOE BEYNOK Crossing the Pacific on a Bamboo Raft In the third century b.c. the Emperor of China sent a mariner named Hsu Fu to search the Pacific for the drug of immortaUty. On his second attempt he failed to return. Last year adventurer Tim Severin (below, standing) and four crew members sailed from Asia on a bamboo raft called the Hsu Fu to see if such a vessel could cross the Pacific. "I had regarded the idea of ancient vessels crossing the Pacific as unlikely until I read a book by Joseph Needham, a Cambridge University scholar, suggesting that the most suitable vessel would have been a sailing raft," says Severin, who once crossed the Atlantic in a leather boat (National Geographic, December 1977). He learned that bamboo fishing rafts still sail off Vietnam and commissioned a 60-foot, three-masted version, outfitted with cotton sails and rattan rigging. Hsu Fu embarked from Hong Kong and rode the current to Japan. Then. 75 days out of Japan, stormy seas (top) broke rattan lashings. Crewmen dived to refasten them (left, upper), but they continued to deteriorate. On day 104. only a thousand miles west of California, Severin alerted the U. S. Coast Guard. The Coast Guard searched its computer database of up-to-the-minute merchant ship positions worldwide and asked a Japanese-owned containership, California Galaxy, to pick up the waiting crew (left). They looked back to see their vessel drift off alone, its bamboo largely intact. With stronger fastenings this type of raft could have reached land, Severin says. National Geographic, April 1994