I was feeling somewhat stuck for something to write about – usually all sorts of things spring into my mind, but today my brain seems empty unlike the room I’m sitting in now. I have spent the day trying to tidy my writing room (no-one would guess from looking at the state of it now, but at least there’s a pile of things to send to a charity shop throw out) So in search of inspiration, I looked on Wikipedia to see if anything is significant about today’s date, 28th April, and i found one thing which immediately caught my attention:
1947 – Thor Heyerdahl and five crew mates set out from Peru on the Kon-Tiki to demonstrate that Peruvian natives could have settled Polynesia.
Now I have written about Thor and his Kon-Tiki expedition before. I think it must have fascinated my dad, because I was aware of it before I found a book in the library and read all about it. Thor published his book, ‘The Kon-Tiki Expedition: By Raft Across the South Seas’ in 1948, but it must have been published in English after that. It was one of the first adult books I ever read, probably when I was about seven or eight; I was such an adventurous child, in my imagination and I was always reading books about real life adventures and wishing, wishing, wishing with every wish-bone, four-leafed clover, shooting star, that I would have an adventure.
Thor Heyerdahl was born in 1914, and as you may guess from his name he was Norwegian. He was a brilliant man, and although his first interest from being a child was zoology, he was renowned in many other areas too. During the war when Norway fell to the Germans, he fought in the Resistance. He had become fascinated by the Polynesian islands and people who he had studied himself while doing other course at university.
He became renowned for many things, but the Kon-Tiki expedition is maybe the one which most people would know. It was the name of an Inca god, and he gave it to the raft he made to sail from Peru to the Easter Islands. He was convinced that in olden times people would have been able to and indeed often did sail across the ocean. He filmed his 1947 adventure, which started on the 28th April, seventy-four years ago today. Kon-Tiki was actually towed away from Peruvian coastal waters because of the danger of other shipping, but after that the balsa wood raft sailed alone. Although they came near other islands, they eventually beached on the Raroia atoll in the Tuamotu group. Kon-Tiki had travelled about 3,770 nautical miles (4,340 land miles) and had taken 101 days; their average speed was 1.5 knots.
It was an amazing feat, and Heyerdahl went on to make other voyages on other craft which I also followed and read about. However, it is Kon-Tiki, which most excited me as a child!
Lois Elsden 