Canoes and Coconut Crabs The People of Paradise

Specially chosen programmes from the BBC archive.

For this Collection, Sir David Attenborough has chosen documentaries

from the start of his career.

More programmes on this theme, and other BBC Four Collections,

are available on BBC iPlayer.

SINGING

The people of the South Seas must be ranked as among the most brave,

the most skilful of all sailors of the world.

In their canoes, they sailed over hundreds of miles of the Pacific,

colonising small coral islands and spreading as far as New Zealand,

a thousand miles to the south.

And when the first European travellers went to the South Pacific,

they were very impressed by the craft that they saw.

This is a drawing by Captain Cook's artist which was made in Tonga

at the end of the 18th century.

And it shows what is perhaps the finest, the most impressive

and most efficient of all the ocean-going canoes.

This is a ndrua, a twin canoe,

as it's called in Fijian, a double canoe.

And it's called a twin or double canoe because it has two twin hulls,

each of them virtually a separate dugout. They were over 100 feet long.

They could carry over 200 men.

One is recorded as carrying 12 live cows in the hold alone

as well as several tons of food on the big deck.

They had gigantic steering paddles in the stern,

and in heavy seas, handling those paddles required several men,

and often those men wrestling with these paddles in high seas

strained themselves so badly that they became crippled for life

and sometimes died on the voyage.

And these boats could do speeds of up to 10 or 12 knots.

That is to say, they could possibly overtake a European merchant ship

sailing in those waters. And that was a very serious business

because 150 years ago the inhabitants of Fiji were cannibals.

And if you were a merchant sailor

and you were caught by one of these canoes,

there was very little doubt as to what would happen to you.

But the European sailors learnt a technique for escaping

from these huge war canoes.

They sailed directly into the wind with the wind filling their sails

and when that happened and the ndrua tried to follow, the wind filled

this huge sail with such force that it forced the bows down

and the thing sank.

But it would have been a very wonderful thing indeed

to see a canoe like that.

When I went to Fiji and asked about the ndrua,

they said, "All those are finished."

The last one rotted away perhaps 50 years ago.

Now the big ocean-going vessels are made on the European pattern.

But they said, "Why not go to Kambara?"

because Kambara is the place where they were all made.

They were all made in Kambara because Kambara is one of the few islands

in this part of the Pacific that has forests of vesi trees,

and vesi timber was the best timber

and the timber used for the big dugout canoes.

They said, "You won't see a double canoe,

"but you may see a dugout canoe. You may see kava bowls.

"And anyway," they said, "you'll get a very good idea

"of what life is like in one of these outlying islands of Fiji."

So, that's what we did.

In a schooner, we sailed away to this island of craftsmen,

the island of Kambara.

Kambara's forests of vesi trees cover most of the central part

of the island and run right down to the sea.

The beaches are so blindingly white that when you walk along them

you simply can't open your eyes wide without very real pain.

These women squatting on the beach in the fierce tropical sun

were preparing to go fishing in the lagoon

and they are blackening their faces with charcoal as a protection

against the glare reflected from the coral sand

and the surface of the sea.

In their baskets, they have some hermit crabs

which they've collected to use as bait.

I watched them go with interest

because I wanted to see what kind of canoe they would use.

After all, Kambara, famous for centuries for its fine canoes,

might be expected still to produce something a little special.

But, in fact, this was a perfectly ordinary outrigger,

similar to the ones that you can see over vast areas of the Pacific.

Their first job was to find the best spot for fishing

among the towers of coral that rose up

from the white, sandy bottom of the lagoon.

The tops of the towers, flattened by the waves, are only a few feet

from the surface and make excellent platforms

on which to stand while you bait your hooks and sort out the lines.

The Fijians have used goggles like these for many years.

They are made from tiny pieces of glass and fit very close to the eyes.

Using them underwater not only enables you to see a shark

if it comes your way,

but it also makes it possible for you to select exactly which fish

you will catch among all those that swim 20 feet below you

in the crystal waters.

Usually, all you have to do is to dangle your bait in front of

the fish that you've selected.

It bites and up it comes, though sometimes not quite all the way.

But when you have caught one,

you kill it by biting it at the back of its neck

and then you store it in the coconut-leaf basket at your waist

which holds the bait.

In a few hours,

you can catch a basketful of fish of the most brilliant colours,

sufficient to provide an excellent meal for all your family.

Further along this lovely, mile-long beach, you come to Tokelau,

the main village of the island.

This is the home of the carpenter clan,

the Children of Lemaki, as they're called,

who are famous not only for their canoes but for their tanoa,

their kava bowls, which this man is making.

Every household in Fiji and in Tonga has to have its kava bowl,

just as every British household has to have a teapot.

Some even have three or four.

And most societies or clubs or institutions

have a special large kava bowl used for important ceremonies.

And nearly all these bowls come from this one island

and are made by craftsmen like this man.

Most of his techniques are the old, traditional ones.

He still uses an adze, though its blade, which 150 years ago

would have been of stone, is now made of steel.

But the shape of the tool and the way of using it is still the same.

One tool which hasn't changed is this pig's tusk,

which is used for the final polishing.

This finished bowl may be traded from island to island

and eventually find its permanent home in Tonga 200 miles to the east

or in the Yasawa Islands, 300 miles to the west.

The kava bowl maker had told me that some relative of his was at work

on a dugout canoe down at the far end of the village,

and I decided to go along and see how he was getting on.

The canoe makers were working in the shade of a grove of coconut palms.

Some of these people almost certainly have Tongan blood in their veins,

for the gigantic double canoes of the past took several years to build

and many of the Tongans who sailed here

to make war canoes for themselves

came to like the island so much that eventually they stayed here for good.

Even a small, single dugout like the one this man is making

could take several months to build.

Merely out of curiosity, I asked the head canoe maker

whether he himself had ever worked on one of the old-style double canoes.

"Like this one," I said, "but with two hulls, ndrua, the twin canoe."

"Oh, yes," he said. "I've made one."

I was sure I hadn't understood him correctly. "You made one yourself?"

"Oh, yes," he said.

"It's over there on the beach."

To be absolutely honest, I thought that this was yet another

of those very frequent occasions

on which I had failed to make myself understood to a Fijian,

that we were at cross-purposes

and that he was going to show me just a rather large outrigger canoe.

But I went along with him just in case

and there it was, high above the water line,

a genuine double canoe with two twin hulls.

Maybe a little smaller than the ones that had been seen by Captain Cook

and the other early travellers, but, nonetheless,

a genuine double canoe built on exactly the same principles.

But was it still seaworthy?

Had he got the masts and the tackle and the sails somewhere?

He seemed a little doubtful, for he said

he hadn't taken the canoe to sea for a very long time.

But he'd go and have a look.

And somewhere or other, he had found them.

The canoe had no metal fittings at all.

The pivots, the cleats

and the bollards were all carved from solid vesi wood.

The oars of the ancient double canoes were gigantic things

over 30 feet long and even the two that were produced

for this smaller version were impressively large.

The sail, made of woven pandanus mats sewn together,

was rather tattered and had to be tied to the booms with string

made from plaited coconut fibre.

By now, lots of the villagers had gathered round,

for this was quite an event - to get the old canoe seaworthy again.

And now came the moment of launching.

We needed the help of everybody available

to shove the very heavy canoe down the beach to the lagoon.

And so, at last, we started on our little voyage.

To begin with, the huge sail had to be hoisted.

As soon as it was fully up and the wind filled it,

then the canoe got underway and we set off across the lagoon

at a really spanking pace.

I reckon we must have been doing at least six or seven knots.

In order to get out of the lagoon, we had to make for

the one and only passage through the surrounding reef.

And to do this, we had to tack. We couldn't swing the boom

and change direction as you do in a European-style yacht.

Instead, the whole sail has to be carried

from one end of the canoe to the other

so that the stern now becomes the bows

and the ship goes in the opposite direction.

It was easy to see that this must be an extremely tricky operation

in any wind stronger than a gentle breeze.

Soon, we were through the reef and heading for the open sea.

It was quite a calm day, the sea, an unbelievably bright blue,

but once we were outside the protection of the reef,

there was quite a swell and we began to ship water over the bows.

What's more, the hulls of the canoe,

not having been at sea for some time, leaked a little

and we had to start bailing.

As we sailed away from Kambara farther out to sea,

I began to get some small idea of the tremendous toughness,

bravery and skill of the sailors of the South Seas,

who in times gone by had sailed craft like this,

not for a few miles in calm waters, but for several hundreds of miles

through high seas and hurricanes right across the Pacific

to settle in some tiny, uninhabited, coral island.

When we, in fact, had gone a mile or two beyond the reef

we turned back and went to Kambara,

but ships like that often sailed on for 100 miles or so

because they sailed on to Tonga.

There was constant sailing between Kambara and Tonga.

Often the Tongans would come this way in their rather crude dugout canoes

and persuade the Kambara people to build them new, smart,

Fijian ndrua and they would live with the Kambara people

for several years, paying for their canoe, their new canoe,

by, in fact, fighting for the Kambara peoples in the tribal wars.

And then, when they had paid their debt,

they took their brand-new, smart, Fijian double canoe

and sailed back to Tonga.

And that's just what we did after leaving Kambara,

not actually in a double canoe, but in a schooner.

And we went to Tonga to look for new people.

But when eventually we landed there,

we became fascinated first of all by the animals

which, frankly, I'd not expected to find in such numbers

in this isolated speck of land in the South Pacific.

The palace in Tonga is the home not only of Queen Salote

but of someone who is almost as famous, Tu'i Malila.

And this is him.

Tu'i Malila is almost certainly the oldest living creature in the world.

In his time, he has survived some pretty serious accidents

as the dents and holes in his shell prove.

Once, he was kicked and his shell cracked by a horse.

On another occasion, he was severely burnt during a forest fire.

But still he plods sedately around the palace.

He must now be at least 190 years old,

and he is probably over 200,

for he was presented to one of Queen Salote's ancestors by Captain Cook

during the explorer's visit to the island in either 1773 or 1777.

And Tu'i Malila must have been quite a sizeable tortoise even then.

His favourite food is pawpaw.

But unfortunately he is now completely blind

and unless someone is there to help him,

his bites sometimes miss the food.

So it is that a palace servant is given the special responsibility

of making sure that this aged Tongan, who has been given the honorary title

of "tu'i" or "chief", gets all the food he needs

and doesn't stray too far.

But of course, Tu'i Malila, although he has lived in Tonga

for over 180 years, is not a true-born Tongan.

Indeed, there are very few animals native to this island.

One of them, however, is a truly terrifying-looking creature.

This is a robber or coconut crab.

From claw to claw, it's over two feet across,

and watching it, you are reminded not of an animal,

but some ghastly, inanimate mechanical robot.

Another crab was crouching in the hole at the base of the tree.

At first, I thought that this grasp was some sort of greeting.

But, in fact, it was soon quite clear that the crabs were engaged

in a silent, inhuman fight,

for the pincers, having met, were crunching one upon the other

and with a horrid splintering sound, small pieces of limey shell

were chipping off and flying into the air.

The crabs were in battle.

But it wasn't a battle of lunge and thrust,

of skilful parries and circling for position,

it was a steady, remorseless trial of strength -

each crab straining every muscle, both trying to withdraw,

yet both seemingly unable to let go of one another.

This senseless, ferocious tug-of-war

continued for nearly quarter of an hour,

the gigantic claws locked together.

Neither, it seemed, could win and neither would surrender.

And then, quite unexpectedly, one of them turned away.

They had separated.

This one retreated towards his hole in the roots of the tree.

The other, the one that had fallen, began climbing once more,

this time up the trunk of a coconut palm.

I had never seen these creatures before, and after watching the battle

I thought I would like to examine one of them a little more closely.

The scar on its claw had been inflicted during the fight

and it was clear evidence that a nip from one of these pincers

would be very unpleasant indeed.

These crabs are such powerful creatures that they can strip

the husk from a coconut, split the shell to eat the flesh inside.

And they will do this to ripe coconuts

that have fallen to the ground

and even climb up the palm trees to cut down the nuts for themselves.

Indeed, they can be serious pests in coconut plantations,

but they rarely become common, for they make very good eating

and are eagerly hunted by the islanders for food.

They have developed a special mechanism which enables them,

once they've passed their larval state,

to spend the rest of their life out of water.

This one was bright blue flushed with pink.

Some crabs, like the little hermit crab to which this one is related,

can, I think, be rather endearing, charming creatures.

But I found it a little difficult to regard this huge robber crab

in the same sort of way.

In the centre of the island, in a grove of casuarina trees,

lives a colony of quite different creatures -

flying foxes, or to give them their more accurate name, fruit bats.

SCREECHING

They are among the largest bats in the world

with a wingspan of over four feet and they live entirely on fruit.

Mangoes are their particular favourite.

They feed during the night

and during the daytime they roost in these noisy colonies.

They have a peculiar, strong, musty smell,

but the Tongans say that they make very good eating

as long as you don't let the fur touch the meat before you cook it.

But this particular colony is sacred, taboo.

According to legend, a Tongan named Ula sailed over to Samoa

to take part in the canoe races. He was very successful

and the daughter of one of the Samoan chiefs fell in love with him.

When he left, she gave him a single pure-white fruit bat.

He took it back with him in his canoe to Tonga

and it lived happily in his village.

Soon it gave birth to young and in a few years there was a large colony.

One day, Ula went to visit the chief of the village of Kolovai

and the chief asked him to give him the bats.

Well, according to Tongan custom,

it's not possible for anyone to refuse a request from a chief,

so Ula gave the bats to the chief

and they've lived here in the centre of the village of Kolovai ever since.

The single white bat however that had been given to Ula in Samoa

he took back to his own village.

It's said that this white bat sometimes reappears here in Kolovai,

and when it does, it's a sign that a member of the royal family

or the chief of Kolovai is about to die

and the bat will stay until the funeral is over.

Happily, however, as far as I could see,

there wasn't a single white bat among them.

They were all chocolate-brown with honey-coloured heads.

Anyway, the bats are still sacred

and no-one except the royal family are allowed to shoot them.

Because no-one interferes with these sacred bats, they're very tame

and they roost much lower than any other fruit bats that I'd ever seen

and as a result, I had the chance of observing them

much more closely than I'd ever been able to do before.

I was able to see, for example, the precise way in which a mother

carries her half-grown youngster and see how even at this late stage

she takes the responsibility of cleaning his wings.

She even makes sure that his ears aren't dirty.

Bats seem to have got a reputation for being dirty and flea-ridden,

but on this evidence at least,

it would seem that they keep themselves meticulously clean.

I was also able to observe exactly how a young bat

lazily completes his toilet in the early morning sun.

When he is finished cleaning himself,

sometimes he will hang, not by his feet, as these are doing,

but by the long thumbs on his wings, his feet hanging freely.

But all isn't amiability in the colony.

Fruit bats are really rather quarrelsome creatures

and often the loser of a quarrel will have to escape by taking to flight.

And here again, the opportunities for observation were better

than I'd ever had before,

for as the bats came flapping low over our heads,

they showed us perfectly the structure of the bones

as the sun shone through their parchment wings.

And I was able to see exactly how they alighted in the trees.

They don't all use the same method.

This one...

..hooks on and falls backwards.

This one grips first with his mouth and then with his thumb.

And this one, using perhaps the commonest method of all, just...

..latches on with his feet and flops over forwards.

But we have, after all, gone to Tonga to film people

and, in particular, the most ancient and sacred ceremony of Tonga,

the royal kava ceremony, in which the queen herself takes part.

It's a ceremony which very few Europeans have been allowed to see

and has never been filmed before.

But exactly what it was like, I'll tell you about next time.

SINGING