|
 kill
and creativity have seen the people of the Philippine
archipelago through many difficult situations. About a
thousand years ago, these were the very same talents
they used to succeed in a flourishing maritime trade
with other Asian countries. Their close affinity with
the waters around them help improve their seamanship and
boatbuilding skill, placing them on equal footing with
their Asian neighbors.
This
also earned them due notice from season European and
Asian voyagers, as well as their chroniclers.
Actual
maritime trade records dating to as early as the 13th
century have been found. Chao Ju-Kua’s work, Reports
on the South Sea Barbarians, completed in 1225, gave
a detailed account of maritime activities in the
Philippines during those times. Wang Ta-Yuan, another
Chinese chronicler, made similar reports in 1349. the
most detailed description, however, may be found in the
accounts from Francisco Alcina’s History of the
Visayan Islands of 1668.
Early boats of the
Philippines
 The
discovery of the balangay boats in Buturan,
Agusan del Norte in the late 1970s served as further
testimony to the ingenuity of the early Filipino.
What were the balangays? These were the
first wooden watercraft excavated in Southeast Asia.
When first announced to the media in 1977, the find was
described by the National Museum of the Philippines
using Antonio Pigafetta’s early 16th-century
Italian spelling “balanghai” for “barangay”,
a term which has been adopted by the Philippine
government as a name for the smallest of political
units. This was perhaps in deference to the unique brand
of unity evident among the builders of these boats.
There are nine existing balangays, three
of which have been systematically excavated by National
Museum archaeologist, with others still waterlogged in
specific sites in Butuan Ciy. Keeping the remaining
boats in situ has proven to be the best way to
preserve them, while they await eventual excavation.
The first
boat, now preserved and displayed in a site museum in
Libertad, Butuan City, had a carbon-14 date of 320,
while the second boat, which has been transferred to the
Maritime Hall of the National Museum in Manila, was
dated to 1250. The third boat remains in a conservation
vat the at the Butuan Regional Museum, undergoing
preservative measures.
The balangay was basically a plank boat
put together by joining the carved-out planks edge to
edge, using pins or dowels. The planks, which were made
from a hardwood called doongon in the Philippines
(Heritiera littoralis), were fastened together
every 12 centimeters long, which were driven into holes
on the edge of each plank. On the inner side of the boat
the planks were provided, at regular intervals, with
raised rectangular lugs, carved from the same plank,
through which holes were bored diagonally from the sides
to the surface.
Rib-like structures made of lengths of wood were
then lashed against these lughs to proved a flexible
bulkhead, to reinforce and literally sew the boat
together. Cordage knows as cabo negro (Arenga
pinnata) was used for the purpose. The hull,
measuring about 15 meters long and 4 meters wide, was
ordinally semicircular in cross-section and with no
marked keel. Provided with huge outriggers, the boat was
propelled either by a sail or by paddling. The boats
were finely manufactured without any blueprints, using a
technique still employed by the boatmakers of Sibutu
Island in the southern Philippines.
There is no basic difference in the technology of
boatbuilding seen in the first two dated balangays,
suggesting the stability of this construction technique
over the last 900 years. The third boat, which was
recovered in 1986, likewise exhibits the same mode of
construction. This is a style of boatbuilding which was
once popular from Scandinavia to the South Pacific, from
the 3rd century B.C. to the present time in a
few remote islands.
|