Tomako or tomoko is a large war canoe from the

Solomon Islands Solomon Islands is an island country consisting of six major islands and over 900 smaller islands in Oceania, to the east of Papua New Guinea and north-west of Vanuatu. It has a land area of , and a population of approx. 700,000. Its capita ...

. The name "tomako" is used in

New Georgia New Georgia, with an area of , is the largest of the islands in Western Province, Solomon Islands, and the 200th-largest island in the world. Geography New Georgia island is located in the New Georgia Group, an archipelago including most of ...

in the

Roviana language Roviana is a member of the North West Solomonic branch of Oceanic languages. It is spoken around Roviana and Vonavona lagoons at the north central New Georgia in the Solomon Islands. It has 10,000 first-language speakers and an additional 16,000 ...

. It is also known as magoru in Marovo, niabara in

Vella Lavella Vella Lavella is an island in the Western Province of the Solomon Islands. It lies to the west of New Georgia, but is considered one of the New Georgia Group. To its west are the Treasury Islands. Environment The island of Vella Lavella is loc ...

, mon in Bougainville, ora in

Makira The island of Makira (also known as San Cristobal and San Cristóbal) is the largest island of Makira-Ulawa Province in the Solomon Islands. It is third most populous island after Malaita and Guadalcanal, with a population of 55,126 as of 2020 ...

, and iola or ola in

Malaita Malaita is the primary island of Malaita Province in Solomon Islands. Malaita is the most populous island of the Solomon Islands, with a population of 161,832 as of 2021, or more than a third of the entire national population. It is also the se ...

and Ulawa. Tomako were narrow and usually between in length. They did not possess

outriggers An outrigger is a projecting structure on a boat, with specific meaning depending on types of vessel. Outriggers may also refer to legs on a wheeled vehicle that are folded out when it needs stabilization, for example on a crane that lifts ...

or sails and were propelled solely by paddling. They were built by fitting planks edge-to-edge which are then "sewn" together and

caulk Caulk or, less frequently, caulking is a material used to seal joints or seams against leakage in various structures and piping. The oldest form of caulk consisted of fibrous materials driven into the wedge-shaped seams between boards on w ...

ed with a paste made from the nut of the tree '' Parinarium laurinum''. They could carry 30 to 50 warriors, and were used in raiding expeditions for slaves or for

headhunting Headhunting is the practice of hunting a human and collecting the severed head after killing the victim, although sometimes more portable body parts (such as ear, nose or scalp) are taken instead as trophies. Headhunting was practiced in hi ...

. They were characteristically crescent-shaped, with sharply upturned prows and sterns (reaching up to high) that were decorated with fringes of cowrie shells,

nautilus The nautilus (, ) is a pelagic marine mollusc of the cephalopod family Nautilidae. The nautilus is the sole extant family of the superfamily Nautilaceae and of its smaller but near equal suborder, Nautilina. It comprises six living species in t ...

shells, and

mother-of-pearl Nacre ( , ), also known as mother of pearl, is an organicinorganic composite material produced by some molluscs as an inner shell layer; it is also the material of which pearls are composed. It is strong, resilient, and iridescent. Nacre is f ...

, as well as intricate carvings (Roviana: ''nguzunguzu''; Marovo: ''toto isu''). These carvings are usually of spirit animals or warriors like the ''kesoko'' (a bird or sea spirit) and Tiolo (a warrior deity). The body is commonly blackened to contrast with the decorations. Tomako usually took 2 to 3 years to build using traditional stone and shell adzes. They were kept in sacred houses known as ''paele'', which also housed human heads taken during battle. Tomako is similar to the lisi, another common boat type in the Solomon Islands which also lacks outriggers, but differs in that the topmost

strake On a vessel's hull, a strake is a longitudinal course of planking or plating which runs from the boat's stempost (at the bows) to the sternpost or transom (at the rear). The garboard strakes are the two immediately adjacent to the keel on ...

s of the lisi have a gap in the middle. It also resembles the

orembai Orembai or Arombai is a type of plank boat from the Maluku Islands of Eastern Indonesia. It is mainly used for fishing and transport. This vessel is used as far as Batavia, where in the 17th century it became popular to go out "''orembaaien''" on a ...

of the

Maluku Islands The Maluku Islands (; Indonesian: ''Kepulauan Maluku'') or the Moluccas () are an archipelago in the east of Indonesia. Tectonically they are located on the Halmahera Plate within the Molucca Sea Collision Zone. Geographically they are located eas ...

, except the latter usually has a sail. The last canoes used for war were confiscated by the British colonial government in the Solomon Islands during the early 1900s to stop

raids. It was eventually bought by a private German collector. However, new canoes were built at around 1910–1912. They were used for canoe-racing, encouraged by the colonial government to preserve the traditional boat-building practices. In the 11th

Festival of Pacific Arts The Festival of Pacific Arts, Pacific Arts Festival, or FESTPAC is a traveling festival hosted every four years, in the same year as the Summer Olympics, by a different country in Oceania ( map). It was conceived by the Pacific Community (former ...

in 2012 hosted by the Solomon Islands, several Tomako were built and displayed.

Gallery

File:PSM V35 D501 Head hunting canoe and canoe house at rubiana.jpg, Woodcut illustration of a tomako stored in a paele (c. 1889) File:Tomako (Solomon Islands, 1918).jpg, An ornamented tomako (c. 1918) File:Head-hunting canoe from Ysabel (Canoes of the British Solomon Islands, 1909).jpg, A tomako from

Santa Isabel Island Santa Isabel Island (also known as Isabel, Ysabel and Mahaga) is the longest in Solomon Islands, the third largest in terms of surface area, and the largest in the group of islands in Isabel Province. Location and geographic data Choiseul lies t ...

(c. 1909)

References

{{Austronesian ships Austronesian ships

Gallery

See also

References