Guam Past and Present. Charles Beardsley

      The first Europeans to set eyes upon the fabulous Chamorro canoes of the Guam aborigines were the crew of Magellan's tiny fleet. As the colorful outriggers approached, fairly flying over the placid coastal waters of Guam, making straight for the scurvy-marked faces of Magellan's gaunt band, they must have appeared wonderfully graceful and vivid with their red- and black-painted hulls and their sloping plaited sails billowing in the strong breeze of the trade wind.

      "These sails were tri-shaped mats plaited from Pandanus leaves and supported on a yard in the [Mediterranean] manner like lateen sails," Magellan's biographer Pigafetta observed in his journal. "The mast was midships. Instead of going about in tacking, they simply shifted the sheet of the sail from one end of the canoe to the other, so that which had been the bow became the stern, and the stern became the bow. Parallel to the fore-and-aft line there was an outrigger or log, rigidly connected with the hull by cross pieces and resting upon the surface of the water. This served, both by its weight and buoyancy, to keep the narrow craft from capsizing, and was kept always on the windward side by shifting the sheet as described above. All of the boats were painted, some black and others red. They had paddles of the form of hearth shovels, which could be used for steering or propelling the boats."

      To the land-starved, sea-weary gaze of Magellan's men, these handsome canoes and their sturdy, joyous occupants waving flowers and fresh fruit were a beckoning symbol of the rich island that rose behind their graceful sails. It is little wonder that these unique craft were more extravagantly admired than even their ingenious builders by most of the early navigators who trekked the long, arduous path of the Pacific from the west coast of the Americas to the restful haven of Guam and the Marianas.