Proa? Malgualire? Ribault/ ft. Caroline

Well here is a shot in the dark.

I have been reading up on ft Caroline, the still undiscovered 1564 french settlement on the SE US coast somewhere. It is a long and fascinating story.

http://www.amazon.com/Three-Voyages-Rene-Laudonniere/dp/0817311211

This is a translation by Charles Bennet from one of the accounts of the story that was translated from the French an into (old) English by Richard Hakluyt.

Anyway in the story, mention is made by the narrator, Rene Laudonnier, of a malgualire, or a boat that "sailes both forward and backwards". hmmmmm... I quickly googled it, of course, and found no other references. So I thought it would be worth an inquiry here.

Anyone have any info on this type of boat?

 

Hi Charly,

Above quote from page 102 in the book was in Jamaica in 1564, at that time still some Taíno people lived there, and/or some of their boats still could have been there at the time.

So ‘‘Malgualire’’ could be a phonetic representation, in old French translated into old English, of an Taíno word for the particular boat René Goulaine de Laudonnière saw there sailing forward and backwards in 1564.

As the Taíno were an Arawak people, the Arawak boat in this post #52 could fit the ‘‘Malgualire’’ description, that is if the mast was drawn in the middle I think . . .

Note: I didn't check the above picture for historical accuracy, nor the text on the linked forum, nor on the linked Wikipedia pages.

 

Thanks Angelique.

I don't quite know what to make of that thread still reading.

The whole thing piqued my interest because I always thought the proa originated in the western Pacific. I know very little about them. FWIW, the wikipedia entry on proas doesn't mention any early historical sightings in the Atlantic.

I e-mailed this guy http://peopleofonefire.com/?s=taino in 1492
maybe he will answer back. I will post if he does. His blog is also pretty interesting stuff, if you are interested in that kind of stuff.

 

I don't know about the accuracy of the below historical drawing, but the 1494 monohull Taíno canoes from Jamaica look symmetrical in fore and aft there, like they could be paddled (or "sailed" so to say) forward and backwards by just turning the paddler in the boat, so maybe these boats are "malgualires" . . .

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