Bajo fishing voyages to the Timor and Arafura seas are undertaken in unmotorised wooden hulled craft known as perahu lambo. The term perahu lambo refers to a number of similar types of Indonesian sailing vessel which feature design elements influenced by and derived from small European fore-and-aft rigged vessels (Horridge 1979: iv; Burningham 1996: 9). The Bajo lambo are of the Butonese type.

The class of vessel that has become known in the literature as the Butonese lambo is built and sailed by a number of ethno-linguistic groups from islands in the region of Southeast Sulawesi and as far west as the Taka Bonerate atoll and smaller neighbouring islands in the Flores Sea. The Tukang Besi Islands, Buton and Bonerate are regarded as the ‘centre’ of the lambo building tradition (Nooteboom 1947: 220; Burningham 1989: 179). Over much of the past century the lambo has facilitated the migration of people from Southeast Sulawesi, particularly from the Tukang Besi Islands, to other areas of eastern Indonesia. Thus lambo are built and sailed in many of those areas where Butonese and Bajo have settled, including parts of of Maluku and Irian Jaya, and on many of the islands in East Nusa Tenggara, including the village of Pepela on Roti Island (Horridge 1979: iv, 1985: 69; Burningham 1989: 179).

The defining features of Butonese lambo are a straight stem and stern post set at an angle to a straight keel, with a median rudder and gunter sail rig (Burningham 1989: 179). In contrast, the stem and stern posts of the traditional Indonesian hull form are curved end to end into the keel (Horridge 1985: 12), while traditional Indonesian sail layouts for craft larger than canoes are generally rectangular (layar tanja) or lateen (layar lete) (Horridge 1979: 10) (see Figure 3-1). While the lambo hull exhibits European design elements, the method of building follows the traditional Indonesian method of shell construction, where short planks of timber carved to shape are fitted edge to edge with wooden dowels and the ribs are fitted afterwards. This is in contrast to the Western method of boat building, where planking is added after the rib frame is constructed (Burningham 1989: 181; Horridge 1985: 69). Nevertheless, perahu lambo have been described as ‘the most westernised and amongst the most recently evolved trading sailing vessels in Indonesia’ (Burningham 1989: 179).

Perahu lambo are generally between 10 and 40 tonnes in weight (Horridge 1985: 66) and between 10 to 16 metres in length. Three types of stern can be distinguished on perahu lambo, and some lambo building communities show a preference for a particular type. ^[10] In the past, perahu lambo were either gaff or ketch rigged (single or double masted). The gaff and ketch rig (lama cangking) was replaced by the gunter sloop rig (lama sande/layar nade) from around 1960 (Horridge 1985: 10). According to Hughes (1984: 155), who carried out fieldwork in the Tukang Besi Islands in 1982, there were no more two-masted lambo left in Wanci or Kaledupa in 1982. Hughes (1984: 156, 162) also reported that by the early 1970s, all lambo in Wanci had been converted from gaff to gunter rig. Since the 1970s many lambo have had auxiliary diesel engines installed, and some lambo have undergone structural modifications, transforming them into perahu layar motor (motorised sailing boats).

Figure 3-1 shows six different combinations of hull and rigging: (a) perahu pajala with the traditional Indonesian hull form and layar tanja rig; (b) perahu lete lete with similar hull form and another version of layar tanja rig; (c) perahu lambo with gaff rig; (d) perahu lambo with ketch rig; (e) perahu lambo with counter-stern and gunter rig; (f) perahu lambo with double-ended stern and gunter rig.

Sources: Hawkins 1982, Burningham 1996.

Many of the newer lambo are designed for shark fishing. In the case of the Mola lambo, vessels were normally built with a hatch located in the middle of the aft deck. In more recent years, some of the newer lambo have hatches closer to the end of the stern or to the entrance of the cabin so that the deck is flush and there is greater working space to process newly caught sharks hauled onto the deck (Burningham 1996: 141). The hulls of perahu lambo built for Mola Bajo appear to have less beam than other lambo in Southeast Sulawesi since they are not engaged in cargo carrying activities. Platforms replacing the traditional toilet box are now added to the stern as an additional space for cooking and storing fishing gear, and the toilet box is then built into one corner. This appears to be related to the adoption of longline fishing gear (ibid.: 51). The design of the counter-sterned lambo is an Indonesian version of a small European trading sloop or cutter (Horridge 1979: iv). The counter-sterned lambo only appeared in the twentieth century (Burningham 1996: 11), but the European prototype from which the lambo was copied is still the subject of conjecture. The design could have been copied from a number of European boat types found in Southeast Asia towards the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries (Horridge 1979: 7–8; Horridge in Southon 1995: 40–1; Burningham 1996: 15, 111). The first modern usage of the word lambo found in records so far is recorded by Kriebel (1920: 217), who listed the types of trading perahu (including lambo) built and used by the people of Bonerate (Burningham 1996: 15). The Bonerate villagers were noted as expert builders of lambo in the 1930s (Collins 1936: 147; Nooteboom 1947: 220) and 1940s (Gibson-Hill 1950: 133). By the late 1930s, the lambo was already quite widespread throughout eastern Indonesia and was slowly replacing earlier trading vessels such as the perahu palari (Nooteboom 1947: 219, 220).

Much of the discussion in the literature has focused on the history and design of the counter-sterned lambo rather than the double-ended lambo. Burningham (1996: 11) says that ‘some of the double-ended lambo from the Tukang Besi Islands have a hull form that is more closely related to that of an indigenous type called sope or soppe than to any western model’, and claims that double-ended lambo may have been the ‘original type’ of lambo in the Buton region (ibid.: 21).

It is possible to determine when the Bajo living at Mantigola in the 1930s and 1940s first adopted the lambo because the oral history of past voyages to the Timor Sea through much of the twentieth century indicates the range of that were boats used. Dating from sometime in the first two decades of the twentieth century, Bajo sailed to Ashmore Reef in a double-ended perahu that carried a tilted rectangular sail (lama tanja). By the 1930s and 1940s, voyages to the Timor Sea were undertaken in perahu lambo, some double-ended and some with counter-sterns, with a single rudder and gaff rigged in the European fashion.

The majority of perahu lambo in eastern Indonesia are used as cargo carriers or trading vessels. Studies of changes in their design focus almost exclusively on their usein trading activities, and Horridge (1979: iv) goes so far as to say that the lambo ‘was brought into use as a trader and was never a fishing boat’ (see also Hughes 1984; Horridge 1985; Evers 1991; Southon 1995; Burningham 1996). However, the Bajo of Mola, Mantigola and Pepela use perahu lambo almost exclusively for collecting trepang and trochus, and for shark fin fishing voyages to the Timor and Arafura seas. This suggests that the lambo was adopted by the Bajo as a fishing vessel some time before the middle of the twentieth century.

The unmotorised lambo used primarily for fishing purposes in eastern Indonesia belong to Mola and Mantigola Bajo and the mixed Bajo/Rotinese population of Pepela and Oelaba on Roti Island. One reason for the continued use of unmotorised perahu lambo in the area permitted to Indonesian craft within the Australian Fishing Zone is that the regulations under the 1974 Memorandum of Understanding state that boats must be ‘traditional vessels’, which means that engines are not permitted. These regulations have contributed to the continuing use of perahu lambo by the Bajo and certainly stalled the widespread adoption of engines. However, most other Indonesian fishing populations, such as other groups of Bajo, Butonese and Bugis fishermen, use motorised boats to engage inillegal fishing activities in the northern Timor and Arafura seas. ^[11]

We have already noted that there were 37 perahu lambo owned by Bajo from Mola Selatan, and seven owned by Bajo from Mola Utara, in 1994 (Table 3-1). Another ten were owned by Bajo from Mantigola. Of these 54 vessels, 20 were located in Pepela at the time of the survey. A few boats from Mola and Mantigola were not used for shark fishing voyages in the Timor and Arafura seas in that year because they were not fully operational and could not put to sea when the fishing season began in August. Some Bajo had by then borrowed perahu from other areas, some of the boats had been sold in Pepela, some Bajo had purchased new vessels and some perahu were apprehended over the course of the following months.

The provenance of Bajo perahu lambo enables us to distinguish those which have been inherited from those purchased second-hand, either locally or from other parts of Indonesia, and those new perahu built in Mola, Mantigola or in other villages such as Langara. The average cost of having a new average-sized counter-sterned perahu lambo built by a boat builder in Mola or Langara is in the range of Rp 7–10 000 000. Smaller lambo, including double-ended vessels, are considerably cheaper to build. In the Tiworo Islands a new double-ender can be purchased for approximately Rp 4 000 000. The time taken to build a lambo can vary from a few months to a few years, depending on the pace of work fand the availability of money and timber. Second-hand perahu, depending on their condition, can cost Rp 2–5 000 000. In many cases a second-hand boat will require some repairs before it can be sailed. Depending on the condition of the vessel, these can cost another Rp 1–5 000 000.

A lambo may last for many decades if it is well maintained. Most boats undergo minor and major repairs to the hull to keep them workable during their lifetime, and after 20 or 30 years very few parts of the original hull remain. The oldest remaining working perahu from Mola are those built in Mantigola prior to the migration of Mantigola Bajo to Mola during the Kahar Muzakkar rebellion in the 1950s.